JOHN CARLETON'S DOUBLE.
That Kate and her aunt were now aware of the identity of John Carleton
with the Dumpling, I was absolutely sure. I could point back, even,
to the moment when--to the latter, at least--the suspicion which
afterwards became certainty was first aroused.
It was when I was repeating, word for word, as they had fallen from
his lips, the Dumpling's expressions about the poor, that the first
sign of agitation had been noticeable in the elder woman. Then, when I
went on to speak of his mania in regard to his being none other than
Napoleon--then it was, as I clearly remembered, that the self-possessed
and by no means impressionable Miss Clara had astonished and alarmed me
by looking as if she were about to faint.
Doubtless she had heard him say the same thing before and in the same
words, and so had no difficulty in identifying the speaker as her
brother.
Kate, on the contrary, had apparently heard me out without connecting
her father with the Dumpling. She had shown no sign of dismay or
agitation, while listening to my story, and when her aunt had called
her aside, at its conclusion, and had urged her to obtain from me the
promise to give up my detective work, Kate had undertaken the task
somewhat light-heartedly, as witness the episode of the uneclipsed eye.
It must have been after Kate had left me, that the elder woman had
spoken of some great and impending danger. How much of the truth she
had told her niece I did not know; but when the poor girl returned
alone to speak to me, she seemed visibly aged, and was trembling in
every limb. Then it was that, by her aunt's command, she forbade me
ever again to enter the house. Were I to do so, John Carleton and I
must sooner or later come face to face, and that I should be the means
of arresting--perhaps of bringing to the gallows--the father of the
girl I loved, was too horrible to contemplate.
Of all conceivable happenings, nothing could so irretrievably part
Kate and myself for ever as that, whereas could Miss Clara contrive
to obtain a medical certificate, to the effect that her brother was of
unsound mind, and have him put under restraint, the further committal
of crimes by him would effectively be prevented, and Carleton, once out
of the way, Kate and I might come together again. That, I believed,
was the end for which Miss Clara was working, and as it was an end
which would spare Kate from being publicly branded as the daughter of a
madman and a murderer, I could not but feel myself in sympathy with it.
That John Carleton and the Dumpling were one and the same man, there
was no room for doubt. That fact explained everything. That was why
Mr. John Carleton had absented himself unexpectedly from his home, and
caused thereby some anxiety to his sister and daughter. He had intended
no doubt to return thither, after superintending the carrying out of
the projected kidnapping operation--instead of which my unexpected
appearance, and subsequent escape from the opium den, had compelled
him to devote himself to the clearing out of the bombs, chemicals, and
other contents of the place, before the arrival of the police. The
telegram from Glasgow was, of course, a fake. He might have instructed
some accomplice of his to despatch a telegram from that place, or the
whole thing, post-mark and all, might have been a forgery.
Which of the two suppositions was true I did not greatly care. It was
enough for me to know that in discovering the reason for Mr. John
Carleton's non-return to his family that night, I had discovered also
the reason for several of his subsequent acts. I had discovered, for
instance, his reason for watching No. 5, Taunton Square, not, as in my
anxiety to form a theory of some sort, I had supposed--because one of
the millionaires whom he was scheming to kidnap, and to hold to ransom,
lived there, but because that house was his home, and because, before
returning to its shelter, he wished to satisfy himself that all was
secure, and that no police trap had been set for him. It was because
the house was his own that he had taken shelter in the garden after the
murder of young Grant. A hiding-place of some sort it was necessary
speedily to find, for the police were everywhere on the watch; and once
he could obtain entrance to his own house he would be safe. Nor would
that entrance be difficult to obtain. None knew better than he that,
by the breaking of a certain pane of glass in the conservatory, he
would be able to shoot back the bolt on the conservatory door; and but
for my accidental presence, he would in all probability have effected
undisturbed the purpose at which he aimed.
He had, no doubt, done his best to deaden the noise he made in breaking
the glass; and, far away as the conservatory was from the living
rooms and from the servants' quarters, the sound would have passed
unheeded but for my abnormally acute sense of hearing. Even if it
had been heard, and had Metcalfe or Miss Clara hurried thither, some
plausible story of his having been accidentally shut out, or other
explanation, would have been forthcoming, and no one was likely to give
a respectable householder in charge for forcing his way into his own
residence, or to connect the fact of his doing so with a recent murder.
That was why, having failed in the first attempt, he had returned, at
dead of night--to discover me emerging from the wine cellar. That was
why he knew there was a gas-jet laid on there, though he had tried to
explain away his knowledge of the fact, and had done his best to throw
dust in my eyes, by telling me that he made it a rule never to enter a
place without finding out all he could about it beforehand.
I could have kicked myself for my density in not having seen daylight
before, but the possibility of connecting my lovely Lady of the Lake
and her eminently respectable, if somewhat unconventional, aunt with a
criminal of the Dumpling type, was so unthinkable that I may, perhaps,
be forgiven for not having entertained it until it was thus forced upon
me.
Of one thing I was certain--that whatever the explanation, the good
faith of Kate and Miss Clara was above suspicion. Unknown to them, the
man was leading a double life. They may, perhaps, have wondered at
his absences from home, and at his trouble in contriving a pretended
burglar alarm, which, I had little doubt, had been invented for quite
another purpose than was pretended. The fact that he had fitted up a
police call for protection against burglars, seemed to point to him
as a reputable member of society and a person of means. No doubt,
when he was absent from home, the use to which the thing was put was
actually that of a burglar alarm. But when he was at home, I thought
it more than possible that he would be at the trouble of making a
disconnection (it could be done by the turning of a switch) between his
house and the police station, and that in cases of emergency--as, for
instance, a surprise visit by the police--the so-called burglar alarm
could as effectively be used against the officers of the law as against
burglars. The simultaneous locking of all doors and windows must
necessarily delay the entrance of the officers who had come to arrest
him, and in the meantime Mr. Carleton would no doubt be making good his
escape by some secret means of exit, known only to himself.
That his sister and his daughter and possibly his servants were his
dupes, and in no sense his accomplices, I was absolutely convinced. But
dupes his sister and daughter could be no more. They, at least, knew
something of the truth, if not the whole of it. Hence their letters to
me; hence their endeavours to induce me to give up Dumpling hunting and
detective work; and hence their disappearance. And now that I, too,
knew the truth, later though my knowledge might be, I was confronted
with the question, "How, in view of what you know, do you propose to
act?"