CONFESSION
During the autumn assizes, Michael Pendean was tried at Exeter and
condemned to death for the murders of Robert, Bendigo and Albert
Redmayne. He offered no defence and he was only impatient to return
to his seclusion within the red walls of the county jail, where he
occupied the brief balance of his days with just such a statement as
Peter Ganns had foretold that he would seek to make.
This extraordinary document was very characteristic of the criminal.
It possessed a sort of glamour; but it failed of real distinction
and the quality proper to greatness, even as the crimes it recorded
and the man responsible for them. Pendean's confession revealed an
insensibility, a faulty sense of humour, an affectation and a love
for the glittering and the grandiose that robbed it of any supreme
claim in the annals or literature of murder. The document ended with
an assurance that Michael would never die at the hands of his fellow
man. He had repeated this assertion on several occasions and every
conceivable precaution was taken to prevent evasion of his
sentence--an issue to be recorded in its proper place.
Here is his statement, word for word as he wrote it.
* * * * *
MY APOLOGIA
"_Hearken, ye judges! There is another madness besides, and it is
before the deed. Ah! Ye have not gone deep enough into this soul!
Thus speaketh the red judge: 'Why did this criminal commit murder?
He meant to rob.' I tell you, however, that his soul hungered for
blood, not booty: he thirsted for the happiness of the knife!_"
And again:
"_What is this man? A coil of wild serpents at war against
themselves--so they are driven apart to seek their prey in the
world._"
So wrote one whose art and wisdom are nought to this rabbit-brained
generation; but it was given to me to find my meat and drink within
his pages and to see my own youthful impressions reflected and
crystallized with the brilliance of genius in his stupendous mind.
Remember I, who write, am not thirty years old.
As a young man without experience I sometimes asked myself if some
spirit from another order of beings than my own had not been slipped
into my human carcase. It seemed to me that none with whom I came in
contact was built on, or near, my own pattern, for I had only met
one person as yet--my mother--who did not suffer from the malady of
a bad conscience. My father and his friends wallowed in this
complaint. They declared themselves openly to be miserable sinners
and apparently held that the one respectable attitude for humanity
at large. "Safety" was the only state to seek; "danger" the only
condition to avoid. A very cowardice of curs are the Cornish!
I soon found, however, that history abounded in great figures who
had thought and acted otherwise; and presently, in the light thrown
from the theatre of the past, I recognized myself for what I was.
In what is comprehended under the general and vague term of "crime,"
everything depends upon the values of the individual performer; and
again and again do we find that a criminal has struck before
counting the cost to himself, or considering the unsleeping
detectives, hidden in his own faulty heart and brain, who will
sooner or later discover and denounce him.
The man of conscience, the man capable of remorse, the man who
murders at the prompting of a temper uncontrolled--such will swiftly
learn that however well the deed is done, a thousand baffling
distractions, bred of their own inherent or acquired weakness, must
arise to confound them. Remorse, for example, is always a first step
to discovery, if not to confession; and any lesser uneasiness
similarly tends to trouble of mind and consequent danger of body.
Those who hang, in truth deserve to do so; but they who strike,
like myself, for reasons that success cannot shake and from a
settled, farsighted resolution beyond the power of any emotion to
assail, should be safe enough. We rejoice in the sublime mental
gratification that follows success: it is our spiritual support, our
sustenance and our reward.
What can offer an experience so tremendous as murder? What has
science, philosophy, religion to give us comparable with the
mysteries, dangers and triumphs of great crime? All are childish
toys compared to it; and since, in any case, the next world will
surely stultify our knowledge, confound our accepted truths, and
reduce the wisdom of this earth to the prattle of childhood, I
turned from physics and from metaphysics to action--and happening to
taste blood early, tingled with the joy of it.
At fifteen years of age I killed a man, and found, in a murder
undertaken for very definite reasons, a thrill beyond expectation.
It was as though I had drunk at a wayside spring and found an
elixir. That incident is unknown; the death of my father's foreman,
Job Trevose, has not been understood till now. He lived at Paul, a
village upon the heights nigh Penzance, and his walk to his work
took him by the coast-guard track along lofty cliffs. Among the
fish-curing sheds one day, unseen, I chanced to hear Trevose speak
of my mother to another man and declare that she did evil and
dishonoured my father.
