PETER TAKES THE HELM
As the detectives travelled through night-hidden Kent and presently
boarded the packet for Boulogne, Mark Brendon told his story with
every detail for the benefit of Mr. Ganns. Before doing so he reread
his own notes and was able to set each incident of the case very
clearly and copiously before the older man. Peter never once
interrupted him, and, at the conclusion of the narrative,
complimented Mark on the recital.
"The moving picture is bright but not comprehensive," he said,
returning to a former analogy. "In fact I'm beginning to see already
that, no matter what we get at the end of the reel, there are still
a few preliminary scenes that should come in at the beginning."
"I've begun at the beginning, Mr. Ganns."
But Peter shook his head.
"Half the battle is to know the beginning of a case. I'll almost go
so far as to say that, given the real beginning, the end should be
assured. You've not begun at the beginning of the Redmayne tangle,
Mark. If you had, the clue to this labyrinth might be in your hands
to-day. The more I hear and the more I think, the more firmly am I
convinced that the truth we are out to find can only be discovered
by a deal of hard digging in past times. There is a lot of spade
work demanded and you, or I, may have to return to England to do
it--unless we can get the information without the labour. But I've
no reason to count on any luck of that sort."
"I should like to know the nature of the ground I failed to cover,"
said Brendon; but Peter was not disposed to enlighten him at
present.
"Needn't bother yet," he said. "Now talk about yourself and give the
case a rest."
They chatted until the dawn, by which time their train had reached
Paris, and an hour or two later they were on their way to Italy.
Mr. Ganns had determined to cross the Lakes and arrive unexpectedly
at Menaggio. He had now turned his mind once more to the problem
before him and spoke but little. He sat with his notebook open and
made an occasional entry as he pursued his thoughts. Mark read
newspapers and presently handed a page to Mr. Ganns.
"What you said about acrostics interested me," he began. "Here's one
and I've been trying to guess it for an hour. No doubt it ought to
be easy; but I expect there's a catch. Wonder if it will puzzle
you."
Peter smiled and dropped his notebook.
"Acrostics are a habit of mind," he said. "You grow to think
acrostically and be up to all the tricks of the trade. You soon get
wise to the way that people think who make them; and then you'll
find they all think alike and all try to hoodwink you along the same
lines. If you tempt me on to acrostics, you'll soon wish you had
not."
Mark pointed to the puzzle.
"Try that," he said. "I can't make head or tail of it; yet I dare
say you'll thrash it out if you've got the acrostic mind."
Mr. Ganns cast his eye over the puzzle. It ran thus:
When to the North you go,
The folk shall greet you so.
. . . . . . . . .
1. Upright and light and Source of Light
2. And Source of Light, reversed, are plain.
3. A term of scorn comes into sight
And Source of Light, reversed again.
The American regarded the problem for a minute in silence, then
smiled and handed the paper back to Brendon.
"Quite neat, in its little conventional way," he said. "It's on the
regular English pattern. Our acrostics are a trifle smarter, but all
run into one form. The great acrostic writer isn't born. If
acrostics were as big a thing as chess, then we should have masters
who would produce masterpieces."
"But this one--d'you see it?"
"Milk for babes, Mark."
Mr. Ganns turned to his notebook, wrote swiftly into it, tore out
the page, and handed the solution to his companion.
Brendon read:
G O D
Omega Alph A
D O G
"If you know Knut Hamsun's stories, then you guess it instantly. If
not, you might possibly be bothered," he said, while Brendon stared.
"There are two ways with acrostics," continued Peter, full of
animation, "the first is to make lights so difficult that they turn
your hair grey till you've got them, the second--just traps--perhaps
three perfectly sound answers to the same light, but the second just
a shade sounder than the first, and the third a shade sounder than
either of the others."
"Who makes acrostics like that?"
