LOUISE O'DONNEL'S FATHER.
Next day Jack Haines came to see me. Mr. Haines promised to be a
nuisance.
Jack Haines and Daniel J. Carruth had been partners. I might have
married either of them, for the matter of that. I might have married
any one in Strikehigh City. Of two evils I chose what seemed to me to
be the lesser, which was Daniel. For one thing, he was the boss partner
and had the larger share, and for another, he was the older man. I
could have twisted either of them round my finger, but it occurred to
me that I might manage best with Daniel. So I became Mrs. Daniel J.
Carruth, and poor dear Daniel lived just long enough to capitalize
his share--he made a better thing of it than we had either of us
expected--and then he died. Hardly was he buried than the chief mourner
at his funeral, Mr. Haines, wanted me to marry him. He hinted that it
would be just as well to keep the partnership alive, which struck me as
absurd. Anyhow, I did not seem to see it. I came straight away to
England, instead of marrying him, with the intention of getting as much
fun out of Daniel's dollars as I possibly could.
What I had not bargained for was his coming after me.
The folks in Strikehigh City had all lived queer lives, but I rather
guess that, in some ways, Jack Haines had lived one of the queerest. He
had told me about it over and over again, and, whatever I might think
of him, I knew that he had told me the truth.
He had been married. He and his wife had lived like cat and dog. She
had died. She had left a daughter. He had brought the daughter
up--trying to rule her with a heavy hand. There came a time when she
objected. There was a disturbance--she left him. That was just before
he came to Strikehigh City--in fact, her going sent him there, and he
had never seen her since. I could see plainly that he had been more in
the wrong than she had. In his way, he loved her. His conscience
pricked him all the time. When Daniel died, it began to prick him worse
than ever. Finding that I would not have him, he set himself to look
for her.
This I learned from his own lips when I met him again in London.
It seemed that, when she had left him the girl had gone on to the
stage--attaching herself to a variety show. From that she had passed to
a burlesque troupe. The burlesque troupe had gone to England--she went
with it. The burlesque troupe returned--she had stayed behind. No doubt
for reasons of her own. Jack Haines wanted very much to know what those
reasons were, because, no sooner had the troupe gone, and left her,
than she vanished. No one seemed to have the faintest notion what had
become of her. She had simply disappeared--gone clean out of sight.
The old man had come over to see if he could not succeed where others
had failed; if he could not light on the clue which others had missed.
The desire to find the girl had become with him a regular mania. It was
like a bee in his bonnet. It occupied his thoughts, to the exclusion of
all else, both by night and day. As I have said, the man was becoming a
nuisance. I did not want to quarrel with him, but I saw that, without a
quarrel, I never should be rid of him. He insisted on making me his
confidant. And, although I took care never to give him a chance to say
a word outright, I knew that, as soon as he had found the girl, he
would renew that hint about the desirability of keeping the partnership
alive.
On the day after that little trip to Brighton, he turned up in my
drawing-room. I had run over to Kensington High Street for something.
When I came back, there he was--and I was not by any means best pleased
to see him there.
I should have disliked him for one thing if I had disliked him for
nothing else--he was so deadly serious. I do not think I ever saw him
smile. Indeed, I doubt if he had a smile left in him. He had no sense
of humour, and, to him, a joke was as meaningless as double Dutch. He
was bald at the top of his head, his face was as long as one's arm, his
eyes generally had an expressionless, fishlike sort of stare, and,
since he had assumed the garb of respectability, he was always attired
in funeral black. He seemed to be under the impression that that was
the only hue in which respectability could appear. As for his temper,
it varied from doubtful to bad, and from bad to worse, and when he was
in a rage, which he quickly was, he was by no means an agreeable person
to have to deal with. He and Daniel were always falling out, and, until
I came upon the scene, he used to ride over poor dear Daniel roughshod.
But, when I did I let him understand that whoever fell out with Daniel
fell out with me.
For my part, I did not wonder so much at his daughter's having run away
as at her having lived with him as long as she did.
His hat was on one chair, his umbrella on another, he himself sat, with
his hands clasped in front of him, on a little centre table, in an
attitude which suggested that he was about to offer prayer. He did not
rise as I entered--respectability has not yet worked such havoc with
him as that. He stared at me as I went in, solemnly speechless, as if
he wondered how I could venture to interrupt the meeting.
"Well, Mr. Haines, any news?"
I did not care if there was any news, but I did object to his sitting
and staring at me like that.
"She is dead."
"Dead!--You don't mean it!--How do you know?"
"It was told me last night in a dream."
Among the rest of his little peculiarities, he was one of the most
superstitious creatures breathing. In religion, I believe, he called
himself a spiritualist. Anyhow, he was always seeing things, and
hearing things, and having things revealed to him. Talking to him in
some of his moods reminded one of that scene in Richard II. where the
poor dear king wants to sit upon a gravestone and talk of epitaphs.
"Is that the only reason why you know that she is dead--because it was
told you in a dream?"
