A STRANGE CONFESSION
THE WHOLE earth, bathed in bright sun and clear air, looked younger when
Derrick walked into Bamberley next morning. It seemed but an hour since
he had piloted Jean back through the fog, and when they parted she had
clung to him for a wonderful moment that needed no words. His mind was
still in a whirl, and with difficulty he pitched it forward to Bamberley
jail.
Martin had been brought there in the gray of dawn, and with him the body
of his wife, which rested where so lately the stiff figure of the
peddler lay till subjugated consciousness mysteriously returned. There
had been no chance to talk with Blunt, nor did Martin want to talk. He
had sat for hours, quite motionless, turning the thing over and over in
his slow brain, and it seemed that from the truth itself there was least
to be feared. It was strange for him even to contemplate truth now. He
was innocent of murder, but he was a perjurer nevertheless. He would
have to risk that. Burke did not speak to him, and the moments dragged
inflexibly on. But there was a new look in his swarthy face when Derrick
entered the cell in company with the sergeant. He got up and nodded
awkwardly.
“Do you want Blunt here when you question this man?” asked Burke. “I’ll
answer for it that nothing has been fixed up between them since last
night.”
“Do you see any objection?”
“They’re your questions, sir, not mine.”
Derrick hesitated a moment but felt persuaded that already he had got
far enough under the skin of things to detect any probable collusion. He
rather wanted to see these two men together and see if he could
corroborate or disprove the story of one from the eyes of the other.
Then something suggested that with death so near at hand there was
little prospect of collusion.
“Yes, I think Blunt had better be here.”
Martin gave him a swift glance in which there was something that was
almost gratitude for his confidence. Blunt was brought in by Peters, the
constable. Peters’s face was full of an unbounded curiosity, and he was
unaffectedly disgusted when Burke motioned him to withdraw. The peddler
looked now not more than forty, and only in the brightness of his eyes
was there anything of the bent and bearded man who had opened his pack
at the cottage of Beech Lodge. One temple was swollen from Burke’s blow,
but there was no animosity about him. Nor was there any suggestion of
fear. He glanced not at all at Martin but sent Derrick a long, steady
stare. There was knowledge in that stare, and a certain unshakable
fortitude. Such men in times past had died on the rack without a whisper
of confession. Their bodies one can conquer, but not their spirits.
Derrick knew then that what Blunt would say would be the truth; as much
of it as he thought wise, and no more.
“Well, Martin,” began the former slowly, “Miss Derrick and I and all of
us are more than sorry about what happened last night, and what I don’t
understand is why your poor wife and you should have thought it best to
say nothing to us of what you were to each other. Even now I am not here
to examine you, I have no right to do anything like that, but just to
ask whether you do think it wise to say something of your own free will.
I think”—here he hesitated a little—“that I’ve been fairly decent to
you since you came. As to your wife, she never said anything which gave
us the slightest inkling of the situation.”
The man regarded him with unfathomable eyes, and here again there was no
fear. He seemed to be weighing chances, and at the same time to be
prepared for any outcome. Presently he looked full at the peddler, and
Derrick noted that the latter nodded ever so slightly, while once more
there spread from him that nameless atmosphere of authority. Then Martin
took a long breath and began in a deep voice, rough and broken with
emotion.
“You’ve always been straight with me, Mr. Derrick, and now I’m going to
be just as straight with you. I can’t help letting myself in for
it”—here he glanced swiftly at Burke—“but I don’t much care what
happens. What’s more, I’d just as soon Blunt heard what I’ve got to say,
and he can check me up when I get off the track, if he wants to. I’ll
start at the beginning, and that’s about eight years ago when we went up
country in Burma.”
“Who do you mean by we?”
“My wife and me. I had been trading along the Irawadi, been there for
some years, when I heard there was good business to be done further up.
We were about ready to pull out, but I changed my plans. Ever been in
those parts?”
Derrick shook his head.
