TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
In the text version Italics text is denoted by _underscores_, text in
small-caps is marked in UPPERCASE.
A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated
variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used
has been kept.
Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.
* * * * *
THE FOURTH PLAGUE
BOOKS BY
[Illustration: Edgar Wallace’s signature]
A KING BY NIGHT
EDGAR WALLACE’S MAMMOTH MYSTERY BOOK
GUNMAN’S BLUFF
PEOPLE
RED ACES
TERROR KEEP
THE BLACK
THE BLACK ABBOT
THE CLEVER ONE
THE CRIMSON CIRCLE
THE DARK EYES OF LONDON
THE DOOR WITH SEVEN LOCKS
THE DOUBLE
THE FACE IN THE NIGHT
THE FEATHERED SERPENT
THE FLYING SQUAD
THE FOURTH PLAGUE
THE GIRL FROM SCOTLAND YARD
THE GREEN RIBBON
THE INDIA RUBBER MEN
THE JUST MEN OF CORDOVA
THE MURDER BOOK OF J. G. REEDER
THE NORTHING TRAMP
THE RINGER THE SQUEALER
THE TERRIBLE PEOPLE
THE THREE JUST MEN
THE TRAITORS’ GATE
THE TWISTER
EDGAR WALLACE
THE FOURTH PLAGUE
His motto was--“Don’t arrest
them--eliminate them!”
[Illustration] GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 1930 PUBLISHED FOR
THE CRIME CLUB, INC.
BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED AT THE _Country Life Press_, GARDEN CITY, N. Y., U. S. A.
PUBLISHED, 1930
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ALL THE CHARACTERS IN THIS
BOOK ARE FICTITIOUS
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PROLOGUE 1
I Sir Ralph Delivers Judgment 22
II The Call of Tillizini 42
III A Hunter of Men 53
IV The Red Hand Draws Blank 64
V The Story of the Red Hand 74
VI The Three 99
VII The Golden Antonio 111
VIII The Rare Collection 123
IX Count Festini 139
X A Way of Tillizini’s 154
XI Lady Morte-Mannery Helps a Friend 173
XII The Second Medallion 190
XIII The Abduction of Marjorie 211
XIV Tillizini Leaves a Mark 226
XV The House by the River 244
XVI Tillizini Addresses the House 261
XVII Marjorie Crosses the Marsh 276
XVIII The Woman 284
XIX The Working of the Act 297
THE FOURTH PLAGUE
PROLOGUE
South of Florence by some sixty miles, and west of Rome by almost
thrice the distance, upon three hills, is Siena, the most equable of
the cities of Tuscany.
On the Terzo di Città, in I know not what _contrada_, is the Palazzo
Festini.
It stands aloof in its gloomy and dilapidated magnificence, and since
it dates from the adjacent Baptistery of S. Giovanni, it leaves the
impression of being a crumbling and disgruntled fragment of the sacred
edifice that has wandered away in sullen rage to decay at its leisure.
Here, in penurious grandeur, dwelt the Festinis, who claimed descent
from none other than Guido Novello, of whom Compagni, the arch
apologist, wrote: “_Il conte Guido non aspettò il fine, ma senza dare
colpo di spada si parti._”
The Festini was a family to the name of which the Italian nobility
listened with immobile faces. And if you chose to praise them they
would politely agree; or if you condemned them they would listen
in silence; but if you questioned them as to their standing in the
hierarchy, you might be sure that, from Rome to Milan, your inquiry
would be met by an immediate, but even, change of subject.
The Festinis, whatever might be their relationship with Guido the
Coward, effectively carried on the methods of the Polomei, the Salvani,
the Ponzi, the Piccolomini, and the Forteguerri.
The vendettas of the Middle Ages were revived and sustained by these
products of nineteenth-century civilization, and old Salvani Festini
had, as was notoriously evident, gone outside the circumscribed range
of his own family grievances and had allied himself, either actively
or sympathetically, with every secret society that menaced the good
government of Italy.
It was a hot June afternoon, in the year ’99, when a man and two youths
sat at their midday meal in the gloomy dining room of the Palazzo.
The man who sat at the head of the table was, despite his age, a
broad-shouldered man of apparent vitality; a leonine head surmounted by
a mane of gray hair would have distinguished him without the full beard
which fell over his black velvet waistcoat.
Yet, for all his patriarchal appearance, there was something in the
seamed white face, in the cold eyes which stared from under his bushy
brows, which was sinister and menacing.
He ate in silence, scarcely troubling to answer the questions which
were put to him.
The boy on his right was a beautiful lad of seventeen; he had the
ivory complexion, the perfect, clean-cut, patrician features which
characterized the Italian nobility. His lustrous brown eyes, his
delicate mouth, his almost effeminate chin, testified for the race from
which he sprang.
The young man sitting opposite was four years older. He was at the
stage when youth was merging into manhood, with disastrous consequences
to facial contours. He seemed thin, almost hollow-jawed, and only the
steady quality of his grave eyes saved him from positive ugliness.
“But, Father,” asked the younger lad, “what makes you think that the
Government suspects that you know about the Red Hand?”
The older youth said nothing, but his inquiring eyes were fixed upon
his father.