From that moment I doomed Trevose to death and, some weeks later,
after many failures to win the right conditions, caught him alone in
a sea fog as he returned homeward. There was not a soul on the
cliff path but ourselves; and he was a small man, I a strong, big
boy. I walked beside him for fifty paces, then fell behind, leaped
at his neck and hurled him over the cliff in an instant. One yell he
gave and dropped six hundred feet. Then I fled over meadows inland
and returned home after dark. Neither I nor anybody else was ever
associated with the affair, and the death of Job Trevose has always
been ascribed to misadventure--the easier to believe since he was
not a temperate man.
From this experience I won, not remorse, but manhood. I rejoiced in
what I had done. But I did not tell any living soul and only my wife
ever heard the truth. Time passed and I proceeded with my life in
normal fashion, learning myself and increasing my understanding of
human nature. I was never under any domination of passion, but
exercised great restraint and found that only by self-knowledge and
self-command comes power. I did not seek forbidden fruit, but did
not shun it. My life proceeded orderly; I chose the profession of
dentist, as being likely to introduce me to people of a more
interesting type than my father's acquaintance; and I kept an open
mind for myself, but a shut mind for others.
My chief joy at this season was represented by my occasional visits
to Italy with my mother. Already I felt that land to be my home and
hated Cornwall and its bleak inhabitants. Then, at the psychological
moment, a girl woke instincts until then dormant; I was faced with
rarest good fortune and discovered a kindred spirit of the opposite
sex. That any woman lived who could see with my eyes, or share my
contempt of the trammels set round life, I did not believe until I
met with Jenny Redmayne. Women had never interested me, save in the
case of my mother, and I had seen none other with her large heart,
tolerance, humour and indifference to convention.
Then a chance friend, the brainless Robert Redmayne, brought his
niece to spend her school holiday with him and I discovered in the
seventeen-year-old schoolgirl a magnificent and pagan simplicity of
mind, combined with a Greek loveliness of body that created in me a
convulsion. From the day that we met, from the hour that I heard her
laugh at her uncle's objection to mixed bathing, I was as one
possessed; and my triumphant joy may be judged, though never
measured, when I perceived that Jenny recognized in me the
complement and precious addition unconsciously sought of her own
spirit.
That spirit she had scarcely understood; but now its clean and
fierce white light shone in secret for me alone. We loved one
another devotedly from the first understanding; and each fresh find
in the heart of the other drew us together with increasing worship
and passion. We were probably the most exquisite man and woman, the
most original, beautiful, fearless and distinguished, that had ever
come together in the benighted township of Penzance. People stared
at us sometimes as though we were a faun and nymph; but they did
not guess that our hearts were formed to match our wondrous bodies.
Fire leaped to fire and before the girl finished her education we
were dedicated to each other forever.
What she saw in me was my extraordinary masculine beauty, combined
with an intellect that set good and evil in their places and soared,
by native instinct, above both. What I discovered in her was an
attitude of mind so inquiring and so lawless, so utterly devoid of
any familiar prejudice or mother-taught opinion, that I felt as the
finder of a priceless jewel unstained by earth or heaven. Her
intellect was pure and not vitiated by any superstition; she
revealed a healthy thirst for experience; she adored me and my
attitude to life. We made fascinating voyages of discovery into each
others' hearts; we experimented from time to time on ordinary
people; and we quickly discovered that we both possessed rare
histrionic ability.
Indeed she had already entertained ambitions for the stage; but
though her dead father would hardly have stood in her way, these
ambitions were not encouraged by the three dolts, her uncles, who
now supposed themselves to control her future. A glorious actress is
lost to the world in my wife.
She had no secrets from me and I soon learned of her expectations;
but it was not the prospect of the Redmayne money that shortened her
uncles' lives. Jenny and I were never man-eaters; and, while my
youthful experience in murder attracted her and increased her
admiration for my qualities, it was not at that time in our minds
to anticipate events or quarrel with her relations.
Her grandfather still lived, when first I met her, and the extent or
disposition of his wealth seldom entered our calculations. For we
were then far too much in love to ponder the value of money, and our
temperaments proved so distinguished that no sordid calculation ever
wasted a moment of our time.