"Nobody. Life's too short; but if I devoted a year to a perfect
acrostic, you bet your life it would take my fellow creatures a year
to guess it. The same with cryptography, which we've both run up
against, no doubt, in course of business. Cyphers are mostly crude;
but I've often thought what a right down beauty it might be possible
to make, given a little pains. The detective story writers make very
good ones sometimes; but then the smart man, who wipes everybody's
eyes, always gets 'em--by pulling down just the right book from the
villain's library. My cryptograph won't depend on books."
Peter chattered on; then he suddenly stopped and turned to his notes
again.
He looked up presently.
"The hard thing before us is this," he said, "to get into touch with
Robert Redmayne, or his ghost. There are two sorts of ghost, Mark;
the real thing--in which you don't believe and concerning which I
hold a watching brief; and the manufactured article. Now the
manufactured article can be quite as useful to the bulls as the
crooks."
"You believe in ghosts!"
"I didn't say so. But I keep an open mind. I've heard some funny
things from men whose word could be relied upon."
"If this is a ghost, that's a way out, of course; but in that case
why are you frightened for Albert Redmayne's life?"
"I don't say he's a ghost and of course I don't think he's a ghost;
but--"
He broke off and changed the subject.
"What I'm doing is to compare your verbal statement with Mr.
Redmayne's written communication," he said, patting his book. "My
old friend goes back a long way farther than you would, because he
knows a lot more than you did. It's all here. I've got a regard for
my eyes, so I had it typed. You'd better read it, however. You'll
find the story of Robert Redmayne from childhood and the story of
the girl, his niece, and of her dead father. Mrs. Doria's father was
a rough customer--scorpions to Robert's whips apparently--a man a
bit out of the common; yet he never came to open clash with the law.
You never thought of Robert's dead brother, Henry, did you! But
you'd be surprised how we can get at character and explain
contradictions by studying the different members of a family."
"I shall like to read the report."
"It's valuable to us, because written without prejudice. That's
where it beats your very lucid account, Mark. There was something
running through your story, like a thread of silk in cotton, that
you won't find here. It challenged me from the jump, my boy, and I'm
inclined to think that in that thread of silk I shall just find the
reason of your failure, before I've wound it up."
"I don't understand you, Ganns."
"You wouldn't--not yet. But we'll change the metaphor. We'll say
there was a red herring drawn across the trail, and that you took
the bait and, having started right enough, presently forsook the
right scent for the wrong."
"Puzzle--to find the red herring," said Mark.
Mr. Ganns smiled.
"I think I've found it," he replied. "But on the other hand, perhaps
I haven't. In twenty-four hours I shall know. I hope I'm right--for
your sake. If I am, then you are discharged without a stain on your
character; if I'm not, then the case is black against you."
Brendon made no reply. Neither his conscience nor his wit threw any
light on the point. Then Peter, turning to his notes, touched on a
minor incident and showed the other that it admitted of a doubt.
"D'you remember the night you left 'Crow's Nest' after your first
visit? On the way back to Dartmouth you suddenly saw Robert Redmayne
standing by a gate; and when the moonlight revealed you to him, he
leaped away and disappeared into the trees. Why?"
"He knew me."
"How?"
"We had met at Princetown and we had spoken together for some
minutes by the pool in Foggintor Quarry, where I was fishing."
"That's right. But he didn't know who you were then. Even if he'd
remembered meeting you six months before in the dusk at Foggintor,
why should he think you were a man who was hunting him?"
Mark reflected.
"That's true," he said. "Probably he'd have bolted from anybody that
night, not wishing to be seen."
"I only raise the question. Of course it is easily explained on a
general assumption that Redmayne knew every man's hand was against
him. He would naturally, in his hunted state, fly the near approach
of a man."
"Probably he didn't remember me."
"Probably; but there are possibilities about the action. He might
have been warned against you."
"There was nobody to warn him. He had not yet seen his niece, nor
spoken with her. Who else could have warned him--except Bendigo
Redmayne himself?"
Peter did not pursue the subject. He shut his book, yawned, took
snuff, and declared himself ready for a meal. The long day passed
and both men turned in early and slept till daybreak.