Salvani Festini brought his mind back to the present with a start.
“Eh?” he asked.
His voice was gruff but not unkindly as he addressed the boy; and the
light of unconscious pride which shone in his eyes as he looked at the
youth softened the forbidding expression of his face.
“I am very well informed, my son,” he said with a gentle growl. “You
know we have excellent information. The carbineers are pursuing their
investigations, and that infernal friend of yours”--he turned to the
elder son--“is at the head of the inquisitors.”
The youth addressed smiled.
“Who is this?” he asked innocently.
The old man shot a glance of suspicion at his son.
“Tillizini,” he said shortly. “The old fool--why doesn’t he keep to his
books and his lectures?”
“He has been very kind to me,” said the younger man. He spoke
thoughtfully, reflectively. “I am sorry he has annoyed you, Father; but
it is his business--this investigation of crime.”
“Crime!” roared the old man. “How dare you, a son of mine, sitting at
my own table, refer to the actions of the Red Hand as crime!”
His face went red with rage, and he cast a glance of malevolence at
his heir which might well have shocked a more susceptible man.
But Antonio Festini was used to such exhibitions. He was neither
embarrassed nor distressed by this fresh exhibition of his father’s
dislike. He knew, and did not resent, the favouritism shown to Simone,
his brother. It did not make him love his brother less or dislike his
father more.
Antonio Festini had many qualities which his countrymen do not usually
possess. This phlegmatic, philosophical attitude of mind had been bred
in him. Some remote ancestor, cool, daring, possibly with a touch of
colder blood in his ancestry, had transmitted to this calm youth some
of the power of detachment.
He knew his father hated the old professor of anthropology at Florence;
for the Festinis, even to this day, preserved the spirit of antagonism
which the Sienese of half a thousand years ago had adopted to the
Florentine.
There were schools enough in Siena; a college most famous for its
lawyers and its doctors.
Simone was graduating there, and what was good enough for Simone should
surely be good enough for Antonio.
But the elder son had chosen Florence with that deliberation which had
always been his peculiarity, even from his earliest childhood, and in
face of all opposition, in defiance of all the Festini tradition, it
was to Florence he went.
Tillizini, that remarkable scientist, had conceived a friendship for
the boy; had taken him under his wing and had trained him in his own
weird, irregular, and inconsequent way.
Tillizini was a master of crime, and he possessed an encyclopædic
knowledge of men. He was at the beck and call of the secret police from
one end of Italy to the other, and, so rumour said, was in receipt of
retaining fees from the governments of other nations.
It was Tillizini who had set himself to work to track down the Red Hand
which had terrorized the South of Italy for so many years and had now
extended its sphere of operations to the North.
And it was a hateful fact that his work had been crowned with success.
His investigations had laid by the heels no less a person than the
considerable Matteo degli Orsoni, the Roman lawyer, who, for so many
years, had directed the operations of one of the most powerful sections
of the Red Hand.
There was something like fear in the old man’s breast, though he was
too good a Festini to display it; and it was fear which leavened his
rage.
“You shall hear a different tale of this Tillizini,” he growled, “mark
you that, Antonio. Some day he will be found dead--a knife in his
heart, or his throat cut, or a bullet wound in his head--who knows? The
Red Hand is no amusing organization.”
He looked long and keenly at his son.
Simone leaned over, his elbows on the table, his chin resting on his
hands, and eyed his brother with dispassionate interest.
“What does Tillizini know of me?” asked the old man suddenly. “What
have you told him?”
Antonio smiled.
“That is an absurd question, Father,” he said; “you do not imagine that
I should speak to Signor Tillizini of you?”
“Why not?” said the other gruffly. “Oh, I know your breed. There is
something of your mother in you. Those Bonnichi would sell their wives
for a hundred lire!”
Not even the reference to his mother aroused the young man to anger.
He sat with his hands thrust into the pockets of his riding breeches,
his head bent a little forward, looking at his father steadily,
speculatively, curiously.
For a few minutes they stared at one another, and the boy on the other
side of the table glanced from father to brother, from brother to
father, eagerly.
At last the old man withdrew his eyes with a shrug, and Antonio leaned
across the table and plucked two grapes from a big silver dish in the
centre, with a hand to which neither annoyance nor fear contributed a
tremor.
The old man turned to his favourite.
“You may expect the _birri_ here to-day or to-morrow,” he said. “There
will be a search for papers. A crowd of dirty Neapolitans will go
rummaging through this house. I suppose you would like me to ask your
friend, Tillizini, to stay to dinner?” he said, turning to the other
with a little sneer.
“As to that, you must please yourself, Father; I should be very
delighted if you did.”
“By faith, you would,” snarled the old man. “If I had an assurance that
the old dog would choke, I’d invite him. I know your Tillizini,” he
said gratingly, “Paulo Tillizini.” He laughed but there was no humour
in his laughter.
Antonio rose from the table, folded his serviette into a square and
placed it neatly between the two Venetian goblets which were in front
of him.
“I have your permission to retire?” he said, with a ceremonious little
bow.
A jerk of the head was the only answer.
