TO TORMOUTH
"An absinthe!"
"A packet of Caporal!"
"Un bock pour vous, m'sieur?"
"A vodka!"
A frowsy waiter was hurrying through some such jangle of loud voices
from the "comrades" scattered among the tables set in a back room in a
very back street of Soho. The hour was two in the morning, and the light
in that Anarchist Club was murky and blurred. Only one gas-jet on the
wall lit the room, and that struggled but feebly through the cigarette
smoke that choked the air like a fog--air that was foul and close as
well as dim, for some thirty persons, mostly men but some few women,
were crowded in there as if there was no place else on earth for them.
One heard the rattle of dice, the whirr of cards being shuffled against
the thumbs, the grating of glass tumblers against imitation granite. Two
poor girls, cramped in a corner, were attempting to dance to the rhythm
of an Italian song. They were laughing with wide mouths, their heads
thrown back, weary unto death, yet alive with make-believe mirth.
At one of the tables sat Gaston Janoc, the man who had been seen by
Inspector Clarke talking in St. Martin's Lane to Bertha Seward, one-time
cook in the Feldisham Mansions flat. Playing vingt-et-un with him was a
burly Russian-looking man, all red beard and eyebrows; also a small
Frenchman with an imperial and a crooked nose; while a colored man of
Martinique made the fourth of a queer quartette. But somehow Janoc and
the rough, red Russian seemed not to be able to agree in the game. They
were antagonistic as cat and dog, and three times one or other threw
down his cards and looked at his adversary, as who should say:
"A little more of you, and my knife talks!"
"Who are you, then, Ruski?" cried Janoc at last, speaking French, since
the Russian only glared at him when he swore in his quaint English.
Yet the Russian grumbled in English in his beard: "No French."
"And no Italian, and no Spanish, and no German, and very, very small
English," growled Janoc in English, frowning at him; "Well, then, shall
we converse, sare?"
"What is that--'_converse_'?" asked the Russian.
Janoc shrugged disgustedly, while the little Frenchman, whose eyes
twinkled at every tiff between the pair, said politely in French:
"We await your play, m'sieurs."
Twice, on the very edge of the precipice of open hostilities, Janoc and
the Russian stopped short; but a little after two o'clock, when much
absinthe and vodka had been drunk, an outbreak took place: for the
Russian then cried out loudly above the hubbub of tongues:
"Oh, you--how you call it?--_tcheeeet_!"
"Who? I--me?" cried Janoc sharply, pale, half-standing--"cheat?"
"Yes--_tcheeet_, you _tcheeet_!" insisted the bearded Slav. And now the
little Frenchman with the crooked nose, who foreknew that the table was
about to be upset, stood up quickly, picked up his thimbleful of
anisette, and holding it in hand, awaited with merry eyes the outcome.
Instantly Janoc, who was dealing, sent the pack of cards like an assault
of birds into the Russian's face, the Russian closed with Janoc, and
forthwith the room reeled into chaos. The struggle need not be
described. Suffice it to say, that it lasted longer than the Russian had
probably expected, for Janoc proved to have sinews of steel, though thin
steel. His lank arms embraced the Russian, squeezing like a cable that
is being tighter and tighter wound. However, he was overcome by mere
weight, thumping to the floor among a tumbled dance of tables, chairs,
and foreign drinks, while the women shrieked, the men bellowed, and the
scared manager of the den added to the uproar by yelling:
"M'sieurs! M'sieurs! Je vous prie! The police will come!"
Only one soul in the room remained calm, and that was the diminutive
Frenchman, who kept dodging through the legs and arms of the flood of
humanity that surged around the two on the floor.
He alone of them all saw that the Russian, in the thick of the struggle,
was slipping his hand into pocket after pocket of Janoc under him, and
was very deftly drawing out any papers that he might find there.
In two minutes the row was ended, and the gaming and drinking
recommenced as if nothing had happened. The Russian had been half led,
half hustled to the front door, and was gone. Immediately after him had
slipped out the bright-eyed Frenchman.
