ONE OF THE DOCUMENTS WHICH COST MY INQUIRY AGENT HIS LIFE
As I could not secure a carriage to myself in the train by which I
returned to town I had to defer a closer examination of the papers
I had found until I had gained the seclusion of my own chambers in
Buckingham Street.
The first of the documents contained in Green’s cigar-case was a
letter, evidently addressed to Mullen. It was dated from “Stavanger,
Norway,” and ran as follows:--
“JAMES,--I know all. I have never tried to spy into your affairs,
but I have known for a long time that you have been engaged in
some secret undertaking which I felt sure was for no good purpose.
Your sudden disappearances and equally sudden reappearances and
the large sums of money you have had, have always been a source of
anxiety to me. That it was some political plot you were engaged in
I was certain, for you were not at such pains to disguise your real
views before me as you were before others. I remember your wild
talk about society having conspired to rob you from before your
birth,--of your being denied the right to bear your father’s name,
and of your mother’s name being a dishonour to you. That your father
was a villain to our mother I know, and it may be that from him you
inherit your evil tendencies, and that God may not hold you morally
responsible for them. But James, bad as your father must have been,
he was, after all, your father, and the language you sometimes used
about him has made me, who am used to your violence, shudder and turn
sick.
“James, I promised our dead mother on her death-bed that I would try
to be to you all that she was. She could do almost as she liked with
you--could soften you and turn you from evil as no other person in
the world could. There was some strange sympathy between you and her.
Perhaps your knowledge of her one and only sin made you tender and
chivalrous to her, just as it sometimes--God forgive me!--made me,
who am so different from you and her, hard. And perhaps her memory
of her one sinning made her gentle and tender to you in your many. I
have had children of my own since then, James, and I think something
has thawed in my heart that was cold as ice before.
“I remember that in those childish days, when you would come to our
mother after some wild and wicked deed, she would take you in her
arms and speak softly to you, and that you would become another
creature and would seek to undo the evil you had done. But I used
to become impatient. I wished that you should be punished, and I
remember that my words would turn you to stone again and bring that
hard glitter that I so hated into your eyes. Yes, and when I saw her
caressing you, whom I would have had flogged, I used to feel--though
she was my mother as well as yours--as if I were a stranger in the
house, and could not be of the same flesh and blood as you and she.
“That is long ago, James, and we are no longer boy and girl, but
man and woman. But my heart tells me that I have not kept my promise
to her. She said to me when she was dying, ‘Mary, I am afraid for
James. He can be chivalrously generous to those who appeal to his
protection; he can be heartlessly cruel to those who oppose his will.
You remember how as a boy he fought like a wild cat with two lads
twice his size in defence of the homeless cur that crawled to his
feet when they were stoning it; and you remember that upon the same
day, because his own dog snarled at him, he beat it about the head so
mercilessly that we had to kill it. Mary, I am afraid for James; I am
the one and only soul in this world--where, young as he is, he feels
himself an outcast--who understands him. And everything depends upon
his associations. He might be a good man or he might be criminal.
Mary, promise me you will not be too hard with him--promise me that
you will try to understand him, and to make allowance, and to be
gentle.’
“I promised her, James, and I meant to keep my promise, but I know
now that I have not done so. I did not grudge you money. I gave you
more of what my father left me than I kept. But I did not try to be
to you what I promised our mother to be. I know now, though I did not
know it then. I have reason to know it now, for my little son Stanley
looks up at me with your eyes to reproach me with it. What you once
were he now is in looks and in disposition. I fear for him as your
mother feared for you; and his mother knows now that the promise I
made to your mother I did not keep.
“James, if you have done evil I am greatly to blame. If I had kept
my promise, if I had tried to take our dead mother’s place in your
life, if I had aimed at being your companion, and at winning your
confidence, if I had sought to keep evil influences away and to set
good influences at work, you might never have formed the associations
you have formed. That you have done the things they lay to your
charge I cannot believe. I have seen the ‘Daily Record,’ and the
portrait, and I know only too well, in spite of the disguise,
that the James Mullen who is accused of being Captain Shannon is
my half-brother James. I will never believe--nothing will make me
believe--that it is really true, and that you are responsible for
the inhuman crimes which you are said to have committed or to have
caused to be committed. That you are associated with men who are
capable of any wickedness is, I fear, only too true; men who, by
flattering that fatal vanity of yours, which I know so well--that
constitutional craving to be thought important and a power, of which
I can see traces in the Manifesto which was published after the
explosion--have made you their tool, and have persuaded you to accept
responsibilities for actions in which you had no hand, I can readily
believe. But that you, whom I have known to do such chivalrous
actions, you whom I have seen empty your pockets to relieve some
beggar whose woe-begone looks had appealed to your pity, could
deliberately plan the murder of hundreds of inoffensive people, I
cannot and never will believe.
“Until I received your letter I did not know where to write to you,
and I feared to send to the old address lest my note should fall
into wrong hands. You say that you have got into a scrape, and that
I must help you to get out of England, as you cannot trust your
associates--which I can well believe. You say, too, that you must
get right away to America or Australia, and that I must lend you the
steam yacht, as it would not be safe to go by any ordinary passenger
steamer, all of which are being watched. You say you would not drag
me into such a miserable business if you could help it, but that
you dare not risk the chance of attracting the attention in which
your chartering yourself a boat big enough to cross to America might
result.
“Well I see the force of all this, and I will do what I can to help
you, but only on one condition. How heartily my husband and I abhor
the acts of those with whom you are associated you must know. Not
even to save your life, not even to keep our connection with you from
becoming known, not even to save our children from being branded
throughout their lives as the relatives of a man who was accused of
the blackest murder, would we move hand or foot in any matter which
might even in the smallest detail further the infamous scheme in
which your associates are engaged.
“But Stanley and I have talked it over, and if you will absolutely
and unconditionally promise to sever yourself entirely from your
associates, and never again to take part in any political plotting,
we will do as you ask and bring the steam yacht to the place you
mention, and remain there until you can make an opportunity to join
us. We will then take you to America or Australia, or whatever
country you think will be safest, will allow you a certain yearly
sum which will enable you to begin life over again, and if possible
to retrieve your terrible past. I tell you frankly that it is only
after days of entreaty that I have got Stanley to consent to this.
Had it not been that he knows my life is hanging by a thread, and
that for you, my only brother, to be given up to the police by
information which came through me would kill me, I believe he would
have telegraphed at once to the police after receiving your letter
and told them where you could be found. It is right to tell you that
the terrible shock I received when I saw the ‘Daily Record,’ and knew
that my half-brother was ‘Captain Shannon’ brought on hemorrhage of
the lungs afresh, and so badly that my life was at first despaired of.
“But whether I live or die, Stanley has promised me--and you know he
never goes back from his word--that if you will accept the conditions
we impose he will help you to get out of the country. But he will do
nothing until he has received that promise, so send us a line at once.
“And now, James, as it is quite possible that I may die before then
and never see you again, I wish to make one last and perhaps dying
request. You know how nobly my dear father acted when he found out
about you; how, to save our mother’s reputation, he gave out that
you were his nephew, whom he intended to adopt as his son. James,
for his sake, for my sake, for our dead mother’s sake, promise me
that should you be arrested you will never let our connection with
you be known. It could do you no good, and it would mean that our
mother’s guilty secret would come out, and my innocent children would
be disgraced and dishonoured throughout their lives by her shame and
your guilt. If you have one spark of natural affection left you will
promise me this.--Your broken-hearted sister,
“F.”