With another little bow to his brother, the young man left the room. He
walked through the flagged and gloomy hall to the ponderous door of the
Palazzo.
A servant in faded livery opened the door, and he stepped out into the
blinding sunlight. The heat struck up at him from the paved street as
from a blast furnace.
He had no definite plans for spending the afternoon, but he was anxious
to avoid any further conflict with his father, and though he himself
did not approve of the association which his house had formed with the
many desperate, guilty bands which tyrannized over Italy, yet he was
anxious to think out a method by which the inevitable exposure and
disgrace might be avoided.
There was no question of sentiment as far as he was concerned. He had
reached the point where he had come to regard not only his father but
his younger brother--so eager to assist and so anxious for the day
when he would be able to take an active part in the operations of the
League--as people outside the range of his affections.
It was natural that he should gravitate toward the Piazza del Campo.
All Siena moved naturally to this historic fanlike space, with its
herring-boned brick pavement and its imperishable association with the
trials and triumphs of Siena.
He stood by the broad central pavement which marks the course of the
Pallio, deep in thought, oblivious of the many curious glances which
were thrown in his direction. For despite the heat of the day, all
Siena was abroad.
Had he been less engrossed by his thoughts, he might have regarded it
as curious that the Sienese, who hold this hour sacred to the siesta,
should have so thronged the square and the street on a hot June
afternoon.
Standing there, absorbed by his thoughts, he heard his name spoken
softly behind him, and turned.
He snatched off his soft felt hat with a smile, and extended his hand.
“I did not expect to see you, Signor Tillizini,” he said.
The pleasure of the meeting, however, was overclouded a second later,
as he realized with a sense of apprehension that the old professor’s
visit was not without gloomy significance to his house.
Professor Tillizini, at that time, was in his eightieth year. As
straight as a die, his emaciated and æsthetic face was relieved by two
burning eyes in which the soul of the man throbbed and lived.
He took the arm of his pupil and led him across the Piazza at a slow
pace.
“Antonio mio,” he said with grave affection, “I am come because the
government desires certain information. You know, although I have not
told you, that we are inquiring into a certain organization.”
He laid his thin white hand upon the other’s shoulder, and stopped,
peering down into the boy’s face with keen attention.
“Antonio,” he said slowly, “that investigation is to be directed toward
your father and his actions.”
The other nodded. “I know,” he said simply.
“I am glad you know,” said Tillizini, with a little sigh of relief. “It
has rather worried me. I wanted to tell you some time ago that such an
inquiry was inevitable, but I did not think I would be doing my duty
to the state if I gave that information.”
Antonio smiled a little sadly.
“It does not matter, signor,” he said; “as a matter-of-fact, my father
knows, and is expecting you.”
Tillizini nodded.
“That I expected too,” he said, “or rather, let me be frank--I hoped he
would be; for a policeman expected is a policeman defeated,” he smiled.
They walked a little way in silence, then--
“Are you satisfied in your mind that my father is concerned in all
these outrages?” asked Antonio.
The old man looked at him sharply.
“Are you not also?” he asked.
The heir of the Festinis made no reply. As if by mutual consent they
changed the subject and spoke of other matters.
The old man was awaiting the arrival of the police officers; that much
Antonio guessed.
They spoke of the college at Florence and of mutual friends. Then,
by easy stages, the professor approached his favourite subject--the
subject of his life-work.
“It is a thousand pities, is it not,” he said, “that, having got so
far, the good God will not give me another hundred years of life?”
He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“At the end of which time I should require another hundred,” he said
philosophically. “It is as well, perhaps, that we cannot have our
desires. It would have satisfied me,” he continued, “had I a son to
carry on my work. Here again I am denied. I have not, I admit,” he
said, with that naïveté which was his charm, “even in my life provided
myself with a wife. That was an oversight for which I am now being
punished.”
He stopped as a tall officer in the uniform of the carbineers came
swinging across the Piazza del Campo, and Antonio Festini instinctively
stepped away from his master’s side.
The two spoke together, and by and by, with a little nod of farewell
and a fleeting shadow of pity in his eyes, Tillizini accompanied the
tall officer in the direction of the Palazzo Festini.
Antonio watched him until he was out of sight. Then he resumed his
aimless pacing up and down the Piazza, his hands behind his back, his
head sunk forward on his breast.
Tillizini accompanied the tall officer to the Festini Palace. He
pulled the rusty bell that hung by the side of the great door, and was
admitted.
He was conducted with all the ceremony which his obvious rank
demanded--for was not there an officer of carbineers accompanying him,
and did not that officer treat him with great deference?--to the big
salon of the Festinis.
It was an apartment bleak and bare. The ancient splendours of the
painted ceiling were dim and dingy, the marble-flagged floor was broken
in places, and no attempt had been made to repair it. The few chairs,
and the French table, which had been pushed against the wall, seemed
lost in that wilderness of chilly marble.
In a few moments Count Festini came in. He was still dressed in his
velvet coat and waistcoat, and the riding breeches and boots which he
and his sons invariably wore, for they were great horsemen, and had but
that one taste in common.
He favoured Tillizini with a bow, which the professor returned.
“I am at your excellency’s disposition,” he said formally, and waited.