"Do not mock at me. The voice which speaks to me in visions does not
lie. I saw a coffin lying in an open grave, and 'Louise O'Donnel' was
on the coffin-lid."
"You did not happen to see in which particular graveyard that grave
might be located."
"I did not. But I know that she is dead. My daughter, oh, my daughter!"
I had to turn aside to smile. I grant that it was not a subject for
laughter--but he was so funny!
"And as I looked the coffin-lid was lifted. And, on her breast, there
was an open wound."
He rose slowly, painfully, inch by inch. He pointed with his right hand
towards the floor.
"Woman, my daughter has been slain."
"Really, Mr. Haines, you are always seeing the most dreadful things in
dreams. If I were you I should take less supper."
"It's not the supper. It's the spirit."
"Well, in that case, I should take less of that."
He frowned.
"You know very well what I mean. I am not speaking of the spirit of
alcohol, but of the spirit of the soul. Now one task is ended. Another
is begun. I will be the avenger of blood. Mine will it be to execute
judgment on him who has destroyed my daughter's body, having first of
all destroyed her soul."
"Jack Haines, what nonsense you do talk."
"What do you mean, woman?"
"My good man, do you think that you awe me by your persistence in
calling me woman? I am a woman; but let me tell you in confidence that
you strike me as only being part of a man!"
"You jeer at me. You are always jeering. You know not what you say."
"That is good--from you. Your style of conversation may have been
suited to Strikehigh City, where they all were lunatics. But in London
it is out of place."
"London!--bah!"
He threw out his arms, as if to put the idea of London clean behind
him.
"Precisely. Then if it's London!--bah! Why don't you return to
Strikehigh City?"
"I will finish the work which I came to do. Then I will return."
I had sat down on an easy-chair. I had crossed my legs, and was
swinging my foot in the air. Old Haines stood glowering down at me,
clenching his fists to hold his temper in. I looked him up and down.
After all he was, every inch of him, a narrow-minded, cross-grained,
hidebound New Englander.
"You are more likely to see the inside of a prison if you don't take
care. You know, they manage things differently upon this side. Jack
Haines, let me speak to you a word in season--a candid word. It may do
you good. You killed your wife; I do not mean legally, but you killed
her all the same. A prolonged course of you would be sufficient to kill
any wife."
"Woman!"
"You drove your daughter from you. So unwilling was she to have it
known that she was connected with you, that she took her mother's name.
She called herself Louise O'Donnel. Under that name she came to
England. Conscious that, even underneath her mother's name, you might
trace her out in England, she has changed her name again. Under that
new name she is deliberately hiding herself away from you."
"It is false."
"It may be. It is but a surmise. But, as such, it is at least as much
likely to be correct as yours."
"She is dead."
"You have not one jot or tittle of proof that she is anything of the
kind."
"I will have proof." He brought down his fist upon my pretty, fragile
table with a crash. "I will have proof."
"Don't destroy the furniture."
"Furniture!" He glared at the inoffensive table as if he would have
liked to have chopped it into firewood. "You should not anger me. I say
that I will have proof. And I will have proof of who it is has murdered
her. And I will find him, though he hides himself in the uttermost
corners of the earth. And when I have found him I will have a
quittance."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Do you not know what I mean? Have you known me so short a time that
you should need to ask?"
"Do you mean that, if there is anything in these wild dreams of yours,
you will kill the man who has killed your girl?"
He raised his hands above his head in a sort of paroxysm.
"Like a dog."
"Then let me tell you that you are treading the road which leads to the
gallows. They manage things in their own way upon this side. Killing's
murder here. And the more excuse you think you have the tighter you're
likely to fit the rope about your neck."
"The hemp has not been sown which shall hang me on an English gallows.
Do you think I am afraid?"
He gave me the creeps. Although it surpassed my powers to adequately
explain the thing, I knew that he had a trick of seeing things which
had taken place before they became known to other people. I had had
unpleasant experience of it more than once. One might begin by laughing
at what he called his dreams and his visions, but, in the end, the
laugh was apt to be upon the other side.
It was quite possible that his girl was dead. Young, pretty, simple,
innocent, alone in a foreign land--what more possible? It was even
possible that she had been done to death. Some one might think that no
one would miss her. In that case, that some one might as well at once
place himself in the hangman's hands as wait to interview Jack Haines.
I was glad to be rid of him. He was not a cheerful companion at the
best of times. But since he had got this bee in his bonnet he was more
than I could stand.
In the afternoon I went to see Kate Levett. Kate and I had been
together in Pfeinmann's "King of the Castle Operatic Combination." We
were friends all through. I fancy it was a case of "a fellow-feeling
makes us wondrous kind"--after a fashion we were girls of a feather.
When the Combination came to eternal grief at Strikehigh City, we went
different ways. I stayed where I was, Kate went East. It was at Boston
she married Ferdinand Levett. He was touring at that time through the
States as acting manager for a famous English comedy company. It was a
case of marriage at first sight as it were. It proved to be the best
thing Kate had ever done in her life. Levett turned out a regular
trump, and they hit it off together to a T. Now they were settled in
England, and, although Kate had kept off the boards, they were doing
uncommonly well in a modest sort of a way.
