WOMAN'S INTUITION
Next morning, Cyril Waring appeared once more in the Sessions House
for the preliminary investigation on the charge of murder. As he
entered, a momentary hush pervaded the room; then, suddenly, from
a seat beneath, a woman's voice burst forth, quite low, yet loud
enough to be heard by all the magistrates on the bench.
"Why, mother," it said, in a very tremulous tone, "it isn't Guy
himself at all; don't you see it's Cyril?"
The words were so involuntarily spoken, and in such hushed awe
and amaze, that even the magistrates themselves, hard Devonshire
squires, didn't turn their heads to rebuke the speaker. As for
Cyril, he had no need to look towards a blushing face in the body
of the court to know that the voice was Elma Clifford's.
She sat there looking lovelier than he had ever before seen her.
Cyril's glance caught hers. They didn't need to speak. He saw at once
in her eye that Elma at least knew instinctively he was innocent.
Next moment Gilbert Gildersleeve stood up to state his defence,
and gazed at her steadily. As he rose in his place, Elma's eye met
his. Gilbert Gildersleeve's fell. He didn't know why, but in that
second of time the great blustering man felt certain in his heart
that Elma Clifford suspected him.
Elma Clifford, for her part, knew still more than that. With
the swift intuition she inherited from her long line of Oriental
ancestry, she said to herself at once, in categorical terms, "It
was that man that did it. I know it was he. And he sees I know it.
And he knows I'm right. And he's afraid of me accordingly." But an
intuition, however valuable to its possessor, is not yet admitted
as evidence in English courts. Elma also knew it was no use in the
world for her to get up in her place and say so openly.
The great Q.C. put his case in a nutshell. "Our client," he
contended, "was NOT the man against whom the warrant in this case
had been duly issued; he was NOT the man named Guy Waring; he was
NOT the man whom the witnesses deposed to having seen at Mambury; he
was NOT the man who had loitered with evil intent around the skirts
of Dartmoor; in short," the great Q.C. observed, with demonstrative
eye-glass, "it was a very clear case of mistaken identity. It would
take them time, no doubt, to prove the conclusive alibi they intended
to establish; for the gentleman now charged before them, he would
hope to show hereafter, was Mr. Cyril Waring, the distinguished
painter, twin brother to Mr. Guy Waring, the journalist, against
whom warrant was issued; and he was away in Belgium during the whole
precise time when Mr. Guy Waring--as to whose guilt or innocence
he would make no definite assertion--was prowling round Dartmoor
on the trail of McGregor, alias Montague Nevitt. Therefore, they
would consent to an indefinite remand till evidence to that effect
was duly forthcoming. Meanwhile--" and here Gilbert Gildersleeve's
eyes fell upon Elma once more with a quiet forensic smile--he
would call one witness, on the spur of the moment, whom he hadn't
thought till that very morning of calling, but whom the magistrates
would allow to be a very important one--a lady from Chetwood--Miss
Elma Clifford.
Elma, taken aback, stood up in the box and gave her evidence timidly.
It amounted to no more than the simple fact that the person before
the magistrates was Cyril, not Guy; that the two brothers were
extremely like; but that she had reason to know them easily apart,
having been associated in a most painful accident in a tunnel with
the brother, the present Mr. Cyril Waring. What she said gave only
a presumption of mistaken identity, but didn't at all invalidate
the positive identification of all the people who had seen the
supposed murderer. However, from Gilbert Gildersleeve's point of
view, this delay was doubly valuable. In the first place, it gave
him time to prove his alibi for Cyril and bring witnesses from
Belgium; and, in the second place, it succeeded in still further
fastening public suspicion on Guy, and narrowing the question for
the police to the simple issue whether or not they had really caught
the brother who was seen at Mambury on the day of the murder.
The law's delays were as marvellous as is their wont. It was a
full fortnight before the barrister was able to prove his point by
bringing over witnesses at considerable expense from Belgium and
elsewhere, and by the aid of a few intimate friends in London, who
could speak with certainty as to the difference between the two
brothers. At the end of a fortnight, however, he did sufficiently
prove it by tracing Cyril in detail from England to the Ardennes
and back again to Dover, as well as by showing exactly how Guy had
been employed in London and elsewhere on every day or night of
the intervening period. The magistrates at last released Cyril,
convinced by his arguments; and on the very same day, the coroner's
inquest on Montague Nevitt's body, after adjourning time upon time
to await the clearing up of this initial difficulty, returned a
verdict of wilful murder against Guy Waring.
That evening, in town, the most completely mystified person of
all was a certain cashier of the London and West County Bank, in
Lombard Street, who read in his St. James's this complete proof that
Cyril had been in Belgium through all those days when he himself
distinctly remembered cashing over the counter for him a cheque
for no less a sum than six thousand pounds to "self or bearer."
Had the brothers, then, been deliberately and nefariously engaged
in a deep-laid scheme--the cashier asked himself, much puzzled--to
confuse one another's identity with great care beforehand, with
a distinct view to the projected murder? For as yet, of course,
nobody on earth except Guy Waring himself on the waters of Biscay
knew or suspected anything at all about the forgery.
Elma Clifford and her mother, meanwhile, had stopped on at Tavistock
till Cyril was released from his close confinement. Elma never
meant to marry him, of course--to that prime determination she still
remained firm as a rock under all conditions--but in such straits
as those, why, naturally she couldn't bear to be far away from him.