“Count Festini,” said Tillizini, “I have come upon an unpleasant
mission.”
“That is regrettable,” said Count Festini shortly.
“It is my duty to ask you to allow me to conduct a personal examination
of your papers.”
“That is not only unfortunate, but outrageous,” said Festini, yet
without the sign of irritation which the carbineer officer, his fingers
nervously twitching the whistle which would summon his men, had
expected.
“It is not my wish,” Tillizini went on, “to make this visit any more
disagreeable to your excellency than is necessary, therefore I ask you
to regard me rather as a friend who desires to clear your name from
aspersions which----”
“You will spare me your speeches,” said Count Festini shortly. “I know
you, Paulo Tillizini. I thought you were a gentleman, and entrusted
you with the education of my son. I find you are a policeman. In these
days”--he shrugged his shoulders--“the Italian nobility--and if I
remember aright, you come from the house of one Buonsignori?----”
Tillizini bowed.
“In these days,” Festini went on, “it is necessary, I presume, for our
decaying nobility to find some means of providing portions for their
marriageable daughters.”
“In my case,” said Tillizini, “that is unnecessary.”
He spoke suavely and calmly: every word which Count Festini had uttered
was, by the code which both men understood, a deadly insult. Yet
Tillizini preserved the same outward show of unconcern which Festini
had seen so disastrously reproduced in his son.
“I can only add,” the old man went on, “this one fact--that to whatever
depths a member of a noble house may sink in assisting the state to
bring justice to the men who are setting the laws of the country at
defiance, it is possible, signor, for a man to sink still lower, and to
be one of those whose dreadful acts, and whose cruel practices, set the
machinery of the law in motion.”
He spoke in his passionless, even tones, and a red flush crept over the
count’s face.
“You may search as you wish,” he said. “My house is at your
disposition. Here are my keys.”
He produced from his pocket a steel ring on which a dozen keys hung.
Tillizini made no attempt to take them.
“If you will conduct me to your bedroom,” he said, “I shall not trouble
you with any further search.”
For a second only Count Festini hesitated. A swift cloud of
apprehension passed across his face. Then with a bow he extended his
hand to the door.
He followed them into the hall and led the way up the stairs. His room
was a large one facing the road. It was as poorly furnished as the
remainder of the house.
Tillizini closed the door behind him, and the officer stood, barring
all egress.
“Here are my keys.”
Again Count Festini held out the polished bunch.
“Thank you, I do not want them,” said Tillizini. He stood squarely
before the man. “I think it is as well, Count,” he said gently, “that
I should tell you what I know. Four days ago a man was arrested in the
act of placing a bomb on the railway line between Rome and Florence.
He was apparently a new recruit, but after he was arrested it was
discovered that he was a man who stood very high in the councils of the
Florentine branch of your excellent society.”
Festini said nothing. He listened with every interest.
“In some way,” Tillizini went on, “this man had discovered many secrets
which I am sure the Red Hand had no intention of revealing. He may
have acted as secretary to one of the heads of your order. At any rate,
he knew that documents incriminating yourself and a very large number
of influential people in Italy were secreted in this house.”
“Indeed!” said Festini coldly. “You have the keys; you may verify for
yourself the truth of your informant’s statement.”
Again Tillizini made no attempt to take the keys from him.
“He knew more than I have told,” he said slowly. “He indicated to me a
hiding-place which I gather is known only to you and to the leaders of
your band.”
He walked to the end of the room, where four long windows lit the
apartment. Between the second and the third hung a picture in a deep
gold frame. He passed his hand gingerly over the scrollwork on the left
side of the frame.
Presently he found what he wanted, and pressed.
The bottom half of the rich carving opened like a narrow drawer.
Festini watched him, motionless, as he took a bundle of papers from the
secret recess behind the hinged moulding.
Tillizini examined them briefly at the window and placed them
carefully in the inside pocket of his coat. He looked at Festini long
and earnestly, but before he could speak the door was opened and Simone
Festini came in quickly.
He walked to his father.
“What is it?” he asked, and bent his angry brows upon the old professor.
“It is nothing, my son,” said Count Festini.
He laid his hand upon the boy’s head and smiled.
“You must go downstairs until I have finished my business with his
excellency.”
The boy hesitated.
“Why should I go?” he asked.
He scented the danger and was hard to move. He looked round from one to
the other, alert, suspicious, almost catlike.
“If anything should happen to me, Simone,” said Count Festini softly,
“I beg you to believe that I have provided for you handsomely, and
there is a provision which is greater than any I can offer you--the
protection and the friendship, and as I hope one day, the leadership,
of comrades who will serve you well. And now you must go.”
He bent down and kissed the young man on the cheek.
Simone went out, dry-eyed, but full of understanding. In the hall below
he came face to face with his brother, who had returned from the Piazza.
“Come this way, Antonio,” said the boy gravely.
He walked first into the dining room, where an hour ago they had been
seated together at their meal.
“Our father is under arrest, I think,” he said, still coolly, as though
he were surveying a commonplace happening. “I also think I know what
will happen next. Now, I ask you, which way do you go if I take up our
father’s work?”
