RUN TO EARTH
“I have to tell you, Jannaway,” said Mr Shapter, “that your
colleague has deserted you.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“He has driven away this morning to catch the early express.
Disillusioned for ever, he told me, as to our police methods,
disappointed in his one cherished ideal, he has gone to London, to
deliver his report and state his case before the court of final appeal
as represented by our employer, Mr Dando.”
“Very well, sir. Then, p’raps its time as _we_ got to business.”
“I don’t understand you, Jannaway.”
“Maybe not, Mr Shapter. Maybe it’s a side of my business to be
misunderstood, and a side of yours to know it.”
“Well, I should have thought I knew you pretty well by this time.”
“_Should_ you, sir? With respect, and judging by results, I must take
leave to doubt it.”
“Well, Jannaway, well.”
The detective warmed a little, his grievance coming to an irresistible
head.
“Look you here, Mr Shapter,” he said. “If we’re all to be judged by
what we go a-boasting of ourselves, we might as well petition the
Almighty to open Paradise again, and give us that Valombroso for our
head gardener. But He’s not to be took in, like some folks, by the
clanging of an empty brass pot; and mayhap He’d ask for a little more
proof of what was at the inside of all the noise that pretended to
such a bellyful of wisdom. It’s time for a cock to crow when it’s out
of the egg.”
“But really, inspector, mayn’t silence sometimes be a little empty
too?”
“That’s for you to judge, sir.”
“I am your very humble servant, Jannaway.”
“Then, sir, if you’ll come along with me, I’ll show you where the body
of this man Dalston is lying at this moment.”
“Dead?”
The bolt, loosed serenely from that official blue, caught us fairly in
the wind, and sent us staggering. The whispered cry came from us
together. The inspector nodded his head, with his lips set very grim.
“Dead, gentlemen. Look in a well, they say, for truth. It’s worth
bearing in mind.”
“In a well!”
“In a well, sir. Mrs Dalston done him. I’ve got her under arrest at
this moment.”
“Murder?”
The detective with a swift movement gripped my arm.
“Hold on, sir,” he said. “It’ll pass in a bit.”
“I’m all right,” I whispered huskily. “Did she murder him!”
“I didn’t say she did, now did I?” he protested. “She drove him to
kill himself, if you want the truth. We got him up at daybreak, and
he’s lying in the parlour now. _His_ ticket’s cancelled for good and
all. I want you over there at once, Mr Shapter; but the young
gentleman needn’t come unless he likes.”
“I’m ready,” I retorted fiercely. “What do you suppose? Have I run him
so far to shirk the end? Come, hurry; what are you waiting for?”
“Well,” said the detective, “he’s not a pretty sight, that’s all.
There’s few as is what shoots themselves in the head.”
I stared at him; I would ask no more. In a minute we were on our way.
“Since when have you known this, Jannaway?” asked Mr Shapter, pale and
breathless, as we hurried on.
“Only since early this morning for certain, sir,” answered the man.
“But I’d been awake and busy half the night before, while the Italian
gentleman, I suppose, was a-fuming and a-packing of his bag. He’d
better have waited a little longer. I couldn’t have kept the truth
from him another day.”
“How long have you been keeping it from him, from us all, as it is?”
“I mentioned, since this morning, didn’t I, sir? I don’t say as that
covers the whole process of my reasoning up to it. But, as to that,
you’ll hardly blame me, I suppose, for sitting close. Anyway, its the
inferior English method, Mr Shapter, and, being an inferior English
detective myself, I’m stupidly prejudiced in favour of it.”
It was wounded dignity’s last shot. We hardly spoke another word as we
sped across the fields. For myself, I was so overcome with agitation
as to find the mere effort of speech a labour. Yet once I found voice
to ask Jannaway a question appalled: “What will be done with her?”
He shook his head, grating his chin.
“What indeed, sir? It might be proved incitement to suicide. More like
she’ll be found incapable to plead. I’m detaining her as a matter of
form; but the County Asylum’s more in her line than the police
station. Don’t you be afraid for her, sir.”