“Then don’t go, sir. It’s no place for a white man, and less for a white
woman. Folks seem to go mad there without knowing it, a sort of slow,
creeping madness that by and by gets them. It’s the jungle that does it,
with the smell of the orchids like a woman’s breast, air that thick and
heavy you could almost cut it with a knife like cheese, soft under your
foot with things dying and being born. There are butterflies as big as
your hat that go fluttering round as though they were drunk with the
smell of the flowers, as I guess they are; and the flowers are like
pulp, with nothing to touch a Lady Hillingdon in the whole country. It
seemed to me after a while that most every one is either mad or drunk in
the jungle, which is perhaps the same thing, but of course they don’t
know it. Anyway, it was eight years ago, no, seven, that Mr. Millicent
came along. He had traveled up river to see the country, being
interested in that sort of thing. I was away still further up at the
time, and when he got back on his way to Rangoon he stopped at my place
because there was nowhere else to stay. What happened there I didn’t
know at the time, but—”
He broke off helplessly, locked and twisted his thick fingers together,
stared uncertainly at Derrick and then at Blunt.
“Go on,” said the latter quietly.
“It was nearly a year before I found out, but when I got back my wife
had gone, leaving no word. Then I went mad, too, blaming myself because
I had kept her so long in the jungle and she begging me to take her out.
Perhaps as I see it now she felt the madness coming on her, but trade
was so promising that I hung on. After a while the natives told me about
Mr. Millicent, but none of them knew his name, only that he had come
from up country, and there were queer stories about him. I started
tracing the thing back till I found a priest who told me that an
Englishman like him had robbed a temple up in the Mong Hills. Then I
sold my stuff and started for Rangoon. There was more of the story
there, and I got Mr. Millicent’s address from a clerk in the shipping
office. I took the first boat to England, came to Bamberley, and my wife
didn’t know me.”
Martin stopped abruptly, and Derrick made a sudden gesture of sympathy.
Blunt’s face did not alter a fraction. This was but a tale to him, and
apparently not of great interest, a minor scene in the play.
“Go on!” he said again.
“Looking back at it now, I can see one reason for some of it. Soon after
we married she had a son, but he didn’t live only a few days. She was
never quite the same afterward, knowing she couldn’t have another. Maybe
that had a little to do with her going off after Mr. Millicent. You
can’t guess what it’s like to be hunting a wife who has gone in pursuit
of a man you never saw.”
“No,” said Derrick slowly, “I can’t.”
“Well, sir, that was my case, and when finally I found her I learned the
truth. It wasn’t Mr. Millicent himself at all, but that damned jade god
he had stolen, that and perhaps the jungle madness. Maybe Blunt here
will tell you more about the thing. Mind you, the natives believed in
it, and whatever it was that got into her blood made her believe in it,
too. At any rate, Mr. Millicent had the ungodly thing, though I suppose
he never knew just why he stole it, and that anchored her wherever he
happened to be, like a moth trying to get inside a lamp. She couldn’t
get away if she wanted to. Mr. Millicent himself never knew, I believe
that, and was always kind to her as he was to every one else, and
nothing more. Had I thought there was anything else I would have killed
him myself, and I don’t care if the sergeant hears me say so, either. So
my wife went into his family as a servant, just to be near him. Mad,
yes, she was mad enough. Did you never notice her eyes, sir?”
“I think we all noticed them.”
“Then I needn’t say much more about that. As I say, I got to Beech
Lodge, and she looked straight in my face and didn’t know me for her
husband. She knew that she had known me before, but that was all, if you
understand. I couldn’t force myself on her without destroying what
little comfort she got out of being near her master, though God knows
that was more pain than comfort. At the same time, I couldn’t leave her
without some kind of protection, for I had never wanted any woman but
her, so I applied for the job of gardener, and got it, perhaps because I
knew the country Mr. Millicent was thinking of most of the time. There I
was, working for the same people as my own wife, but no more a husband
of my wife’s than one of my own shrubs. The jade god had her for its
own, and it had Mr. Millicent, too. The fear was on him. I could see
that.”
“Why didn’t you tell Mr. Millicent the truth as soon as you got to Beech
Lodge?”
“Because my wife would have gone clean mad if I had, for he would have
tried to send her away. And back of all this I knew there were those in
the Mong Hills who would never rest or be content till they got the
damned thing back in their own hands. What’s more, they weren’t the sort
who cared much what they did to get it. Millicent’s life wouldn’t be
worth a snap of the finger when they found out where he was, if they
thought he had it. That was always in my head. And there was she, moving
further and further away from me, and more and more in love with him.
