Thecla Perzio received Barndale with much shyness and embarrassment; and
he, seeing that she was a good deal afraid of him, plucked up courage
and treated her rather wilfully. He insisted on her going down to his
sister at his own house in Surrey and staying there under the old maid’s
chaperonage, at least until such time as she should be able to find
another suitable companion. The more Thecla found herself overpowered by
this masterful son of Anak, the more she felt resigned, and comfortable,
and peaceful, and safe. Barndale, like the coward he was, felt his power
and took advantage of it. He would have no ‘nay’ on any grounds, but
exacted immediate obedience.
To make things smoother he set out that afternoon for Surrey, saw his
sister, talked her into a great state of sympathy for little Thecla,
and brought her back to town by the next morning’s train. Then, having
introduced the ladies to each other, he left them and went to his own
chambers in King’s Bench Walk. Arrived there he stooped at the keyhole,
finding some trifle or other there opposing his latch-key. The key-hole
was half-filled with putty. Barndale never lost his temper. ‘Some genius
takes this for a joke, I suppose,’ he murmured philosophically, and
proceeded by the aid of a pocket corkscrew to clear the keyhole. He had
just succeeded when a hand was laid familiarly upon his shoulder.
He turned and saw a stranger clean-shaven, calm, and in aspect
business-like.
‘Mr. Barndale, I think?’ said the familiar stranger.
‘Yes,’ said Barndale, looking down at him in a somewhat stately way, in
resentment of the familiar hand upon his shoulder.
‘We’ll do our little bit of business inside, sir, if _you_ please.’
Barndale looked at him again inquiringly, opened the door, walked in,
and allowed the stranger to follow. The man entered the room and stood
before Barndale on the hearthrug. He had one hand in the breast of his
coat; and somehow, as Barndale looked at him, he bethought him of the
Greek who had stood with his hand at his breast in the Concordia Garden
glaring at Leland.
‘I hope you’ll take it quietly,’ said the clean-shaven man, ‘but it’s
got to be done, and will be done whether you take it quietly or not. I’m
an officer, and it’s my duty to arrest you.’
There passed rapidly through Barndale’s mind the remembrance of a
disputed wine-bill, and the service of some legal document which he had
thrown into the fire without reading.
He connected the clean-shaven stranger with these things, and was
tickled at the idea of being arrested for some such trifle as a hundred
pounds. He was so far tickled that he laughed outright.
‘Come,’ said Barndale, still smiling, ‘this is absurd. I’ll give you a
cheque at once. Are you empowered to give a receipt?’
The clean-shaven stranger regarded him with a cool, observant, wary eye.
‘It’s my duty to arrest you,’ he said again quietly, ‘and I hope you’ll
come quietly and make no fuss about it.’
‘My good man,’ said Barndale, ‘you can’t arrest me if I pay the money.’
‘Come, come, come, sir,’ said the official, with calm superiority in
his tone; ‘that’s all very well and very pretty, but it’s Mr. Leland’s
affair that I want you for, sir.’
‘Mr. Leland’s affair?’ said Barndale.
‘That little attempted murder the night before last, that’s all. Now,
take it quiet; don’t let’s have any nonsense, you know.’
The clean-shaven stranger’s lips pressed close together with a resolute
look, and his hand came a little way out of the breast of his coat.
‘Will you have the goodness to tell me what you mean?’ asked Barndale,
bewildered, and a little angry to find himself so.
‘Well, if you _won’t_ know anything about it, Mr. James Leland was found
yesterday in a house-boat at Thames Ditton, with a pistol bullet into
him, and he ain’t expected to recover, and that’s my business along with
you, and I’ll trouble you to come quiet.’
The tension on the official nerves made hash of the official’s English.
Barndale smote the mantel-piece with his clenched hand.
‘Great God!’ he cried. ‘The Greek! Where is Mr. Leland?’ he asked the
official eagerly.
‘In bed at the “Swan,” abeing doctored. That’s where _he_ is,’ replied
the official curtly. ‘Now, come along, and don’t let’s have no more
palaver.’
Barndale discerned the nature of the situation, and remained master of
himself.
‘I will come with you,’ he said with grave self-possession. ‘I am
somehow suspected of having a hand in the attempted murder of my friend.
Now, you shall arrest me since you must, but you shall not tie the hands
of justice by preventing me from tracing the criminal. The man who has
committed this crime is Demetri Agryopoulo, a Greek, attached to the
Persian Embassy at Constantinople. You look like a shrewd and wary man,’
Barndale took out his cheque-book and wrote a cheque for one hundred
pounds. ‘When you have done with me, cash that cheque and spend every
penny of it, if need be, in pursuit of that man. When it is gone come
to me for more. When you have caught him, come to me for five hundred
pounds. Wait a moment.’