His eyes were bright with suppressed excitement; he had grown suddenly
to a man in that brief consciousness of impending responsibility.
Antonio looked at him sorrowfully.
“I go the straight way, Simone,” he said quietly. “Whichever way is
honest and clean and kindly, I go that way.”
“_Buono!_” said the other. “Then we part here unless God sends a
miracle--you to your destiny and I to mine.”
He stopped and went deadly white, and looking at him, Antonio saw the
beads of sweat upon his brow.
“What is the matter?” he asked, and stepped forward to his side, but
the boy pushed him back.
“It is nothing,” he said, “nothing.”
He held himself stiffly erect, his beautiful face raised, his eyes
fixed on the discoloured decorations of the ceiling.
For he had heard the pistol-shot, muffled as it was by intervening
doors and thick walls, that told the end for Count Festini.
Tillizini, hurrying down to break the news to him, found him fully
prepared.
“I thank your excellency,” said the boy. “I knew. Your excellency will
not live to see the result of your work, for you are an old man, but
if you did, you will behold the revenge which I shall extract from the
world for this murder, for I am very young, and, by God’s favour, I
have many years to live.”
Tillizini said nothing, but he went back to Florence a sad man.
Three months afterward he again visited Siena, and in the Via Cavour,
in broad daylight, he was shot down by two masked men who made good
their escape; and, in his chair, at the College of Anthropology at
Florence, there reigned, in good time, Tillizini the younger.
CHAPTER I
SIR RALPH DELIVERS JUDGMENT
It was absurd to call the affair the Red Hand Trial, because the
Red Hand had played no part in the case so far as the burglary was
concerned.
It was a very commonplace burglary with a well-known, albeit humble
member of Burboro’s community in the dock. He had been found in a
house in the early hours of the morning, he had given an incoherent
explanation to the alert butler who had captured him, and beyond a
rigmarole of a story that some mysterious Italian had sent him thither,
there was no hint of the workings of the extraordinary association
which at the moment agitated the law-abiding people of Britain.
It was equally absurd and grossly unfair to accuse the newspapers, who
referred to it as the Red Hand Case, of unjustifiable sensationalism.
After all, there was an Italian mentioned in connection with the
charge--quite enough in those days of panic to justify the reference.
The Session House was crowded, for the case had excited more than usual
interest. All the county was there. Lady Morte-Mannery occupied a seat
on the bench, as was her right. Most of the house party from East
Mannery had driven over and were seated in privileged places, to the no
small inconvenience of the bar and the representatives of the press,
the latter of whom bitterly and indignantly resented this encroachment
upon their already restricted domain.
But Sir Ralph Morte-Mannery, the chairman of the session, had a short
way with critics and professed, though his practice did not always
come into line with his theory, that the press might be ignored and
impressed with a sense of its own unworthiness.
The pressmen in the Session House at Burboro’ were constantly
undergoing that mysterious process which is known as “being put in
their place.” They desired, most earnestly, that the principle should
be applied now, for their places were occupied by the guests of the
chairman.
Hilary George, K. C., sat with his colleagues, though only as a
spectator. He was curious to see in operation the workings of justice,
as Sir Ralph conceived it.
Sir Ralph’s sentences were notorious, his judgments had before now come
up for revision. He was, perhaps, the best hated man in the country.
Mothers frightened their obstreperous children with references to
Sir Ralph. He was the bogey man of the poacher, a moral scarecrow
to tramps, people who slept out at night, and such-like dangerous
characters.
A little man, spare and bony, his clothes, though carefully fitted,
seemed to hang upon him; his face was long and white and solemn;
his lips drooped mournfully at each corner. A pair of gold-mounted
pince-nez struck such an angle on his pendulous nose as to suggest that
they were so placed in order not to obstruct his line of vision. His
hair was white and thin; he had two dirty-gray tufts of side-whisker,
and affected a Gladstonian collar. His voice, when he spoke, was
querulous and complaining; he gave the impression that he felt a
personal resentment toward the unfortunate prisoner in the dock for
having dragged him from his comfortable library to this ill-ventilated
court.
Sir Ralph was a man hovering about the age of sixty. His wife, who
was looking supremely lovely in her black velvet cloak and her big
black hat, which one white feather lightened, was nearly thirty years
his junior. A beautiful woman by some standards. Junoesque, imperial,
commanding; her lips in repose were thin and straight, and if the truth
be told, a little repellent. Some people found them so. Hilary George,
for one, a daring rider to hounds, and wont to employ the phraseology
of the field, confessed that he never saw those lips tighten but a
voice within him uttered the warning, “’Ware! ’ware!”
She was a beautiful woman, and a disappointed woman. She had married
Sir Ralph Morte-Mannery, five years before, in the supreme faith that
she had emerged for ever from that atmosphere of penury which had
surrounded her girlhood; that she had said good-bye to the strivings,
the scrimpings, and the make-believe of shabby gentility with which
a mother with social aspirations and an income of £150 a year had
enclouded her.
But Vera Forsyth found she had moved from an atmosphere of penury
enforced by circumstances to an atmosphere of penury practised for love
of it. Sir Ralph was a mean man; he was little short of a miser, and he
had the settled conviction that, in taking care of the pennies, he was
appointed, as by divine right, the natural heir to hundreds.