Can you see the sort of life I led? But the master was always straight
with me, and no man ever had a better boss.”
“The night you applied to me for a job,” put in Derrick, “I asked her if
she thought under all the circumstances I would do well to take you on,
and she said yes, if I wanted a garden like Mr. Millicent’s. How do you
explain that?”
“Simple enough, sir. She remembered me as a gardener for Mr. Millicent,
and that I was good with flowers, and nothing else.” He broke off in
distress and sent Blunt a pathetic glance.
“You people are getting the truth,” said the latter, fingering his
handcuffs. “Go on, Martin.”
“Well, I waited and waited, knowing that that lot in the Mong Hills
would never forget, or give the thing up, and the jade god was working
somewhere in the dark. Then came the night when it happened. I was out
behind the cottage when my wife came tearing down the drive like a crazy
woman, screaming that she had had a terrible dream and Mr. Millicent was
dead. She was only half dressed, with her hair down, and just for a
minute I thought the worst of them both, then saw that she was in a sort
of daze as she used to be when once or twice I caught her walking in her
sleep. The knife was in her hand. I guessed what had happened and got it
away from her, and wiped the blood from her fingers, and all the time
she kept on talking as though she didn’t see me. I told her it was only
a dream and went up to the house with her and found it was as she said.”
Martin’s voice faltered here, and he looked beseechingly at Derrick.
“What would you have done, sir, if you’d been me?”
“I think probably exactly the same.”
“Yes, because no man could do anything else. Here was this poor woman
who did not know she had committed any crime, only that she had found
the man she loved better than anything on earth in a pool of his own
blood. I knew that I had to act quickly if I was going to save her and
got it into her head that she must break the news to Mrs. Millicent, who
would send her straight to the cottage again. Her mind was still dazed,
but she grasped that, and I sneaked back to my own place. And all this
I’ve told you is God’s truth, and it brings you up to the start of what
every one knows about the Millicent mystery. Since then I’ve kept my
mouth shut, but”—and here the man stared grimly at Burke—“I’d do the
same thing again for the same reason. I know I’m a perjurer and reckon
I’ll have to pay for that. But I’m ready to pay.”
Derrick turned involuntarily to Burke, who had been sitting quite
motionless, slowly twisting a pencil between his broad finger-tips. The
big, strong face reflected nothing of his thoughts. The sergeant had
drunk in every word, his brain turned to detect any seeming flaw on
which he might fasten. But so far there was none, except that his stolid
British mind could not grasp the seeming potentiality that lay in a lump
of carved stone. Blunt did not stir a muscle and regarded his handcuffs
with a sort of quiet interest as though they were children’s toys. From
his expression Derrick knew what Blunt was thinking about.
“Is there anything else, Martin?”
“Only the inquest and all that part of it. After it was over I knew by
my wife’s face that her soul had gone wandering after Millicent and that
I was nothing to her and never could be. But she was my woman, and
nothing would alter that. I did not know where the image was, nor did
she, and right away it seemed clear that if I stayed I might let out
something. I told her I was going away, and she looked at me as though
she had never seen me before, so I knew that nothing would drive her
from Beech Lodge while that damned thing was hidden there. She wanted to
find it, too, but in a way was afraid to find it. So I hid the knife and
went off.”
“Why hide the knife?” put in Derrick sharply.
“So in case she should ever be charged with the murder I might come back
and the thing be found with me. That would let her out,” said Martin
steadily.
Derrick caught his breath. He had a blinding glimpse of the unswerving
devotion hidden behind this formidable exterior. The sheer depth of it
seemed to dwarf all other kinds of worship. The gallows to save this
cold and repellent woman, this one woman of his heart. That was the
offering Martin stood ready to make.
“Well,” continued the heavy voice, “I went back to Burma, and by that
time the story of the theft of the god was pretty much all over the Mong
Hills, not talked of openly, but going round in whispers, and I knew
that something else was bound to happen. I met Blunt there, and he knew
that I knew and followed me. He’ll tell you his own story about that if
you ask him. I stayed with my sister in America, but all the time
something was calling me back here, so I came, hotfoot. And the minute I
reached the house I knew the god was still there.”