Afraid? Merciful heavens! if this might be found the solution!--my
mother--never as yet so realised--never, until made a widow for the
second time, and by her own revengeful act, it seemed. Yet, dreadful
as that might prove itself, it restored her somehow in my mind to her
right place in the triple tragedy of my life.
We found a knot of gaping, whispering rustics gathered about the farm
when we reached it. The news had already got abroad, and a potent
shadow was henceforth to add itself to the traditional spectres of the
place. A stolid hot-faced member of the local police opened the door
to us. A fellow-constable was in charge of the prisoner in the study.
Thither we went.
She rose, with a smile, upon seeing us--there was a bright unearthly
light in her eyes--and glided across to me.
“Hush!” she said. “They have found him, Charlie darling; but it does
not matter, he can never hurt you again. How big and strong you have
grown while you slept; and he has fallen to nothing. He would be no
match for you now; and yet, in spite of all, I used to think him a
fine man. He would woo so confidently; and all the time he never
guessed what was in my heart. And in the end I did it so cleverly. He
just went down there into hiding, into the place which he had
discovered and told me of--I let him down myself--and afterwards it
was so simple. I had only to wind up the bucket again and leave him.
He had never foreseen that, for all his cleverness; and I kept my
secret too well. He used to call up to me--the names that had once
seemed to give me to him, and I listened and never answered. And then
he implored and implored, and I never answered; but I looked over the
rim and laughed at him until he knew. I saw his face hang white above
the water--whiter and whiter every day--and then once, when evening
had fallen, came the sound--O, my God!--and I knew that at last he had
shot himself in his despair.”
She flung her hands to her throat, with a gasping cry--
“It was like him to take that way. He knew that the sound would go on
for ever and ever in that pit and betray me in the end. Don’t you hear
it now, coming from the garden? But you needn’t be afraid to touch me,
my lord; my hands are clean. Gentlemen of the Jury, I did not kill
him. Please let me pass. He has a headache, and it is my duty to
attend to him. He is a very handsome man when he is himself. I should
like to tell him that--it is so little--and I have never said as much
to him before. I think it might help to cure him and stop the sound.
Gentlemen--please!”
At a sign from Jannaway the two constables advanced, and put firm but
not ungentle hands upon the poor creature. She struggled, uttering
shriek upon shriek.
“Best leave her to us, sir,” panted one of the men. “She’ll go quiet
in a little.”
Mr Shapter led me, inexpressibly agitated, from the room, and out into
the open at the back. Here the detective took the lead, and,
conducting us by way of weed-grown paths and tangled vegetation
through a wicket into an old walled fruit garden, turned towards an
angle of the enclosure where, on a little elevation, the yoke of a
great well sprouted from the ground.
My heart shuddered in me as we approached the thing. It was a pretty
massive structure, built for endurance, and calculated to the strain
of a heavy load of water. The bucket, the loop of a strong chain
connecting it with the windlass barrel, stood empty on the grass by
the well rim--a great sheet-iron pail, capable of holding eight or
perhaps half-a-score gallons. But the machinery by which it was
manipulated was the most curious, being a nest of powerful cog-wheels
and blocks, so adjusted under the butt of the windlass that, by
turning a handle, a child, or little stronger, could wheel up the full
bucket with perfect ease and as many pauses by the way as he chose.
What was as striking as anything, perhaps, was the state of
preservation of the whole structure; but, no doubt, the entire water
supply of the farm depending on it had made that a perennial
necessity.
“Will you look down now, gentlemen,” said the detective, “and see if
anything strikes you? Hold steady, sir!”
I balanced myself by the upright post of the windlass, and peered into
the well. Its heavy wooden lid, pierced by a trap in the middle,
through which the bucket could be raised and lowered without
disturbing the rest, had been bodily removed, and stood on its rim
against the wall hard by. The diameter of the shaft was
considerable--a full six feet, I should say--and the depth of the
boring, it might be, two hundred, but I am not certain. I know only
that the eye of water at the bottom looked no larger than a full moon,
and that a surprising interval elapsed between the dropping of a stone
from above and its answering plop from below.