But a year passed; Jenny was ready to wed me and begin life as my
twin star; while I longed for her with a great longing. The
situation cleared; her grandfather died; she would presently be the
possessor of ample means and I already enjoyed an income from the
business of Pendean and Trecarrow.
Then came the war and the sentence of death incidently pronounced by
that event upon the brothers Redmayne. Their own folly and lack of
vision were alone responsible. The facts are familiar, but not the
tremendous and shattering emotions I endured on being branded a
coward and traitor to my country by these three patriotic idiots. I
did not argue with them; it was enough that Jenny swiftly awakened
to even a bitterer hatred and a deeper fury of resentment than
myself. They had roused the sleeping tempest and our lightning now
became only a question of time.
Was I the man to make carrion of myself in national quarrels! Was I
the man to sacrifice my glorious life because besotted and
third-rate minds, blinded by their own ignorance and fooled by
cleverer statesmen than themselves, had suffered England to drift
into war with Germany? Was I a sheep to be slaughtered for a
government of Nonconformists? Should I consent to be mangled by the
Boches because my fatuous country willed to trust the old gang? No!
I had long understood that war was certain; I had already ascended
public platforms with that little company who warned the Empire and
were derided for their pains by the ruling bats and moles. But to
die for the salvation of this diplomatic trash, to suffer untold
torments and ultimate extinction for that myopic crew of hypocrites
known as the British government--Never!
I evaded active service with a heart drug, as did some thousands of
other intelligent men. I kept a whole skin, stopped at home and
received for my share the Order of the British Empire instead of a
nameless grave. It was easy enough.
Before Jenny and I were married she knew that my outraged honour had
doomed her family to extinction. But they would wait till the war
was ended. Germany, indeed, might account for Robert Redmayne; and
even the elderly Bendigo, who was appointed to a mine sweeper, might
give his life for his country. Meantime we volunteered also and our
record of service at Princetown Moss Depôt is not to be assailed.
Already my future intention was colouring my life. I grew a beard,
wore glasses and pretended delicacy of constitution; for after the
war was done I intended murdering three men, and I proposed to do so
in such a manner that society would find it impossible to associate
me with the crimes. We devoted many hours to the project, for my
wife was, of course, at one with me in my determination. She hated
her family, as only relations can hate; and she had her own ground
of grievance, in that her legacy of twenty thousand pounds was
withheld pending the deliberations of Albert Redmayne. The money
interested Jenny more than myself; but she pointed out that her
grandfather's fortune, representing considerably over a hundred
thousand pounds, was left entirely to her uncles and herself, and
that as they were all three bachelors, she might reasonably hope to
inherit in fulness of time.
To that end we identified ourselves with war work and expected
presently to secure the trust and good-will of the brothers before
they were banished off the earth. At Princetown we adopted that
strenuous, simple-minded attitude to life most calculated to satisfy
those among whom our toil now threw us. We pretended an enthusiasm
for the work and an affection for Dartmoor which were alike
illusory. As an example of our far-reaching methods I may relate how
we returned to the wilderness after the war was done and actually
began to build a bungalow upon it, which, needless to say, we never
had the least intention of occupying. But the seed was sown and we
had created in many minds the impression of a devoted and simple
pair--conventional, narrow-minded, ingenuous and therefore
attractive to the many.
I now come to my confession and must admit at the outset how
circumstance served to modify detail and improve the original plan.
My own greatness gradually increases to any intelligent,
unprejudiced critic when my adaptability is considered, for that
play of blind chance, in which ninety and nine men out of a hundred
find themselves entangled throughout their lives, was to me an added
inspiration and opportunity. I tamed Chance and put a bit in its
jaws, a bridle on its fiery neck. Chance immensely altered my
original schemes; but it was powerless to modify my genius; it
became the Slave of the Ring, to serve an adamant purpose superior
to itself.
The war left the three brothers alive; and I had designed first to
destroy Bendigo and Albert Redmayne, who had never seen me, and
finally deal with my old friend, Robert; but it was he who came at
the critical moment as a lamb to the slaughter and so inspired the
superb conception now familiar to the civilized world.
