THE FLIGHT AND CAPTURE
Prominent among the many commonplaces current among men is the one that
"truth is stranger than fiction," and the other that Life, in building
up her dreams, employs "situations" which the boldest playwright would
hesitate to present upon the stage. Yet the lines that Life lays down
for her productions are, in the main, closely followed by those who are
ranked as among the world's greatest dramatists. She, like them, leads
up to a climax by a mass of incidents that may severally be trivial,
but combine together with tremendous weight; she follows farce with
tragedy, and lightens tragedy with comedy; she brings her heroes in
touch with clowns, her lovers with old women and comic countrymen--and
in the complexities of her plots mingles them together so bewilderingly
that the wonder and interest of the audience are kept vigorously alive
until the curtain's fall.
So in this sordid Windsor tragedy she introduces between the first
and third acts a second, where the tension is relaxed and the milder
interest of Romance appears.
* * * * *
It was not the purpose of the murderer to remain near the scene,
or even in the country, of his crime:--he was a shrewd as well as
merciless villain, and he turned his face towards Sydney, evidently
with the intention of taking a steamer then about to sail for San
Francisco, and sinking his identity in the vast areas and amid the
swarming millions of the United States.
Nemesis accompanied him, but in the disguise of Cupid. On the coastwise
steamer by which he traveled to Sydney was a young woman by the name of
Rounsfell, who was returning to her home in the interior of New South
Wales from a visit to her brother near the border-line between Victoria
and South Australia. She was about eighteen years of age, and from an
interview I later had with her I estimated her as an attractive and
modest girl, not strikingly intellectual, but of kindly disposition and
affectionate nature. To her the fugitive, introducing himself by his
latest-assumed name, paid regardful court, and relieved the tedium of
the voyage by devoted attentions; and when the boat arrived at Sydney,
where she was to remain a few days, he escorted her to one hotel and
saw to her satisfactory accommodation, while he himself, with admirable
delicacy, took up quarters at another. During her stay he continued his
attentions with equal respect and assiduity; his attitude, as she told
me afterward, was more like that of an elder brother than a lover--this
attitude being confirmed by judicious advice and counsel, and even
by moral admonition:--as when he gently chided her for her confessed
fondness for dancing, sagely implying that he regarded this form of
amusement as one of the most insidious wiles of the Adversary.
It was at Coogee, on the shores of the beautiful harbor of Sydney, that
this chaste and improving courtship culminated in his asking her to
marry him. He was a man of wealth, he told her, a mining engineer by
profession, and with several lucrative positions in Australia at the
moment waiting upon his selection. To these practical considerations he
added the plea of his devotion. He had "lately lost his wife" (delicate
euphemism!) he said, and stirred her sympathies by eloquent and
tearful descriptions of the lonely and unsatisfactory life he led in
consequence of this bereavement--the hollowness of which life he felt
more acutely than ever now that she had crossed his path. She was, as
I have said, a tender-hearted girl, and what more natural than that
she should willingly incline her ear to words which every woman loves
to hear?--the more so when they were uttered by a man whose history
indicates him to have inherited all the persuasiveness of the original
Serpent in dealings with the sex, and who, as my interview with him in
the condemned cell caused me to remark, possessed one of the sweetest
and most sympathetic voices I ever heard in human throat.
It would be no discredit to Miss Rounsfell if she had accepted him then
and there; but it speaks well for her prudence and self-command that
she asked for delay in giving her answer until she could lay the matter
before her parents. To this he promptly assented, adding the suggestion
that he should accompany her to her home, and give her friends an
opportunity to become acquainted with him. This plan was carried out,
and the successful conquest of the daughter was completed by the
capitulation of the family; the engagement was formally announced, and
the joyful contract sealed by the installation upon the hand of the
_fiancée_ of the costly diamond ring so lately worn by the woman whose
mutilated body was at the moment mouldering under the hearth-stone at
Windsor.