Before noon they had left Baveno on a steamer and were crossing the
blue depths of Maggiore. Brendon had never seen the Italian lakes
before and he fell silent in the presence of such beauty; nor did
Mr. Ganns desire to talk. They sat together and watched the panorama
unfold, the hills and gorges, the glory of the light over earth and
water, the presence of man, his little homes upon the mountains, his
little barques upon the lake.
At Luino they left the steamer and proceeded to Tresa. Beside the
railroad, on this brief instalment of the journey, there stood lofty
palisades of close wire netting hung with bells. Peter, who had
travelled here twenty years earlier, explained that they were
erected as a safeguard against the eternal smuggling between
Switzerland and Italy.
"'Only man is vile' in fact," he concluded and woke a passing wave
of bitterness in his companion's spirit.
"And our life is concerned with his vileness," Mark answered. "I
hate myself sometimes and wish I was a grocer or a linen draper or
even a soldier or sailor. It's degrading to let your life's work
depend on the wickedness of your fellow creatures, Ganns. I hope a
time is coming when our craft will be as obsolete as bows and
arrows."
The elder laughed.
"What does Goethe say somewhere?" he asked. "That if man endures
for a million years, he'll never lack obstacles to give him trouble,
or the pressure of need to make him conquer them. Then there's
Montaigne--you ought to read Montaigne--wisest of men. He'll tell
you that human wisdom has never reached the perfection of conduct
that itself prescribes; and could it arrive there, it would still
dictate to itself others beyond. In a word, the world will never be
short of crooks while human nature lasts, nor yet of men trained to
lay them by the heels. Crime will continue, in some form or other,
as long as men do; and as the criminal gets cleverer, so must we."
"I think better of human nature," answered Mark and his friend
applauded him.
"Quite right, my boy--at your age," he said.
They wound over Lugano and came in evening light to its northern
shore. Then once more they took train, climbed aloft, and fell at
last to Menaggio on Como's brink.
"Now," said Peter, "I guess we'll leave our traps here and beat it
to Villa Pianezzo right away. We'll scare the old boy a bit, but can
tell him things all fell right and so we found that we could jog
along a week before we thought to do so. Not a word that I think him
to be in danger."
Within twenty minutes their one-horse vehicle had reached Mr.
Redmayne's modest home and they found three persons just about to
take an evening meal. Simultaneously there appeared Mr. Redmayne,
his niece, and Giuseppe Doria; and while Albert, Italian fashion,
embraced Mr. Ganns and planted a kiss upon his cheek, Jenny greeted
Mark Brendon and he looked once more into her eyes.
There had come new experiences to her and they did not fail of the
man's observation. She smiled indeed and flushed and proclaimed her
wonder and admiration at the speed which had brought him across
Europe to her uncle's succour; but even in her animation and
excitement the new expression persisted. It set Mark's heart
throbbing vigorously and told him that perchance he might yet be
useful to her. For there hung a shadow of melancholy on Jenny's face
her smiles could not dispel.
Doria held back a little while his wife welcomed her uncle's friend;
then he came forward, declared his pleasure at meeting Mark again
and his belief that time would soon reveal the truth and set a
period to the sinister story of the wanderer.
Mr. Redmayne was overjoyed at seeing Ganns and quite forgot the
object of his visit in the pleasure of receiving him.
"It has been my last and abiding ambition to introduce you to
Virgilio Poggi, dear Peter, so that you, he and I may sit together,
hear each other's voices and look into each other's eyes. And now
this will happen. Thus the unhappy spirit who wanders upon the hills
has unconsciously accomplished a beautiful thing."
Jenny and Assunta, had hastily prepared for the visitors and now all
sat at supper and Brendon learned how rooms were already taken for
him and Mr. Ganns at the Hotel Victoria.
"That's as may be," he declared to Doria's wife. "You will find, I
think, that Mr. Ganns is going to stop here. He takes the lead in
this affair. Indeed there was no great reason why I should have
intruded again, where I have failed so often."
Jenny looked at him softly.
"I am very thankful you have come," she said--in a whisper for his
ear alone.
"Then I am very thankful too," he replied.