The time was ripe to pluck these men who had insulted and outraged
me; and when Bendigo Redmayne advertised for a motor boatman, the
challenge was accepted. I left my wife and, from Southampton,
offered my services as an Italian marine engineer familiar with this
country and now seeking occupation in England. The sea was my
playground in youth and I understood very perfectly the mechanism to
be under my control. That Ben would select me seemed improbable and
I regarded this tentative opening as unlikely to introduce me to my
first objective. I forged certain foreign letters of commendation
and left it at that. He approved, however. He liked Italians, from
experience of them aboard ship, and he appreciated my letter and my
imaginary war record. It was arranged that I should join him on a
day in late June; and I returned to Princetown with the interesting
intelligence.
My original plans need not be related; but any reader of imagination
will perceive that Bendigo Redmayne must quickly have been in my
power to dispose of as I thought best. Then, within a fortnight of
the date fixed for my arrival at "Crow's Nest," all was changed by
the advent of Robert Redmayne. Strange to say, upon the day previous
to his appearance, my wife had nearly prevailed upon me not to keep
my engagement with Bendigo. She had learned that Robert was at
Paignton and the danger of a meeting between him and me--the
possibility that he might visit his brother and recognize me--was
too considerable to risk. I had therefore almost abandoned the
impersonation of "Giuseppe Doria" when Robert arrived at Princetown
and we were reconciled. But then Jenny, to whom all credit belongs
at this stage--my devoted, glorious Jenny!--began to see a glimpse
of the dazzling opportunity now presented. Every detail was worked
out with meticulous precaution; not a hazard was ignored, not a risk
unguarded.
With Robert Redmayne free to visit Bendigo at any time, "Doria"
would obviously be a danger; for, though a man of little
perception--noisy dolt easily enough hoodwinked--there remained
strong likelihood that he must recognize me in the Italian "Doria."
And the more so that we had now renewed our former friendship. But
let Robert Redmayne be reduced to silence, let Robert Redmayne
vanish, and I should be safe enough as "Giuseppe Doria" with the old
sailor!
From this determination: to obliterate Robert before going to
Bendigo, the inevitable means appeared. A week before Robert
Redmayne died, every stage of the journey had been planned.
What was the first step? An entreaty from Jenny that I should shave
my beard! She begged again and again and appealed to Robert, who
supported her. I withstood them until the day of his destruction.
Upon that morning I appeared without it and they congratulated me.
Other trifling preliminaries there were. On one occasion, when my
wife rode down to Plymouth with her uncle on his motor bicycle, she
left him to do some shopping and, visiting Burnell's the theatrical
costumer, she purchased a red wig for a woman. At home again she
transferred it into a red wig for a man. Meantime I had made a pair
of large mustaches, helping myself when Mrs. Gerry, our landlady,
was out of the way to hair from the brush of one of her stuffed
foxes, whose colour exactly resembled the rufous adornments of
Robert Redmayne. That was all I wanted. The rest of my disguise
would go to the quarry on the person of Robert himself.
But other things went to the quarry also, for I had to look far
ahead. When we started on his motor cycle, after tea, to do some
work at the bungalow, I took a handbag containing my costume as
Giuseppe Doria--a plain, blue serge suit, coat, waistcoat and
trousers and yachtsman's cap. I also carried a tool--the little
instrument with which I murdered the three Redmaynes. It resembled
the head of a butcher's pole-axe, of great weight with the working
end sharpened. I made it in a forge at Southampton and it lies
to-day under the waters of Como. My bag I had taken on previous
occasions to the quarry, with a bottle of whisky and glasses, so
Robert thought it not strange that I should do so again.
We started for Foggintor and it was still broad daylight when we got
there. I had already studied the quarry and determined on Robert
Redmayne's resting-place. You will find him--and the suit of clothes
I was wearing that evening--in the moraine, where it opens fanwise
from the cliff above and spreads into the bottom beneath. On the
right, at its base, water eternally drips from the ledges of the
granite and here, two feet beneath the surface, he doubtless still
lies. The falling water smooths the slope and the earth descends
daily to increase the volume of granite sand and gravel above him.
The drip must swiftly have washed away any trace of my handiwork
and, even with these directions, it may be hard to find him.
Arrived at the bungalow, Robert's first demand was a bath in the
quarry pool. To this I had accustomed him and we stripped and swam
for ten minutes. You will perceive the value of this operation. His
clothes were ready for me without speck or blemish; and when we
returned from the pool into the shelter of the bungalow it was a
naked man I smote and dropped with one blow of my formidable weapon.