The Russian, after pacing down an alley, turned into Old Compton Street,
twice peering about and behind him, as if disturbed by some instinct
that he was being shadowed. And this was so--but with a skill so nimble,
so expert, so inbred, did the Frenchman follow, that in this pursuit the
true meaning of the word "shadowing" was realized. The Russian did not
see his follower for the excellent reason that the Frenchman made
himself an invisibility. He might have put on those magic shoes that
shadows shoot and dash and slink in, so airily did he glide on the
trail. Nor could mere genius have accomplished such a feat, and with
such ease--were it not for the expertness that was wedded to genius.
When the Russian emerged into the wide thoroughfare close to the Palace
Theater, he stood under a lamp to look at one of the papers picked from
Janoc's pockets; and only then did he become aware of the Frenchman, who
rose up out of the ground under his elbow with that pert ease with which
a cork bobs to the surface of water.
"Got anything of importance?" asked the Frenchman, his twinkling eyes
radiant with the humor of the chase.
The Russian stared at him half a minute with the hung jaw of
astonishment. Then, all at once remembering his rôle, he cried hoarsely:
"No English!"
"Oh, chuck it!" remarked the other.
Again the Russian gazed at the unexpected little phenomenon, and his
voice rumbled:
"What is that--'chuck it'?"
Suddenly the Frenchman snatched Janoc's paper neatly with thumb and
finger out of the Russian's hand, and ran chuckling across Charing Cross
Road eastward. The Russian, with a grunt of rage, made after him with
his long legs. But, from the first, he saw that he was being left behind
by the nimble pace set up by a good runner. He seemed to understand that
a miracle was needed, and lo, it occurred, for, as the two crossed the
road in front of the Palace Theater, the Russian lifted his voice into:
"Stop him! Stop thief! Police! Police!"
Not only did he yell in most lucid English, but he also plucked a police
whistle from his coat and blew it loudly.
No policeman happened to be near, however, and the deep sleep of London
echoed their pelting steps eastward, until the Russian saw the
paper-snatcher vanish from sight in the congeries of streets that
converge on the top of St. Martin's Lane.
He lost hope then, and slackened a little, panting but swearing in a
language that would be appreciated by any London cabman. Nevertheless,
when he, too, ran into St. Martin's Lane, there was the small Frenchman,
standing, wiping his forehead, awaiting him.
The Russian sprang at him.
"You little whelp!" he roared. "I arrest you----"
"Oh, what's the good, Clarke? You are slow this evening. I just thought
I'd wake you up."
"Furneaux!"
"Fancy not knowing me!"
"It was _you_!"
"Who else? Here's your Janocy document. You might let me have a look at
it. Share and share alike."
Clarke tried to retrieve lost prestige, though his hand shook as he took
the paper.
"Well--I--could have sworn it was you!" he said.
"Of course you could--and did, no doubt. Let's have a glimpse at those
documents."
"But what were _you_ doing in the Fraternal Club, anyhow? Something on
in that line?"
"No. An idle hour. Chance of picking up a stray clew. I sometimes do
dive into those depths without special object. You managed that to a T
with Janoc. Where are the other papers? Hand them over."
"With pleasure," said Clarke, but there was no pleasure in his surly
Russian face, in which rage shone notwithstanding a marvelous make-up.
Still, he opened the paper under the lamp--a sheet of notepaper with
some lines of writing on the first page; and on the top of it, printed,
the name of a hotel, "The Swan, Tormouth."
The two detectives peered over it. To the illimitable surprise of both,
this letter, stolen by Clarke from Janoc's pocket, was addressed to
Clarke himself--a letter from Rupert Osborne, the millionaire.
And Osborne said in it:
DEAR INSPECTOR CLARKE:--Yours of the 7th duly to hand. In reply
to your inquiry, I am not aware that the late Mlle. Rose de
Bercy had any relations with Anarchists, either in London or in
Paris, other than those which have been mentioned in the
papers--_i.e._, a purely professional interest for stage
purposes. I think it unlikely that her connection with them
extended further.