* * * * *
The ecstasy of the betrothal inspired a consideration of ways and means
to hasten the wedding. The ardent lover pleaded for the celebration
of the nuptials without further ado; but his more prudent mistress
urged the possession of a home, and definite employment as surety of
maintaining it. This point conceded, the question arose as to what
particular section of the Colonies seemed to offer the most attractive
opportunities. The bride-elect objected to New South Wales as being
too near home (she had always been a home-body, and wished to see
the world); Victoria, also, was not to her taste for some other
feminine but conclusive reason; Western Australia had just begun to
come into notice as likely to become one of the world's greatest
gold-producers--there, it seemed to her, was the land of promise for a
young and experienced mining-engineer.
This opinion prevailed, and the fugitive, abandoning any idea he may
have had of escaping to America, set out for the new El Dorado; and in
a few weeks his _fiancée_ was cheered by a letter giving news of his
arrival at Southern Cross--a mining-camp some hundred and fifty miles
in the interior--where he had secured the post of manager for a company
which owned a rich deposit, and where he was already preparing for her
coming. Thus some weeks passed, until another letter came informing
her that a house had been secured and fitted up for her, and enclosing
sufficient funds for her journey. She replied, fixing the date of
her departure from Sydney, and on the day appointed took train for
Melbourne, intending to continue thence to Albany by sea.
Arriving at Melbourne the following morning--where by chance she took
a room in the same "Coffee Palace" to which her prospective bridegroom
had resorted upon his arrival from England--she despatched a note to a
young man who was a long-time friend of her family, and when he called
in the evening went out with him for a stroll through the city. As they
passed the office of _The Age_ newspaper on Collins street, they saw an
excited crowd surrounding the bulletin-board, and crossed the roadway
to read the announcement that it bore. As her eyes rested upon it, Miss
Rounsfell gave a piercing shriek, and fell senseless upon the ground.
The announcement upon the board was this:
"BARON SWANSTON, THE WINDSOR MURDERER, ARRESTED AT SOUTHERN CROSS."
Taken to her hotel and revived with difficulty, she told her
sensational story, with which the newspapers of the whole country were
filled next day; then, broken and trembling, she returned to her home,
there to remain until summoned again to Melbourne to give her testimony
at the trial which took place a month later.
Most strangely had it happened that by her unwitting influence the
criminal career of Frederick Bailey Deeming had been brought to an end.
Had she consented to live, after her anticipated marriage, in New South
Wales or Victoria, he might never have been apprehended. In these two
colonies--except for the seeming impossibility of the murdered body
being discovered--he might have come and gone without suspicion; his
only peril being the almost negligible one that some associate of his
voyage from England, or one of the very few persons in Melbourne who
had seen him with his former wife, might encounter him and inquire
as to his changed name and partner:--but the extrication of himself
from such an entanglement would have been merely a stimulating mental
exercise to Deeming, whose record, as searched after his latest crime
was known and the hue-and-cry was on his trail, shows him to have been
a most accomplished swindler, and a man of singular address in all
forms of deceit.
In these comparatively populous sections, too, the free and wide
circulation of newspapers would have brought immediate warning, by
announcement of the discovery of the Windsor murder, of the danger he
was in, and thus have aided his escape; for it was not until several
days after the body was found that its identity was revealed, and many
more before any clue was found to Deeming's whereabouts. With railways
extending to ports in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and
Queensland, his opportunities for quitting the country quickly and
secretly were numerous; and once away before the search for him had
even been started, the chance of capturing him would have been poor
indeed.
In Western Australia, whither Miss Rounsfell had been innocently
instrumental in sending him, the situation was entirely different.
No railways connect the colony with the others, and ingress and
egress are alike possible only by sea. Moreover, being the latest of
the Colonies in which the old English system of penal-transportation
was abolished, and still harboring many of the former subjects of
that _régime_, Western Australia at this time maintained through its
police a close system of espionage over all who arrived or departed
by the few seaports of the district. Thus did the murderer walk into
a _cul-de-sac_; and when the pursuit (by an extraordinarily sagacious
piece of deductive work on the part of the Melbourne detectives, which
it would interfere with the purpose of this narrative to describe)
reached Albany, the officers, armed with warrants for his arrest
and learning from the local police records that a man such as they
described had "gone up country" and had not returned, had only to
endure the tedious desert journey to Frazer's gold-mines at Southern
Cross, and apprehend him in the very house he had prepared for his
awaited bride.