His back was turned and the pole-axe head went through his skull
like butter. He was dead before I cut his throat, put on my shoes
and hastened, naked, to the moraine with a spade.
I opened the grave under the falling water and dug two feet into the
loose stuff, for that was deep enough. Then I carried him and my
clothes from the bungalow, interred them, heaped back the soil and
left the eternal percolations from above to do the rest. By the
following morning it had demanded very keen eyes to discover any
disturbance at that spot even had search been instituted at
Foggintor. But I did not desire a search and my subsequent measures
prevented it. A Ganns might have discovered clues, no doubt; a
Brendon was more easily deluded.
I stood now free of the vital object in a murder--the corpse, and it
remained for me to create the false appearance of reality with which
these operations have always been so successfully enshrouded. I
donned Redmayne's clothes. We were men nearly of a size and they
fitted closely enough, though too large in detail. I then adjusted
my wig and mustaches, drew Robert's cap over my head--it was too
large, but that mattered not. I next obtained the sack, touched it
in blood and put into it my handbag and a mass of fern and litter
to fill it out. Then I fastened it behind the motor bicycle--an
unwieldy object designed to create the necessary suspicion.
There was now nothing of either Redmayne or myself left at
Foggintor. The gloaming had long thickened to darkness when I went
my way and laid the trail through Two Bridges, Postbridge and
Ashburton to Brixham. Once only was I bothered--at the gate across
the road by Brixham coast-guard station; but I lifted the motor
bicycle over it and presently ascended to the cliffs of Berry Head.
Fate favoured me in details, for, despite the hour, there were
witnesses to every step of the route; I even passed a fisher lad,
descending from the lighthouse for a doctor, where no witness might
have been hoped for or expected. Thus my course was followed and
each stage of the long journey correctly recorded.
On the cliff I emptied my sack, cast its stuffing to the winds,
fastened my handbag to the bicycle, thrust the bloodstained sack
into a rabbit hole, where it could not fail to be discovered, and
then returned to Robert Redmayne's lodging at Paignton. There a
telegram had already been sent informing the landlady of his return
that night. The place and its details I had gleaned from Redmayne
himself; therefore I knew where he kept his machine and, having put
it in its shed, entered the house about three o'clock with his
latchkey and ate the ample meal left for his consumption. Only a
widow and her servant occupied the dwelling and they slept soundly
enough.
I did not venture to seek Bob's bedroom, for I knew not where it
might lie; but I changed into the serge suit, cap and brown shoes of
Doria and packed Redmayne's clothes, tweeds and showy waistcoat,
boots and stockings into my handbag with the wig and mustaches and
my weapon. Soon after four o'clock I left--a clean-shorn, brown
sailorman: "Giuseppe Doria," of immortal memory.
It was now light, but Paignton slumbered and I did not pass a
policeman until half a mile from the watering-place. Having admired
the dawn over Torquay, I walked to Newton Abbot and reached that
town before six o'clock. At the railway station I breakfasted and
presently took a train to Dartmouth. Before noon I reached "Crow's
Nest" and made acquaintance with Bendigo Redmayne. He was such a man
as Jenny had led me to expect and I found it easy enough to win his
friendship and esteem.
But he had little leisure for me at this moment, for there had
already come news from his niece of the mysterious fatality on
Dartmoor.
Needless to say that my thoughts were now entirely devoted to my
wife and I longed for her first communication. Our briefest
separation caused me pain, for our souls were as one and we had not
been parted, save for my visit to Southampton, since our marriage
day.
It was her exquisite thought to involve the man from Scotland Yard.
Mark Brendon, then known to be taking holiday at Princetown, had
been pointed out to her; she appraised him correctly and her
woman's intuition told her what verisimilitude would spring from his
active cooperation. Secure in her own genius, she therefore
complicated the issues by appealing to Brendon and winning his
enthusiastic assistance. Much sprang from this, for the poor fellow
was soon a willing victim to Jenny; and while he lent a thousand
happy touches to subsequent incidents by his inefficiencies and sins
of omission, such moderate talent as he possessed was still farther
obscured by the emotion of love which sprang up in his heart for my
widowed partner. Thus he became exceedingly useful as time passed;
yet fortune favours fools and his very stupidity served him well at
the end; for when I sought to destroy him on Griante and believed
that I had done so, the man displayed an ingenuity for which I did
not give him credit and unconsciously laid the foundations of
subsequent disaster.