After a cheerful meal Peter absolutely declined to cross Como and
visit Signor Poggi on the instant.
"I've had enough of your lakes for one day, Albert," he announced,
"and I want to talk business and get a rough, general idea of what
more is known than Mark and I already know. Now what has happened
since you wrote, Mrs. Doria?"
"Tell them, Giuseppe," directed Mr. Redmayne.
"Your gift--the gold box--take a pinch," said Peter holding out his
snuff to the old bookworm; but the master of Villa Pianezzo refused
and lighted a cigar.
"I will have smoke rather than dust, my precious Peter," he said.
"The man has been seen twice since you heard from my wife," began
Doria. "Once I met him face to face on the hill, where I walked
alone to reflect on my own affairs; and once--the night before
last--he came here. Happily Mr. Redmayne's room overlooks the lake
and the garden walls are high, so he could not reach it; but the
bedroom of Mr. Redmayne's man, Ernesto, is upon the side that stands
up to the road.
"Robert Redmayne came at two o'clock, flung pebbles at the window,
wakened Ernesto, and demanded to be let in to see his brother. But
the Italian had been warned exactly what to say and do if such a
thing happened. He speaks English well and told the unfortunate man
that he must appear by day. Ernesto then mentioned a certain place,
a mile from here in a secluded valley--a little bridge that spans a
stream--and directed Robert to await his brother at that spot on the
following day at noon. This my Uncle Alberto had already planned in
the event of his brother reappearing.
"Having heard this, the red man departed without more words and your
friend, greatly courageous, kept the appointment that he had made,
taking only me with him. We were there before midday and waited
until after two o'clock. But nobody came to us and we saw neither
man nor woman.
"For my own part I feel very certain that Robert Redmayne was hidden
near at hand, and that he would have come out quickly enough had his
brother been alone; but of course Uncle Alberto would not go alone,
and we would not have allowed him to do so in any case."
Peter listened intently to these words.
"And what of your meeting with him?" he asked.
"That was clearly an accident on Robert Redmayne's part. I happened
to be walking, deep in thought near the spot where my wife first saw
him, and, rounding a corner, I suddenly confronted the man sitting
on a rock by the path. He started at my footfall, looked up, clearly
recognized me, hesitated, and then leaped into the bushes. I
endeavoured to follow but he distanced me. He is harbouring aloft
there and may be in touch with some charcoal burner above in the
mountains. He was strong and agile and moved swiftly."
"How was he dressed?"
"Exactly as I saw him dressed at 'Crow's Nest' when Mr. Bendigo
Redmayne disappeared."
"I should like to know his tailor," said Mr. Ganns. "That's a useful
suit he wears."
Then he asked a question that seemed to bear but little on the
subject.
"Plenty of smugglers in the mountains I suppose?"
"Plenty," answered Giuseppe, "and my heart is with them."
"They dodge the customs officers and get across the frontier by
night sometimes I dare say?"
"If I stop here long enough, I shall be better in a position to
know," replied the other cheerfully. "My heart, Signor Ganns, is
with these boys. They are a brave and valiant people and their lives
are very dangerous and thrilling and interesting. They are heroes
and not villains at all. Our woman, Assunta, is the widow of a free
trader. She has good friends among them."
"Now, Peter, tell us all that is in your mind," urged Mr. Redmayne
as he poured out five little glasses of golden liqueur. "You hold
that I go in some peril from this unhappy man?"
"I do think so, Albert. And as to my mind, it is not by any means
made up. You say, 'Catch Robert Redmayne first and decide
afterwards.' Yes; but I will tell you an interesting thing. We are
not going to catch Robert Redmayne."
"You throw up the sponge, signor?" asked Giuseppe in astonishment.
"Surely you have caught everybody you ever tried to catch, Peter?"
asked Albert.
"There is a reason why I shall not catch him," replied Ganns,
sipping from his little Venetian glass.
"Can it be that you think him not a man at all but a ghost, Mr.
Ganns?" asked Jenny, round-eyed.