It seemed to her, in her first year of marriage, that she could never
escape from the eternal account book. He was a man who believed in
domestic stock-taking. He knew, better than she, the prevalent price of
potatoes, and he noted with pain any advance in the grocer’s bill, and
set himself the congenial task of discovering the cause for any such
swollen expenditure.
Now she looked along the bench at her husband curiously; he was always
a source of interest to her. She needed some such interest to sustain
her in her everyday acquaintance with this man.
He was summing up with gross partiality. Though he had had one or two
bad raps from the Court of Criminal Appeal, he was not to be turned
from his set purpose, which was to rid the country of those who showed
a disinclination to distinguish the difference between _meum_ and
_tuum_.
All who knew the circumstances realized that the summing up was in
the veriest bad taste. The young man, white of face, who stood by the
dock’s edge, his shaking hands clasping and unclasping the iron rail
before him, was being tried for burglary and the burglary was at Sir
Ralph’s own place.
“He has told you, gentlemen of the jury,” went on Sir Ralph in his
speech, “that a mysterious Italian asked him to break into the house,
where somebody would be waiting to give him an equally mysterious
packet. He did not intend to steal, so he tells you; he was merely
carrying out the instructions of this mythical--perhaps I ought not to
say ‘mythical,’” said Sir Ralph hastily, with the recollection of a
lord chief justice’s comments on a judgment of his--“but which may to
you, gentlemen of the jury, appear to be a mythical person.
“He tells you that he was induced by his poverty to go to Highlawn at
midnight, to effect an entrance through the kitchen, and there to wait
until some cloaked, masked individual brought him a packet which he
was to bring away. He tells you that he had no intention whatever of
robbing the owner. He was merely being the accomplice of some person in
the house.”
Sir Ralph leaned back with a little contemptuous smile.
“Well, gentlemen of the jury,” he said, throwing out his hands, with
pseudo good-nature, “if you believe that, of course you still must
convict the man on the charge of being an accomplice. As you know,
there is in this house a very valuable collection of Renaissance
jewelry, and when the counsel for the Crown tells you, as he has told
you, that the inference to be drawn from the man’s presence in the
kitchen, where the butler discovered him, is that he intended to make
a raid upon that jewelry, you are, perhaps, as justified in believing
that suggestion as you are in believing that of the prisoner’s
counsel--that he was merely acting as an innocent agent in the matter.”
He said a few more words, summarized such of the evidence as had not
come under his previous purview, and commended the jury to their
deliberations with the air of benevolence which invariably enwrapped
the peroration of his more malignant speeches.
The jury tramped out and a buzz of conversation overhung the court. The
prisoner lingered a little by the rails; he looked down at the delicate
face of his girl-wife, this woman of seventeen, who had sat throughout
the trial tense and haggard, listening to the evidence.
“It can’t be helped, dear,” he said. He was a man of the working
classes, but his voice showed an unusual culture.
The girl could only raise her piteous eyes to his; her lips trembled,
she could frame no answer. She knew that her young husband spoke the
truth. Poverty had ground them down to desperation, but to whatever end
it might drive them, it would never make her man a thief.
The jury were back in five minutes. They shuffled into the box and
answered to their names, keeping their eyes averted from the prisoner
at the bar. The clerk of assizes put his questions to them.
“Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty of the crime of
burglary?”
“Guilty,” said the foreman, in a high, nervous voice.
Sir Ralph nodded his head approvingly. He turned to the prisoner as the
clerk said, “Have you anything to say before the sentence is passed?”
The man in the dock took a swift glance at the drooping figure of his
wife. She had fainted, and a kindly policeman was lifting her to carry
her from the court.
“The story I have told,” he said, speaking clearly and without
hesitation, “was a true story. I had no idea of burgling your house,
Sir Ralph. I merely went there because I thought I was acting as the
agent of somebody who was carrying on some sort of----” he hesitated.
“I hardly like to say it--some sort of intrigue,” he continued boldly,
“and did not want this fact to leak out.”
His eyes roved round the bench and halted when they met those of Lady
Morte-Mannery. They looked at each other; she calmly, incuriously, he
hopefully, with a wondering, puzzled stare.
“It is my first offense,” he went on. “I have never been in this
position before, and although the jury have found me guilty, my lord, I
do hope that you will take a lenient view of my offense, not only for
my own sake, but for the sake of my wife and unborn child.” His voice
shook a little as he pleaded. It was the only sign of emotion he had
given.
Sir Ralph nodded again. It was a grim nod. It put a period to the
prisoner’s speech. The chairman adjusted his gold pince-nez and bent
his head from left to right, consulting his colleagues.
“Your offense, George Mansingham,” he said, “is peculiarly abhorrent
to me. I do not consider the fact that the house burgled was my own.
Fortunately, I am unaffected by personal considerations, and the fact
that I, myself, was away from home that night enables me to try this
case in an unprejudiced spirit.”
He looked down at the paper on his desk musingly. Then he suddenly
jerked his head up.
“You will be kept in penal servitude for seven years,” he said.