“And when you arrived you found you were no more to your wife than
before?”
Martin pulled himself together. “That’s it,” he said, with a glance
almost of gratitude; “not even as much. And when Miss Millicent came in
I knew the infernal thing was at work again.”
“I felt something of the kind, too.”
Martin nodded. “I saw that, sir, though you were all in the dark. Then
Blunt got here, as I knew he would, and you can guess the rest. Last
night, when my woman came into the study and saw things just as they
once were, she thought she had waked up again, and I hadn’t time to stop
her. My God, Mr. Derrick, did you know what was coming?”
“No, Martin, I didn’t, except that I frankly expected you might say
something. It was a jump in the dark.”
“Then if I had said what she did, or something like it, she would be
alive now,” groaned the man bitterly.
Derrick could not answer that, and there ensued a poignant moment which
he ended by turning suddenly to Burke. “Is there anything you want
cleared up, sergeant?”
“No, sir”—the man’s voice was softer than usual—“but there’s one
thing, about Martin calling himself a perjurer. The law does not ask
that a man or woman give evidence against each other if they are man and
wife. Considering what we’ve heard, I think Martin can forget the
perjury part of it. I see now how the knife happened to be in the
cottage, for that did surprise me. I thought perhaps Blunt had put it
there for his own purpose. We might as well get on to what he has to
say.”
“I’ll give you the rest of it,” began the peddler in a clear voice, “and
you can pick any holes in it you like. All that Martin says is true,
every word of it. I come from the Mong Hills and was born near there. My
father was English, and you might know his name, but he’s dead now, so
that end of it doesn’t matter. My mother was a Malay woman, and she’s
alive. I lived near a temple in the hills where the priests believed in
what they said and read, which isn’t always the case in that country. It
was a famous temple, and the more famous on account of what was in it,
this being a lot of images of Buddha, all the work of one man. The name
of the man was Lung Sen, and he had the blood of forefathers who were
the greatest artists of their time in wood and gold and jade. Most of
Lung’s work went to this temple, where it was very precious, but of the
man himself the priests knew nothing except that the faces he carved
were alive and something moved behind the eyes. One night I stayed with
Lung, and before morning came I knew the man as none other ever had. It
seemed that there were two men in him, one the carver of images, the
other with all the evil of the world wrapped up in his black heart. He
told me, perhaps because I had foreign blood and he thought I would
understand better, that he was tired of making flat-faced Buddhas and
had been tired for years, and that evil was more interesting than good,
and it was more difficult to carve evil than the other thing. Then he
looked at me for a quarter of an hour while he smoked, and took
something out of a roll of silk. It was the jade god.”
He paused reflectively, his eyes cloudy with memories, and Derrick had a
glimpse of what he must have seen then. The half-light, the dark
sardonic face, the long, lean fingers, the obscurity of a riverside hut,
and all around it the ceaseless whisper of the jungle.
“When I saw that,” went on Blunt presently, “I was frightened, for it
was the image of the soul that Lung Sen had hidden from the world. He
had spent years making it, putting in the hours when he wasn’t turning
out the standard article. And as he looked at the thing I saw that his
own face had become just like it. There was a sort of living devil
there, crammed with all the knowledge in hell and afraid of nothing in
the other place. And this was the man who had been carving Buddhas for
nearly fifty years according to his own account. I asked him what he was
going to do with it, and he said put it in the temple, where they let
him do pretty much as he liked, and after a while it would acquire and
soak in the power of the real thing, by which it would be surrounded,
but would lose nothing of what he had carved on it. That would make it a
god of evil, with the influence of the real gods behind it.”
The man hesitated an instant and looked curiously at Derrick. “All this
may sound like a fairy-story to you, but if you and your people had
lived in the Mong Hills all your lives it wouldn’t seem like that.”
“I think I understand.”