The letter which Bendigo Redmayne received, and supposed had come
from his brother at Plymouth, was posted by Jenny on her journey to
"Crow's Nest." We had written it together a week earlier and studied
her uncle's indifferent penmanship very carefully before doing so.
This blind I held valuable, and indeed it proved to be; for it
concentrated attention on the port and led to the theory that Robert
had escaped to France or Spain.
Thus closed our opening episode. The murder of Michael Pendean
became received as a fact capable of everything but proof absolute,
while the escape of Robert Redmayne offered an insoluble problem to
the authorities. Michael Pendean indeed was dead enough, for it had
been a part of my original conception that he should never reappear.
Obviously he could not do so; and I, who had already created
"Doria," now began to live my new part in life with zest and
gusto--a dramatist and actor in one. He did not spring full-fledged
from my brain; but like other great impersonators, I gradually
enlarged and enriched the character and finally found myself
actually living and thinking the new being into which I was
translated. Pendean sank to the shadow of a shade.
My past, by an effort of will, was banished from my mind. I invented
and presently believed in another past. When my wife returned to my
side, I fell in love with her for the second time; and so superbly
did I enter into the existence and mental outlook of Giuseppe Doria
that I was almost shocked by the familiarity of Jenny when she
kissed me and hugged me at the first convenient opportunity after
her arrival at "Crow's Nest"!
And her own echoing genius swiftly accepted this magnificent
apotheosis of her Cornish husband. I became a new man in her eyes
also. With that marvellous power of make-believe, possible only to
women of supreme genius, she swiftly conceived of me as something
altogether different from Michael Pendean--a creature richer and
rarer--and this effort of imagination enabled us both to create that
solid appearance of a new and quickening understanding that so amply
sufficed to deceive Bendigo Redmayne and delude Brendon.
It is impossible to exaggerate the unique entertainment we derived
from this phase of our deception. We proposed to let six months pass
before the death of Bendigo Redmayne, and we were already
contemplating details and considering how best to bring his brother
back upon the stage for the purpose of Ben's destruction, when Mark
Brendon blundered in upon us once again. He came very pat with calf
love in his eyes; and it seemed that he might well assist us once
more and apply his limited attainments to the problem of our sea
wolf's approaching exit. Because we knew our Marco well, by this
time, and perceived how useful he might be in disseminating that
atmosphere of reality so desirable in cases such as these.
We were called upon to act quickly--so quickly that the first steps
were taken before the last had been fully planned; but the place,
the time of long, dark nights and other circumstances--these all
lent value and assistance to the acute operations now undertaken. I
swiftly brought Robert Redmayne to life; and though, with more
leisure for refinements, I should not have clothed him in his old
attire, yet that crude detail possessed a value of its own and
certainly served to deceive Brendon, who, before the sudden
apparition under that night of storm, did not stop to be logical or
weigh probability. In the windy moonlight he saw the red head, huge
mustache and brass-buttoned waistcoat of Robert Redmayne, and any
question of detail escaped him in the whirl of the larger emotions
and suspicions awakened by such an unexpected vision.
Doubtless he was thinking of Jenny and speculating with deep unrest
how he might approach that lonely and lovely woman. Nor had he
missed my attractions and we may feel sure that jealousy shared his
heart with passion. Upon these reflections broke Redmayne, the
murderer, and Marco's first thought was doubtless unflattering to
the residents of "Crow's Nest." What he designed to do next morning
I cannot say, but we determined his actions from the other end.
Having first appeared before him by Black Wood and lifted the
curtain on the second act of my romantic comedy, I remained there a
while, then ascended to Strete Farm and presently, in the small
hours, awakened the farmer, showed myself stealing food and so
hastily departed.
Thus a few hours later, when Giuseppe goes for the milk, he hears of
the robbery, returns to "Crow's Nest" and describes a man that Ben
has no difficulty in recognizing as his brother, or Jenny as her
uncle. Robert Redmayne is on the war-path once more!