He sat down and wrote in a great, broad hand: ‘I promise to pay to
Bearer the sum of Five Hundred Pounds (500L.) on the arrest of Demetri
Agryopoulo, attaché to the Persian Embassy at Constantinople__W. Holmes
Barn-dale.’ He appended date and place, and handed it to the officer.
‘Very good, sir,’ said he, waving the papers to and fro in the air to
dry the ink, and keeping all the while a wary eye on Barndale. ‘I know
that my opinion goes for nothing, but if I was a grand jury I should
throw out the bill, most likely. We’ll make it as quiet as we _can_,
sir; but there’s two of my men outside, and if there should be any need
for force it’ll have to be used, that’s all.’
‘I shall go with you quietly,’ said Barndale. ‘I have two things to
impress upon you. Let no apparent evidence in any other direction throw
you off the scent on which I have set you. Next: send a smart man to
Thames Ditton and let him collect evidence of all the grounds on which I
am suspected. Now I am ready.’
Thus torn with grief for his friend, and sorrow for his lover, but moved
to no upbraiding of Fate for the cruel trick she had played him, this
British gentleman surrendered himself to the emissary of Public Gossip
and went away with him.
The officer, having ideas of his own, got into a cab with Barndale
and drove straight to Scotland Yard. On the way Barndale set out the
evidence in favour of his own theory of the crime and its motive.
Inspector Webb’s experience of criminals was large; but he had never
known a criminal conduct himself after Barn-dale’s fashion, and was
convinced of his innocence, and hotly eager to be in pursuit of the
Greek. When the cab drew up in the Yard a second cab drew up behind it,
and from it emerged two clean-shaven, quiet-looking men in inconspicuous
dresses, whom Barndale had seen in King’s Bench Walk as he had gone that
afternoon to his chambers. Scarcely had they alighted when a third cab
came up, and from it dashed a mahogany-coloured young man with grey
hair, and assisted a lady to alight. Catching sight of Barndale, the
lady ran forward and took him by the arm.
‘Oh, Will,’ she said, ‘you have heard this dreadful news?’
‘My poor child!’ he answered.
‘This,’ said Lilian, pointing out her companion, ‘is Dr. Wattiss, who
saved James’s life.’
‘Hundred and Ninety-first Foot,’ said the medical man. ‘I’ve had
considerable experience in gunshot wounds, and I don’t think Mr.
Leland’s case at all desperate, if that’s any comfort to anybody,’ There
the doctor smiled. ‘You are Mr. Barndale, I presume. Miss Leland has
evidence of the name and even the whereabouts of the scoundrel who
inflicted the wound, and we are here to hunt him up.’
‘May I ask who’s the suspected party?’ asked Inspector Webb with his eye
on the doctor.
‘Demetri Agryopoulo,’ said Lilian, ‘a Greek----’
‘Attached to the Persian Embassy at Constantinople.’ said Inspector
Webb. ‘All right. Come with me, ma’am. This way, gentlemen.’ And the
inspector marshalled them all upstairs. There he gave a whispered order
to an officer who lounged to the door, and placed his back against it,
and there picked his teeth, insouciant. The inspector disappeared. In
two minutes he was back again.
‘This way, ma’am. This way, gentlemen,’ And he ushered all three before
him up a set of stone stairs, down a set of stone stairs, and into a
carpeted apartment, where sat a gentleman of military aspect, behind a
business-looking table overspread with papers.
‘You have a statement to make to me, I believe,’ he said to Lilian with
grave politeness.
Lilian told her story without faltering and without superfluous words.
When she mentioned the pipe Dr. Wattiss drew a packet from his pocket
and unwound it carefully, and laid the precious meerschaum on the table.
‘What is this statement of a nightly quarrel between the two residents
in the house-boat, Webb?’ Thus spoke the superior officer behind the
business table.
‘Man named Hodges, sir,’ responded the inspector, ‘states that he
overheard violent rows after dusk.’
In spite of all his grief and anxiety Barn-dale laughed, and was about
to speak in explanation when Lilian rose and laid a letter on the table.
‘Will you kindly read that, sir, and then ask Mr. Barndale to explain?’
she said simply.
The military-looking official took the letter and read it through. It
ran thus:--
‘On the Roaring Deep,
‘Thames Ditton.