“Well, gentlemen?” said Jannaway, after we had been gazing down some
moments; “nothing strikes you out of the common?”
“Nothing whatever.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed, satisfied. “They was pretty cute in those days.
Now, I’ll tell you, there _is_ something peculiar, and not more’n
thirty or forty feet down; but you’d never guess it from here, would
you? If you doubt me, go and satisfy yourselves. I don’t ask you to,
mind you. I say only as I’ve been the journey myself this morning, and
more than once; and if that’s enough for you, you can take my word on
it.”
I came away instantly from the post.
“I’m going down,” I said.
“No!” exclaimed Mr Shapter violently.
“Yes,” I insisted.
“He’ll do all right, sir,” said the detective, after a moment’s survey
of me. “I should be glad, as a matter of fact, of the corroborative
testimony, and there’s no more danger in it than in a fire escape, if
he keeps his hold and his nerve.”
“I am going down,” I repeated. “What shall I do, Jannaway?”
“Nothing more, sir, than sit on the bucket edge, with your legs
inside, and hold on to the chain. When you come to it, shout, and I’ll
stop.”
I did as he bid me. He went to the windlass handle, and without a
moment’s hesitation began to turn. Instantly the bucket containing me
swung free, and, after a little sluggish oscillation, descended slow
and smooth, dropping into the bowels of the earth. It was a curious
rather awful sensation, going down so into that smooth-walled shaft,
with its deep-sunk eye watching for the breaking of the thread which
was to precipitate me to an unthinkable death. I could not find the
nerve, after one glance, to look down again. But, on the other hand,
the brightness of my descent both surprised and comforted me. I had
peered from above into a pit of gloom, rather appalling and fathomless
to the eye; now, descending into it, under its open circular skylight
all was as clear as day, so that I could see the shadows under the
projecting bricks, and the little hartstongues in the crevices of
mortar a vivid green.
I must have dropped already some thirty or more feet, when I saw a
curious hooded bulge, so slight as to be imperceptible from above,
swell from the curve of the wall; and immediately afterwards the wall
itself appeared to gape beneath it like a yawning mouth. I shouted in
another moment, and the bucket stopped. Right opposite me, gouged out
of the wellside, was a deep niche like an oriel, forming a sort of
grotto or retreat. It was quite roomy, and lined and floored with
brick; and a stone ledge in it formed a seat. At the entrance an iron
stanchion was let into the wall, so that one, setting the bucket
gently swinging, might easily grasp that hold and land himself in the
cave. A man might lie hid there indefinitely, with the aid of a
confederate above, and not a soul guess the secret of his
disappearance. It was as cunning a cover, I am convinced, as
persecution had ever inspired.
Now, as I gazed fascinated, a certain token of some late human
occupation there entered into my vision and set the brain of it
reeling. I screeched out, and clung frantically to the chain. In an
instant I was going upward, and in a little more the wholesome
daylight came about me.
“Swing!” cried the detective, bending at the crank; and he slipped in
a block that held up the machinery.
I obeyed, as well as my shaken nerves would let me; and in a little
they had caught the rim of the bucket, and held it to the side while I
stepped out.
“Why the devil didn’t you tell me of the blood?” I gasped, wiping my
wet forehead as I stood away.
The inspector looked at me queerly.
“Truth is, sir,” he said, “I never thought. We’d had to get him out,
you see; and a nice job it was. What was left of it didn’t seem to
matter.”
Mr Shapter, with his eyes like grey agates, was holding my left hand
in his left, his right placed sympathetically on my shoulder.
“What was it, my boy?” he said.
“A cave, sir,” I answered--“a scoop in the wall where he’d
hidden--water and a cave like that other. And the shot in his head! My
God! who fired it? My God, sir!”
“An awful retribution,” he said. “But come, come--you are overwrought;
and no wonder. Let us go back to the house--or into the open fields,
if you prefer it; and Jannaway shall give us the story of his
discovery, in good matter-of-fact reviving prose.”
* * * * * * * * *
The detective took from his pocket the letter which he had obtained
from Mrs Dalston, and held it up to the light for our inspection.