So she remained at Tavistock quietly till the inquiry was over.
On the evening of his release Elma met him at the hotel. Her mother
had gone out on purpose to leave them alone. Elma took Cyril's hand
in hers with a profound trembling. She felt the moment for reserve
had long gone past.
"Cyril," she said, boldly calling him by his Christian name, because
she could call him only as she always thought of him, "I knew from
the first you didn't do it. And just because I know you didn't, I
know Guy didn't either, though everything looks now so very black
against him. I can trust YOU, and I can trust HIM. All through,
I've never had a doubt one moment of either of you."
Cyril held her hand in his, and raised it tenderly to his lips. Elma
looked at him, half surprised. Only her hand, how strange of him.
Cyril read the unspoken thought, as she would have read it herself,
and answered quickly, "Never, Elma, now, till Guy has cleared himself
of this deadly accusation. I couldn't bear to ask you to accept a
man who every one else would call a murderer's brother."
Elma gazed at him steadfastly. Tears stood in her eyes. Her voice
trembled; but she was very firm.
"We must clear you and him of this dreadful charge," she said slowly.
"I know we must do that, Cyril. Guy didn't kill him. Guy's wholly
incapable of it. But where is Guy now? That's what I don't understand.
We must clear that all up. Though, even when it's cleared up, I
can only LOVE you. As I told you that day at Chetwood--and I mean
it still--whatever comes to us two, I can never, never marry you."
"Not even if I clear this all up?" Cyril asked, with a wistful
look.
"Not even if you clear this all up," Elma answered seriously. "The
difficulty's on MY side, don't you see, not on yours at all. So far
as you're concerned, Cyril, clear this up or leave it just where
it is, I'd marry you to-morrow. I'd marry you at once, and proud
to do it, if only to show the world openly I trust you both. I half
faltered just once as you stood there in court, whether I wouldn't
say yes to you, for nothing else but that--to let everybody see
how implicitly I trusted you."
"But _I_ couldn't allow it," Cyril answered, all aglow. "As things
stand now, Elma, our positions are reversed. While this cloud
still hangs so black over Guy, I couldn't find it in my conscience
to ask you to marry me."
He gazed at her steadily. They were both too profoundly stirred
for tears or emotions. A quiet despair gleamed in the eyes of each.
Cyril could never marry her till he had cleared up this mystery.
Elma could never marry him, even if it were all cleared up, with that
terrible taint of madness, as she thought it, hanging threateningly
for ever over her and her family.
She paused for a minute or two, with her hand locked in his. Then
she said once more, very low, "No, Guy didn't do it. But why did
he run away? That baffles me quite. That's the one point of it
all that makes it so strange and so terribly mysterious."
"Elma," Cyril answered, with a cold thrill, "I believe in Guy;
I think I know myself, and I think I know him, well enough to say
that such a thing as murder is impossible for either of us. He's weak
at times, I admit, and his will was powerless before the magnetic
force of Montague Nevitt's. But when I try to face that inscrutable
mystery of why, if he's innocent, he has run away from this
charge, I confess my faith begins to falter and tremble. He must
have seen it in the papers. He must have seen I was accused. What
can he mean by leaving me to bear it in his stead without ever
coming forward to help me fairly out of it?"
Elma looked up at him with another of her sudden flashes of superb
intuition. "He CAN'T have seen it in the papers," she said. "That
gives us some clue. If he'd seen it, he MUST have come forward to
help you. But, Cyril, MY faith never falters at all. And I tell
you why. Not only do I know Guy didn't do it, but I know who did
it. The man who murdered Montague Nevitt is--why shouldn't I tell
you?--Mr. Gilbert Gildersleeve!"
Cyril started back astonished. "Oh, Elma, why do you think so?" he
cried in amazement. "What possible reason can you have for saying
so?"
"None," Elma answered, with a calmly resigned air. "I only know it;
I know it from his eyes. I looked in them once and read it like a
book. But of course that's nothing. What we must do now is to try
and find out the facts. I looked in his eyes and I saw it at a
glance. And I saw he saw it. He knows I've discovered him."
Cyril half drew away from her with a faint sense of alarm. "Elma,"
he said slowly, "I believe in Guy; but really and truly I can't
quite believe THAT. You make your intuition tell you far too much. In
your natural anxiety to screen my brother, you've fixed the guilt,
without proof, upon another innocent man. I'm sure Mr. Gildersleeve's
as incapable as Guy of any such action."
"And I'm sure of it, too," Elma answered, with the instinctive
certainty of feminine conviction. "But still I know, for all that,
he did it. Perhaps it was all done in a moment of haste. But at
least he did it. And nothing on earth that anybody could say will
ever make me believe he didn't."
When Mrs. Clifford came back to the hotel an hour later, she scanned
her daughter's face with a keen glance of inquiry.
"Well, he says he won't ask you again," she murmured, laying Elma's
head on her shoulder, "till this case is cleared up, and Guy is
proved innocent."
"Yes," Elma answered, nestling close and looking red as a rose.
"He knows very well Guy didn't do it, but he wants all the rest of
the world to acknowledge it also."
"And YOU know who did it?" Mrs. Clifford said, with a tentative
air.
"Yes, mother. Do you?"
"Of course I do, darling. But it'll never be proved against HIM,
you may be sure. I saw it at a glance. It's Mr. Gilbert Gildersleeve."