‘Dear Lil,--
‘Billy has struck ile. He’s at work on an amazing comedy
with which he intends to fire the Thames next first of
April. He and I are both going to appear in it at Barndale
in the Christmas week. Meantime we rehearse a terrific
combat nightly.
‘While words of learned length and thundering sound Amaze the
wondering rustics gathered round.
‘A genial idiot, Hodges yclept, has persuaded the whole
village that a murder is on the carpet, and that Billy and I
are at daggers drawn. Don’t tell him this in any of your
letters. It’s a great tribute to our acting that even Hodges
takes us to be in earnest. I can’t call to mind any stage
row I ever listened to that I shouldn’t have spotted the
hollowness of in a brace of shakes. At this minute Author
summons Actor to Rehearsal. I close up. This Scrawl to tell
you I haven’t forgotten you. Would have written more, but
authority’s voice is urgent.
‘Your affectionate brother,
‘J.’
‘I think you had something to say, sir,’ said the military official
turning to Barndale, and handing the letter back to Lilian.
‘The supposed quarrel between poor Leland and myself is easily
explained. We were rehearsing for amateur theatricals, almost nightly,
in a somewhat animated scene, and I can only suppose that we were
overheard, and that our play was taken for earnest.’
‘Have you any clue to the whereabouts of this Greek?’ the officer asked
Lilian. The doctor broke in--
‘Miss Leland was describing the Greek to me this morning with a view
to his identification, when a man walked into the room, said he had
overheard the lady through the open window, and had seen the man she
described two hours before. He was the boots of an hotel at Kingston. We
came here at once, after sending an officer to look after him.’
‘That will do, Mr. Webb,’ said the superior official. ‘There can be no
necessity for detaining this gentleman.’
Lilian and the doctor read this last sentence in its most superficial
light, but Barndale rose and turned with a feeling of vast inward
relief--
‘Our bargain holds good still,’ he said to the inspector, as they went
downstairs together.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the inspector, and bade the trio adieu with great
politeness.
They three took train for Thames Ditton at once, and by the way Barndale
told the story of his arrest.
Arrived at the historic ‘Swan,’ they settled down to their separate
avocations--Lilian and the doctor to nurse Leland, and Barndale to do
all that in him lay to track the Greek. My story nears its close; and
I may say at once, without word-spinning, that Demetri Agryopoulo
disappeared, and was no more heard of. He was too wily to speak the
English described in the advertisement of his peculiarities. He spoke
German like an Alsatian, French like a Gascon, and Italian like a
Piedmontese, and could pass for any one of the three. By what devices he
held himself in secrecy it matters not here to say. But again, and for
the last time in this story, he went his way, and the darkness shrouded
him.
On the day following Barndale’s arrest and release, Lilian sat by her
brother’s bedside, when the door of the bedroom opened noiselessly, and
two women stole in on stealthy tiptoe.
One was Barndale’s maiden sister, and the other was poor little Thecla
Perzio.
Lilian kissed them both; and Thecla said, in a tearful, frightened
whisper.
‘It is all my wicked, wicked fault. But O mademoiselle, may I not help
to nurse him?’
‘Not mademoiselle, dear--Lilian!’ was Lilian’s sole answer.
So the three women stayed, together with mamma Leland, and nursed the
invalid in couples. And it came to pass that the indiscreet little
Thecla won everybody’s heart about the place, and that everybody came to
be assured that no lack of maidenly honour had made her indiscreet, but
only a very natural, unsuspecting, childlike confidence. It came to pass
also that when Leland Junior began to get better he saw good and
sufficient reasons for setting a term to his bachelor existence.
And with no great difficulty Thecla Perzio was brought to his opinion.
By Christmas time Leland was well and strong again. The chase after the
Greek was dismissed from the official mind by this time: and Barndale,
being reminded of Inspector Webb by the receipt of the promissory note
for five hundred pounds, wrote to that official to offer him a week or
two in the country. The inspector came, and brought the marvellous pipe
with him. It had been detained until then to be put in evidence in case
of the Greek’s arrest and trial.
The inspector heard the comedy, and told Barndale, later on, that he
regarded the quarrel scene as a masterpiece of histrionic art.
‘I don’t wonder that bumpkin took it all for earnest,’ he said. ‘I
should ha’ done that myself. No, thankee, sir. I don’t care about mixing
with the lords and swells upstairs. I’ll have a look in on the butler.
Smoking the old pipe again, I see, sir. Not many old meerschaums
knocking about with a tale like that attached to ‘em.’
It pleases me to add that Doctor Wattiss officiated at Leland’s wedding,
and married the maiden sister.