"He has already suggested a ghost," said Mark, "but there are
different sorts of ghosts, Mrs. Doria. I see that, too. There are
ghosts of flesh and blood."
"If he is a ghost, he is a very solid one indeed," declared Doria.
"He is," admitted Peter. "And yet none the less a ghost in my
opinion. Now let us generalize. It needn't be a sound maxim to seek
the person who benefits by a crime--not always--for often enough the
actual legatee of a murdered man may have had nothing whatever to do
with his death. Albert, for example, will inherit Mr. Bendigo
Redmayne's estate when leave to assume his death is granted by the
law; and Mrs. Doria will inherit her late husband's estate in due
course. But it isn't suggested that your wife killed her first
husband, Signor Doria; and it isn't suggested that my friend here
killed his brother.
"None the less, it's a safe question to ask what a suspected man
gains by his crime. And, if we put that question, we find that
Robert Redmayne gained nothing whatever by killing Michael
Pendean--nothing, that is, but the satisfaction of a sudden,
overpowering lust to do so. Pendean's murder made Redmayne a
vagabond, deprived him of his income and resources, set every man's
hand against him and left him a wanderer haunted by the gallows.
Yet, while he evaded the law in a manner that can only be called
miraculous, he made no attempt to avert suspicion from himself. On
the contrary he courted suspicion, took his victim to Berry Head on
a motor bicycle and did a thousand things which defiantly proclaim
him a lunatic--but for one overmastering fact. A lunatic must have
been caught: he was not.
"He vanishes from Paignton, to reappear at 'Crow's Nest'; he takes
another life; he apparently commits another senseless murder on the
person of his own brother and once more disappears, leaving not a
clue. Now, in face of these absurdities, we have a right to brush
aside the apparent facts and ask ourselves a very vital question.
What is that question, Signor Doria?"
"It is one I have already asked myself," replied Giuseppe. "It is
one I have asked my wife. It is a question, however, which I cannot
answer, because I do not know enough. There is nobody in the world
who knows enough--unless it be Robert Redmayne."
Ganns nodded and took snuff.
"Good," he said.
"But what is the question?" asked Albert Redmayne. "What is the
question Giuseppe puts to himself and, you put to yourself, Peter?
We who are not so clever do not see the question."
"The question, my friend, is this: Did Robert Redmayne murder
Michael Pendean and Bendigo Redmayne? And you can ask yourself a
still more vital question: Are these two men dead at all?"
Jenny shivered violently. She put out her hand instinctively and it
clutched Mark Brendon's arm where he sat next to her. He looked at
her and saw that her eyes were fixed with strange doubt and horror
upon Doria; while the Italian himself showed a considerable amount
of surprise at Peter's conclusion.
"Corpo di Bacco! Then--" he asked.
"Then we may be said to enlarge the scope of the inquiry a good
deal," answered Mr. Ganns mildly. He turned to Jenny.
"This is calculated to flutter you, young lady, when you think of
your second marriage," he said. "But we're not asserting anything;
we're only just having a friendly chat. Facts are what we want; and
if the fact is that Robert Redmayne didn't kill Michael Pendean,
that doesn't mean for a moment that Mr. Pendean isn't dead. You must
not let theories frighten you now, since you certainly did not allow
them to do so in the past."
"More than ever it is necessary that my unhappy brother should be
secured," declared Albert. "It is interesting to remember," he
added, "that poor Bendigo first thought he had to do with a ghost
when the arrival of his brother was reported to him. He was very
superstitious, as sailors often are, and not until Jenny had seen
and spoken with her uncle, did Bendigo believe that a living man
wanted to see him."
"The fact that it was actually Robert Redmayne and no ghost is
proved by that incident, Ganns," added Mark Brendon. "That the man
who came to 'Crow's Nest' was in truth Robert Redmayne we can rest
assured through Mrs. Doria, who knew her uncle exceedingly well. It
only remains to prove with equal certainty that the wanderer here is
Redmayne, and one can feel very little question that he is. It is of
course marvellous that he escaped discovery and arrest; but it may
not be as marvellous as it seems. Stranger things have happened. And
who else could it be in any case?"