Something like a gasp ran through the court. Hilary George, monocle in
eye, half started to his feet, then sank back again. The man in the
dock stood dazed.
“Seven years,” he repeated, and shook his head as though he could not
understand it, then turned and stepped down the stairs which led to the
cells below.
Hilary George was a stout man; he had a large fresh face, and eyes that
told plainly of his immense vitality and joy of life. Seeing him you
thought of an overgrown boy, and the monocle, as a friend had remarked,
seemed out of place in one so young. He had one of the biggest
practices at the bar; he was a skilful lawyer and a brilliant debater.
You might think him an easy man to manage, with his parted lips, that
showed two rows of white even teeth, and that look of surprise and
delight which shone in his eyes. But no man who had ever tried to
persuade Hilary George against his will or against his better judgment
had ever repeated the attempt.
He stood now, an immaculate figure, on the steps of the Session House.
He was not smiling, he looked as grave as his facial conformation would
allow. Very slowly, very deliberately, he buttoned the white gloves
over his huge hands. He looked at his watch, and, as he did so, the
East Mannery party came out, Lady Morte-Mannery a little ahead, Sir
Ralph following with two or three of his guests.
“Will you drive over in the car with us, or will you take the
wagonette?” asked Sir Ralph pleasantly. He was rather in awe of the big
barrister--as much in awe as he could be of anybody--and he invariably
cloaked his uneasiness with a certain perkiness of manner which passed
with Sir Ralph for good humour.
“I’m not coming over, Ralph,” said Hilary George quietly.
The chairman raised his brows.
“Not coming over?” he repeated. “What do you mean?”
“I’m going back to town,” said Hilary, slowly as before.
“But why? What has happened? I thought you were keen on the shooting.”
“I’d rather not say why,” said Hilary. “If you’ll be good enough to
tell my man to bring my luggage to the station, I’ll amuse myself in
Burboro’ for another hour.”
“But what is the reason?” persisted Sir Ralph. “Have you had any news?
Is there any necessity for your going back to town?”
Hilary scratched his chin reflectively.
“I’ll tell you,” he said, and faced the other squarely. “You’ve just
sentenced a man to seven years’ penal servitude.”
“Yes?” replied Sir Ralph wonderingly.
“It was a perfectly beastly sentence,” said the K. C., and every word
cut like a knife. “A perfectly beastly, malicious, vindictive, unjust
sentence,” he repeated, “and I would not stay another hour in the house
of the man who passed it.
“More than this!” he said, with a sudden accession of fierceness and
benevolent malignity, if the paradox may be allowed, which almost
paralyzed his hearer, “I will not rest until that sentence is reduced.
My solicitors shall take it to the Court of Appeal.”
“You--you--how dare you!” spluttered Sir Ralph.
“A perfectly beastly sentence,” repeated the other, with annoying
deliberation. “Don’t talk to me, Sir Ralph, I’m not a tyro, I’m a
barrister. I know the game better than you. I know what sentence was
justifiable there. I know exactly how your own personal prejudice
stepped in to confine this man--this young man, a first offender--to a
living hell.”
He spoke with vehemence, his plump face growing redder and redder as
his anger rose.
“I will never forgive you, Hilary,” cried Sir Ralph, shaking with
anger. “You have mortally offended me. You know I believe in long
sentences.”
“I don’t care a damn what you believe in,” said the other, and his
very calmness emphasized the strength of his language. “I bid you good
morning.”
He walked over to where Lady Morte-Mannery stood watching them.
“I am sorry, Lady Morte-Mannery,” he said, a little stiffly, “I shall
not be coming back to the house. An important engagement has called me
to London.”
She murmured her sorrow conventionally, though she was by no means
displeased to see the back of a man whom at first she had regarded as
one who might easily be influenced to her views. Her views, it may here
be remarked, were peculiar.
“Why has he gone?” she asked her husband, as the car drove through the
main street of Burboro’.
Sir Ralph, who was glowering with rage, vouchsafed a snarling answer.
“How do I know? Why do you ask ridiculous questions? Because he’s a
fool,” he went on viciously. “Because he’s a blackguard. He’s grossly
insulted me, and I’ll never forgive him.” He was in a white heat of
temper, and for the whole day brooded on the affront which had been
offered him.
Vera made one or two ineffectual attempts to smooth his ruffled
plumage. She was particularly anxious to get him into a good mood. She
had one or two requests to make, which, in his present frame of mind,
she knew would be rejected without thought. Her efforts were unavailing.
“I wish you wouldn’t potter round,” he growled, when she went into the
library on the pretext of tidying away some books which had been left
out by some careless guest.
“Oh, come here,” he said, as she was going out of the room. “Here’s a
bill from Burt’s. How many packets of prepared oats did we have in last
week?”
“I forget, dear,” she said.
“Six,” he growled. “Do you know we have never had more than four
before?”
“Mr. George liked it for breakfast,” she answered.
“Mr. George!” he almost shouted. “Don’t mention that man’s name.
Why is Bulgered charging 1s. 0-1/2_d._ a pound for his beef? It’s
monstrous--change the butcher. I wish to goodness you’d show some
interest in the conduct of your house, Vera.”
He scowled at her under his white shaggy brows.