Of subsequent events, most are so familiar that there is no need to
retrace them. It is to be noted, however, that Robert does not
appear again to anybody but Jenny and Doria. In other words, he does
not appear again at all. His disguise is doffed--not to be resumed
until many months have passed, when once more he leaps out upon the
wild ranges of Griante. No. While alive enough and close enough to
impress both Bendigo and Brendon with his presence as described by
Jenny and myself, he has in reality vanished to the void. The
"forgery" again goes to sleep--as soundly as the real man in
Foggintor.
Accident, indeed, modified the original scheme and once more Chance
befriended us and enabled us to improve upon the first intention.
My tears fall when I think of my incomparable Jenny and her
astounding mastery of minutiæ at "Crow's Nest"--her finesse and
exquisite touch, her kittenlike delicacy, her catlike swiftness and
sureness. The two beings involved were as children in her hands. Oh,
precious phoenix of a woman, you and I were of the same spirit,
kneaded into our clay! Through your father you won it--and I had it
from my mother--the primeval fire that burns through all obstacles
to its inveterate purpose!
I say that accident made a radical alteration of design vital, for I
had intended, on the night when Robert Redmayne would come and see
Bendigo, to murder the old sailor in his tower room and remove him
before morning with my wife's assistance. But the victim postponed
his own destruction, for upon the night when his death was intended,
during my previous conversation with him touching Jenny, I had
perceived, by his clumsy glances and evidence of anxiety, that
somebody else was in the tower room--unseen.
There was but one hiding-place and but one man likely to occupy it.
I did not indicate that I had discovered the secret and it was not
the detective who gave himself away; but, once alive to his
presence, I swiftly marked a flash of light at one of the little
ventilation holes in the cupboard and perceived that our sleuth
stood hid within it. My plan of campaign was altered accordingly and
to great advantage. Indeed, to have slain Ben in his house, when I
should have appeared instead of the brother he expected, had been a
maladroit achievement, contrasted with the far more notable feat of
the following night.
Having conveyed the old sailor to the cave, where, on my recent run
up the coast after dropping Brendon, I had already looked in and
lighted the lamp, I landed behind him and, as his foot touched the
shore, the pole-axe fell. He was dead in an instant and five minutes
later his blood ran upon the sand. Next I dug a grave under the
shingle, at a spot destined within half an hour to be covered by the
tide. In less than twenty minutes Bendigo Redmayne reposed beneath
three feet of sand and stone and I was on my way back again to
"Crow's Nest." There I reported to Brendon that the brothers had met
and would expect me again anon. I smoked a cigarette or two,
descended to our little harbour, removed my spade from the launch to
the boathouse, took a sack and so set out again.
By the time that I had reached the cavern the waves already flowed
over old sea wolf's resting-place. I landed, half filled my sack
with stones and sand, scattered judicious drops of blood and climbed
the steps and tunnel, laying the trail that occupied official
attention to such poor purpose during the days that followed.
Having reached the plateau, I emptied my sack, casting its contents
over the cliff; I then left a good impression or two of Robert
Redmayne's shoes, which I had, of course, remembered to put on. They
would be recollected by Mark Brendon, for impressions had been found
and records taken at Foggintor.
I swiftly descended the tunnel again after these operations,
returned to my boathouse, stowed my sack, changed my boots and
hastened to Brendon with my story. How we proceeded to the cave, our
fruitless inquiries and the subsequent failure to find any solution
to the disappearance of Bendigo and the reappearance of Robert are
all facts within the memory. I need not tell you that tale again;
but may declare how specially attractive it was to picture the
puzzled police upon the little beach next day, and know that Bendigo
Redmayne lay not a yard beneath their feet.
Once more my amazing wife and I parted for a brief period and then I
had the joy of introducing her to Italy, where the remainder of our
task awaited us. But we resolved that considerable time should pass
before proceeding and we did not appear before her remaining uncle
for many months. Meantime we revelled in a second honeymoon,
reported our marriage to Albert Redmayne and the egregious Marco, to
whom, at Jenny's suggestion we conveyed a piece of wedding cake,
that he might the better grasp our achievement. We had not finished
yet with the pride of New Scotland Yard.
And now for Italy. It is true that in my early manhood I had
suffered a sad accident at Naples, the secret of which was known to
my mother and myself alone. I therefore entertained some grudge
against her country; but the fact at no time lessened my love for
the south; and Jenny and I had always determined that when our task
was accomplished the balance of our united life should there be
spent in dignity and peace.