“Well, when he finished it, working with sharp sand and thousands of
little wooden drills to cut the stone, he did put it in the temple. I
don’t know how long the job had taken, but probably not less than thirty
years. Then he sat tight, smiling to himself, till the priests found
out. They knew in a minute that if the thing ever got away from them it
would raise hell for whoever had it, so they guarded it day and night
till a year or so later Millicent came along. He heard of it; the
thought of the thing began to work in his brain; and, to make a long
story short, he bribed a young priest and got away with it. The first
thing that happened was that Lung Sen didn’t wake up one morning, and
his face was just like the jade god’s. The priest was never seen again.
Then for some reason they sent for me and told me to go in search of it;
didn’t ask, but told me. And I knew enough to go. It took me years to
find Martin, and if you ask why I didn’t give it up long ago, I can’t
tell you, except that I knew another was coming after me, and then
another, but I would only see them once. When I got here, I knew by
Martin’s face that the god was not far off. So now”—here he glanced
dominantly at Derrick—“this thing must go back with me. The god of all
evil lives in it, and whoever keeps it will be cursed. Joy will die for
him, and fear will come, and love be changed to a dream of terror. God
hides in that stone, and sacrifices must be made in front of it. What
becomes of me does not matter. The woman killed the man, because the
image commanded her. She could not help it, her love being turned to
gall. And this is only the beginning of what must come if the image
stays in your keeping.”
The voice lifted with a strange domination that brooked no interruption,
and the peddler’s features took on a look of exalted prophecy. “What do
the children of to-day know of the wisdom that dwelt in the hills of
Mong when England was peopled by half-naked savages? They are like
children with toys they do not understand. Gautama opened the books of
good and evil that all might read. You of the West have read not at all;
Lung Sen read only the evil, and he is dead; and this man from an
English village disobeyed the law and passed at the hand of one who
struck when her eyes were closed. When after two years they opened, she
struck again, but this time at herself. She was asleep, but the god
never sleeps. So if you do not give it to me, then make an end of me
quickly, and prepare for the next messenger, who is now on his way, and
will not ask, but take.”
Silence descended in the cell. Burke’s eyes were half closed, as though
he peered at visions hitherto unguessed. A cart creaked in the distance
but did not break the spell. Derrick had an abiding sensation that from
the East a hand had reached out and touched the village of Bamberley
into a strange sleep. Martin sat motionless, reliving the past, while
the peddler clasped his lean fingers, a look of intense abstraction on
his dark smooth face. Derrick was aware that he felt amazingly impotent,
and with difficulty made an indefinite gesture.
“Sergeant,” he said, after a long pause, “I make no charge against
Martin and will go bail for his appearance at the inquest when wanted.”
The big man jerked himself together, stood up, groped in his pocket, and
produced a key. There was a click of steel. Martin was a free man.
“You might go back to the cottage now,” said Derrick, looking him full
in the eye.
The gardener nodded, shook himself like a wet dog, said one sibilant
word of farewell to the peddler, and vanished. His step was still
audible when Burke fastened an inquiring look on Blunt.
“What about this man, sir? Are you going to let him down as easy as
that?”
“I take it that the only charge is of attempted theft?”
“That’s right, but I wouldn’t be so sure about bail in this case.”
“And the only damage is to the French window?”
“That’s for you to say, sir. It’s your house.”
Derrick turned to Blunt. “You have come here in search of a certain
thing. In that I believe you have told the truth, but as to what may
follow if you don’t get it, that’s another story. I do accept what you
said about the image, and that it has for some reason an evil effect. It
is not necessary to go into that any further, but since the thing is
evil, it should no longer exist, and—”
Blunt leaped to his feet. “What are you going to do?”
“First leave it to the sergeant to decide whether he keeps you here till
the inquest, and—”
“I’ll certainly do that,” put in Burke.
“Well, after that’s over there will be no reason for you to stay in
England any longer. You can go back to the Mong Hills and tell them that
the image does not exist. It won’t.”
“You’ll destroy it?” whispered Blunt, aghast.
“Yes. If it’s the evil thing you say, and I believe you, it ought to be
destroyed. If it isn’t, you’ve been lying, which I don’t believe. I’ve
learned something from all this, Blunt,” he added thoughtfully, “and my
mind is made up. Good morning, sergeant.”