When I turned up at their flat on the Thames Embankment, at the back of
the Strand, Kate wanted me to stay and dine. So I stayed. After dinner
we went to a theatre. Levett was at business--managing the Colosseum,
so we went there. To finish up, we went back to supper at the flat.
I had gone originally to Kate with the idea of gleaning a little
information. Before I left I had got all that I wanted, and, perhaps, a
little more. What I wished to find out was whether Kate knew anything
about a Mr. Reginald Townsend. She and her husband knew something about
all sorts and conditions of men, and it struck me that my friend, the
gentleman, was just the sort of man of whom one or the other of them
might have heard.
I did not want to seem too anxious. So I just slipped my question in
casually, as if I was indifferent whether I received an answer to it or
not. I kept it till after supper. Kate was at the piano strumming
through all the latest things in comic songs. I was lolling in a
rocker, joining in the chorus whenever there was a chorus. Ferdinand
was taking his ease upon a couch. We were all as snug as we could be.
Kate had been saying she knew somebody or other, I don't know who, when
I struck in.
"Between you, you two seem to know pretty nearly every one."
"Those whom we don't know are not worth knowing."
"Quite right, my dear!"--this from Ferdinand, on the couch.
"Have you ever heard of a Mr. Townsend?"
"What!--Reggie Townsend?"
She spun round on the piano-stool like a catherine-wheel.
"Reginald Townsend--that's it."
She and her husband looked at each other--in that meaning sort of way.
"Fred, have we ever heard of Reginald Townsend?"
Ferdinand laughed. She held out her hands in front of her.
"Why, my dear, there have been times and seasons when we've heard of
little else but Reginald Townsend."
"Perhaps your man is not my man. My man's tall."
"So's our man!"
"And dark."
"You couldn't paint our man blacker than he is."
"And very--very swagger, don't you know."
"Our man's the swaggerest man in town. It's impossible that there could
be two Reginald Townsends. What do you know of him?"
"Oh, I only met him once. But he rather struck me."
"Take care that he doesn't strike you too much. He's not only the
swaggerest, he's also the wickedest man in town. I could tell you tales
of him which would shock your innocent ears. He's a terror, isn't he,
Fred?"
"He has rather liberal ideas on the subject of the whole duty of man."
"I should rather think he has."
And Kate went off at score. I could see from what she said that my
friend the gentleman was all my fancy painted him. When she gave me an
opening, I slipped another word in edgeways.
"Is he received in respectable society?"
"That depends, my dearest child, upon what you call respectable
society. He's the boon companion of dukes, marquises, and earls, and
that kind of thing. He visits the best houses and the best people. But
I was raised at Salem, Mass., and our ideas of respectable society were
perhaps our own. I haven't found that they obtain to any considerable
extent round here."
It was scandalously late when I left for home.
The same thing occupied my thoughts in the cab as on the night
before--my friend the gentleman. Whatever could have made him do the
thing which he had done? That is, if Kate's Reginald Townsend was
mine--of which, by the way, I had no doubt. A man may be all that's
bad; he may be worse than a murderer, but he takes particularly good
care not, if he can help it, to be the thing itself. What could it be
which, in the judgment of a man in his position, had compelled him to
place himself within the shadow of the gallows?
The problem occupied my mind. The man had been placed by nature in such
a fortunate position. It appeared that he had so much to lose--and he
had lost it all! What for? I wondered. What was it which had
constrained him to choose between the devil and the deep sea--and then
to choose the devil?
As I thought of it, and how handsome he was, and how well bred, and how
there was everything to please a woman's taste, and to gratify her eye,
a wild notion germinated in my brain--which was watered by
circumstances, and grew.
I dismissed the cab at the end of my road. The night, though dark, was
fine. The horse was tired. I had no objection to saving the creature's
legs by walking the rest of the way. I did not suppose that, at that
hour of the night, or, rather, of the morning, there would be any one
about.
In supposing that, however, I was wrong.
The street was a pretty long one. When I got about half way along it I
perceived that a cab was stopping at a house in front of me. As I
reached the cab a man got out of it in a fashion which, to say the
least of it, was rather sudden. He plunged on to the pavement, rather
than stepped on to it. As his feet touched solid ground, he turned
towards me.
It was Tommy Tennant!
For a moment I was frightened half out of my wits. It was such an hour,
he was without a hat, he looked wild and dishevelled, his appearance at
such a place--within a stone's throw of my own house--at such a moment
was so wholly unexpected, that it fairly took my breath away.
But if his appearance startled me, my appearance seemed to have an even
more startling effect upon him. He gave one glance at me and tumbled in
a heap on to the pavement.
The driver of the hansom leaned down towards me from his perch.
"It's all right, miss; he's only been enjoying of hisself. The cold
stones will cool 'is head."
I said nothing; I hurried on.