“You go on as if I was made of money. Practise some sense of economy.
My dear girl, before you were married you counted every penny. Imagine
they are your mother’s, and count mine.”
With a shrug, she left him. He was utterly impossible in these moods.
She went into the drawing room wondering how she should approach her
lord on the subject which lay uppermost in her mind. A girl sat in one
of the windows, reading. She looked up with a smile as Vera entered.
“Isn’t it a bore?” she said. “They’ve just told me that Mr. George has
gone back to town. He played such beautiful piquet. Why has he gone?”
She rose lazily, putting her book down. She was a tall, beautiful
girl, of that exquisite colouring which is the English gentlewoman’s
heritage. The well-poised head was crowned with a luxurious mass of
russet gold hair. Her eyebrows, two delicate lines of jet black,
were set over a pair of the loveliest eyes that man ever looked
into. At least, so thought many a man who knew her. Even Sir Ralph,
self-engrossed and contemptuous, he said, of beauty, had commented upon
their liquid loveliness.
A straight nose, and a firm, rebellious chin, a perfectly calm mouth,
completed the picture. As she moved she displayed the grace of her
slender figure. Every movement suggested the life of freedom--freedom
of field and road--eloquently, and her complexion, the softening
qualities of her native Ireland.
“The horrible thing about being a poor relation,” she said, as she
dropped her strong hand affectionately on the other’s shoulder, “is
that one can’t command the friends of one’s rich relations. I should
have told Hilary George: ‘You cannot go to London, however pressing
your business may be, because my niece, Marjorie, wants somebody to
play piquet with her.’”
Vera shook the hand from her shoulder with a scarcely perceptible
movement.
“Don’t be silly, Marjorie,” she said a little tartly. “Ralph’s very
worried. Hilary has been awfully rude to your uncle.”
The girl’s eyebrows rose.
“Rude?” she repeated. “Why, I thought they were such good friends.”
“He has been very rude,” she said again. “By the way,” she said, “your
man is coming down to-day, isn’t he?”
The girl’s face flushed. She drew herself up a little.
“I wish you wouldn’t say that sort of thing, Vera,” she said. “I do
try to be nice to you, and you never lose an opportunity of speaking
unkindly.”
Vera laughed and strolled across to the piano.
“I didn’t know that was unkind,” she said, as she seated herself and
pulled out some music from the rack at her side.
The girl followed her, her hands behind her back; she stood behind her.
“Do you like me, Vera?” she asked.
Vera looked around and stared at her.
“My dear child,” she said, “don’t be absurd. I don’t dislike you.”
“But you do,” persisted the other. “I have seen it so often. I’ve had
such convincing evidence, and it makes me a little unhappy.” She drew
up a chair by the side of the piano and sat down.
“Don’t play,” she said, “just let us have a heart-to-heart talk.”
“That’s the kind of talk I loathe. I’ve just been having a
heart-to-heart talk about Quaker Oats,” said the other. “But this young
man--what’s his name?”
“Gillinford--Frank Gillinford,” said Marjorie steadily.
“You are rather keen on him, aren’t you?”
“I am hoping that he is rather keen on me,” said the girl, her sense of
humour getting the better of her resentment.
“What is he--an engineer or something?” asked Vera, touching the keys
lightly with her sensitive hands.
“Something of the sort.” And Marjorie changed the conversation. “Didn’t
Uncle rather--rather”--she hesitated for a simile--“as Mr. George would
say, ‘whack it into’ that unfortunate person?”
“You mean the burglar?”
Marjorie nodded.
“I don’t think he got any more than he deserved,” said Vera.
“Do you really think he came after Uncle’s collection?”
“Why not?” asked Vera, without looking round. “It is a very valuable
one. There are medallions there worth three or four hundred pounds
each--there is one there worth a thousand, at least,” she added
quickly. “I believe that is so.”
“But what use would they be to him?” persisted the girl.
“Well----” Vera shrugged her shoulders. “You are asking me to give a
psychological survey of a burglar’s mind,” she said, “and that I am not
prepared to do.”
Marjorie walked back to the window and looked out on the dismal
landscape. It had been raining for the last hour, and the trees looked
especially miserable, half enveloped as they were by a mist which was
driving up from the Medway Valley.
“I shouldn’t advise you to discuss the question of that sentence with
your uncle,” said Vera across her shoulder. “He is rather sore; I think
that was the cause of his quarrel with Hilary George.”
The girl made no reply. She could not understand Vera. She had
always been an enigma to her. That she was a disappointed woman,
Marjorie knew. She had expected to inherit a life of luxurious calm;
instead, she had merely succeeded the housekeeper, whom Sir Ralph had
thoughtfully discharged, and had, moreover, dated his discharge as from
the date of his wedding.
Vera was an ambitious woman. She had set no limit upon her
possibilities. She had come, as she had thought, into a wider world, to
a larger life, with scope for the exercise of her undoubted genius, but
had found herself restricted to the prosaic duties of housekeeping for
a querulous and a mean old man.
Marjorie’s reverie was cut short by the sudden cessation of the music.
There was a little pause, and then Vera’s voice asked:
“Where could I raise five hundred pounds?”