"That reminds me," replied Ganns. "There has been mention made of
Mr. Bendigo's log. He kept a careful diary--so it was reported. I
should like to have that book, Albert, for in your statement you
tell me that you preserved it."
"I did and it is here," replied his friend. "That and dear Bendigo's
'Bible,' as I call it--a copy of 'Moby Dick'--I brought away. As yet
I have not consulted the diary--it was too intimate and distressed
me. But I was looking forward to doing so."
"The parcel containing both books is in a drawer in the library.
I'll get them," said Jenny. She left the apartment where they sat
overlooking the lake and returned immediately with a parcel wrapped
in brown paper.
"Why do you need this, Peter?" asked Albert, and while he was
satisfied with the reply, Brendon was not.
"It's always interesting to get a thing from every angle," answered
Mr. Ganns. "Your brother may have something to tell us."
But whether Bendigo's diary might have proved valuable remained a
matter of doubt, for when Jenny opened the parcel, it was not there.
A blank book and the famous novel were all the parcel contained.
"But I packed it myself," said Mr. Redmayne. "The diary was bound
exactly as this blank volume is bound, yet it is certain that I made
no mistake, for I opened my brother's log and read a page or two
before completing the parcel."
"He had bought a new diary only the last time he was in Dartmouth,"
said Doria. "I remember the incident. I asked him what he was going
to put into the book, and he said that his log was just running out
and he needed a new volume."
"You are sure that you did not mistake the old, full book for the
new, empty one, Albert?" asked his friend.
"I cannot be positive, of course, but I feel no shadow of doubt in
my own mind."
"Then the one has been substituted for the other by somebody else.
That is a very interesting fact, if true."
"Impossible," declared Jenny. "There was nobody to do such a thing,
Mr. Ganns. Who could have felt any interest in poor Uncle Bendigo's
diary but ourselves?"
Mr. Ganns considered.
"The answer to that question might save us a very great deal of
trouble," he said. "But there may be no answer. Your uncle may be
mistaken. On the other hand I have never known him to be mistaken
over any question involving a book."
He took up the empty volume and turned its pages; then Brendon
declared they must be going.
"I'm afraid we're keeping Mr. Redmayne out of bed, Ganns," he
hinted. "Our kits have already been sent to the hotel and as we've
got a mile to walk, we'd better be moving. Are you never sleepy?"
He turned to Jenny.
"I don't believe he has closed his eyes since we left England, Mrs.
Doria."
But Peter did not laugh: he appeared to be deep in thought. Suddenly
he spoke and surprised them.
"I'm afraid you're going to find me the sort of friend that sticketh
closer than a brother, Albert. In a word, somebody must go to the
hotel and bring back my travelling grip, for I'm not going to lose
sight of you again till we've got this thing straightened out."
Mr. Redmayne was delighted.
"How like you, Peter--how typical of your attitude! You shall not
leave me, dear friend. You shall sleep in the apartment next my own.
It contains many books, but there shall be my great couch moved from
my own bedroom and set up there in half an hour. It is as
comfortable as a bed."
He turned to his niece.
"Seek Assunta and Ernesto and set the apartment in order for Mr.
Ganns, Jenny; and you, Giuseppe, will take Mr. Brendon to the Hotel
Victoria and bring back Peter's luggage."
Jenny hastened to do her uncle's bidding, while Brendon made his
farewell and promised to return at an early hour on the following
morning.
"My plans for to-morrow," said Peter, "subject to Mark's approval,
are these. I suggest that Signor Doria should take Brendon to the
scene in the hills where Robert Redmayne appeared; while, by her
leave, I have a talk with Mrs. Jenny here. I'm going to run her over
a bit of the past and she must be brave and give me all her
attention."
He started and listened, his ear cocked toward the lake.
"What's that shindy?" he asked. "Sounds like distant cannon."
Doria laughed.
"Only the summer thunder on the mountains, signor," he answered.