“Do you observe the water-mark, gentlemen--Nolans, the big North
Hampshire paper mills? It was that first put me on the scent. Here was
local-made foreign note-paper, asserted to have been received from
Spain. He might, of course, have took some with him; but it wasn’t
likely, was it, seeing as how the letter itself refers to the journey
as unpremeditated, and him away from home, or wished it to be supposed
so, at the time? Inference, that he’d wrote it here for a blind, and
give it to be produced by Mrs D. in case of inquiry, while he himself
dropped into hiding.
“He was clever, and he knew a good deal--not the least of his
knowledge that the game was threatening to be up with him--but the
best of his sort make their slips. He’d made his, and it left me
pretty convinced that he’d be found lying close somewheres about the
neighbourhood, while the hunt ran abroad.
“I didn’t much cotton to the house, myself, for a solution. It was
reasonable to suppose, of course, that, during his tenancy of the
place, he hadn’t overlooked its best facilities for concealment. But,
then, where _he_ could find a way, others could too, and the
reputation of the farm promised a pretty searching inquiry into its
holes and corners. No, I thought, if our gentleman’s to be unearthed
at all, it will be from somewheres characteristic of his genius, and
the least likely to be considered by the ordinary. Probability pointed
to the house for that: therefore I made it my business to look
outside.
“Now, I don’t know if you may recall, gentlemen, a rather queer
thing--and that was the odd laugh the lady give in answer to our
Italian friend’s remark that she’d been too precipitate? She had--she
admitted it indirectly. She’d always been looking, the inference was,
for this solution to the long grudge she’d bore against him, and, when
at last it come, it come too late. Why? By God, gentlemen, the answer
took me in a flash. It was because she herself had already anticipated
the law by killing him.
“Once, in my mind, I couldn’t get it out. Yet, if it was true, it only
made the puzzle deeper. For where could she have hid him, none the
less? and why had she chosen this particular time more than another
for the deed? The plain answer to that second seemed because he must
have put himself suddenly at her mercy, in a way he’d never done
before, and the temptation had proved too strong for her. It was then
for the first time that the well occurred to me. Could she have pushed
him in unexpected when he was gone to draw water?
“I had observed the thing, of course, often enough before. Its size
and depth and the machinery about it was only too conspicuous to draw
my serious notice. But now I went to a closer examination--and, by the
Lord, gentlemen, what do you think I found caught among the cogs? Why,
a finger-stall. That was something, at least, for on the day we first
saw her, Mrs D. was wearing such a thing.
“That decided me. I tested the machinery, and found the bucket drop
like oil. A child could have worked it. I determined to go down into
that well, and find out, if I could, what a little fishing at its
bottom might bring to light. You see, the discovery of the grotto was
an accident. I’d been looking for murder, not suicide, and the truth
met me, like you, sir, half way. Only God or a Jury can give it a
name. That was no earlier than this morning, when I got over a couple
of the locals, and had the cover off and was let down. _He’d_ never
wanted the cover off. The man must have been built of stone and steel.
To sit there those days and nights famished and deserted, waiting for
his release that never came! The most of us, I think, would have
dropped into the water and ended it long before he did. But he always
had his revolver, that’s true. He could afford to stake up to the last
chance. I don’t know how long he himself had known about the grotto;
but he only let his wife into the secret of it a fortnight ago. He’d
seen or heard from the woman Carey, as far as I can gather, and
thought as we should be down upon him at once. He bolted for his
hiding at the first in a panic, arranging with Mrs D. that she was to
come and wind him up at evenfall if nothing happened; and that was the
last the world saw of him. It come on the woman in a moment as how
she’d got him in a trap, and her chance was given her at last. I had
it all out of her, while she kept the reason to speak it, and that
wasn’t long. When she saw _him_ being brought in, she broke out like a
screech-owl; and a mercy for her if she could be turned into one in
actual fact, poor creatur’.”
“Jannaway,” said Mr Shapter, “I owe you an apology.”
“I’ll cancel the debt, sir,” answered the inspector. “After all, your
saying _you_ couldn’t understand me was a compliment.”