I am,
Sincerely yours,
RUPERT OSBORNE.
Furneaux and Clarke looked at each other in a blank bewilderment that
was not assumed by either man.
"_Did_ you write to Mr. Osborne, asking that question?" asked Furneaux.
"No," said Clarke--"never. I didn't even know where Osborne was."
"So Janoc must have written to him in your name?" said Furneaux. "Janoc,
then, wishes to know how much information Osborne can give you as to
Mademoiselle de Bercy's association with Anarchists. That seems clear.
But why should Janoc think that _you_ particularly are interested in
knowing?
Clarke flushed hotly under the paint, being conscious that he was
investigating the case on his own private account and in a secret way.
As a matter of fact, he was by this time fully convinced that Rose de
Bercy's murder was the work of Anarchist hands, but he was so vexed with
Furneaux's tricking him, and so fearful of official reprimand from
Winter that he only answered:
"Why Janoc should think that I am interested, I can't imagine. It beats
me."
"And how can Janoc know where Osborne is, or his assumed name, to write
to him?" muttered Furneaux. "I thought that that was a secret between
Osborne, Winter, and myself."
Clarke, equally puzzled, scratched his head under his wig, which had
been insufferably hot in that stifling room.
"Janoc and his crew must be keeping an eye on Osborne, it seems--for
some reason," he exclaimed. "Heaven knows why--I don't. I am out of the
de Bercy case, of course. My interest in the Janoc crowd is--political."
"Let me see the letter again," said Furneaux; and he read it carefully
once more. Then he opened the sheet, as if seeking additional
information from the blank pages, turned it over, looked at the
back--and there at the back he saw something else that was astounding,
for, written backwards, near the bottom of the page, in Osborne's
handwriting, was the word "Rosalind."
"Who is 'Rosalind'?" asked Furneaux--"see here, an impression from some
other letter written at the same time."
"Don't know, I'm sure," said Clarke. "A sister, perhaps."
"A sister. Why, though, should his sister's name appear at the back of a
note written to Janoc, or to Inspector Clarke, as he thought?" said
Furneaux to himself, deep in meditation. He suddenly added brightly:
"Now, Clarke, there's a puzzle for you!"
"I don't see it, see any puzzle, I mean. It might have appeared on any
other letter, say to his bankers, or to a friend. It was a mere
accident. There is nothing in that."
"Quite right," grinned Furneaux. "And it was a sister's name, of course.
'Rosalind.' A pretty name. Poor girl, she will be anxious about her fond
and doting brother."
"It may be another woman's name," said Clarke sagely--"though, for that
matter, he'd hardly be on with a new love before the other one is cold
in her grave, as the saying is."
Furneaux laughed a low, mysterious laugh in his throat. It had a
peculiar sound, and rang hard and bitter in the ears of the other.
"I'll keep this, if you don't mind," he said, lapsing into the detective
again.
Meantime, Furneaux knew that there were other papers of Janoc's in
Clarke's pocket, and he lingered a little to give his colleague a chance
of exhibiting them. Clarke made no move, however, so he put out his
hand, saying, "Well, good luck," and disappeared southward, while Clarke
walked northward toward his residence, Hampstead way. But in Southampton
Row an overwhelming impatience to see the other Janoc papers overcame
him, and he commenced to examine them as he went.
Two were bills. A third was a newspaper cutting from the _Matin_
commenting on the murder in Feldisham Mansions. The fourth had power to
arrest Clarke's steps. It was a letter of three closely-written
pages--in French; and though Clarke's French, self-taught, was not
fluent, it could walk, if it could not fly. In ten minutes he had read
and understood....
St. Petersburg says that since the secret meeting, a steady
growth of courage in the rank-and-file is observable. As for the
Nevski funds, an individual highly placed, whose name is in
three syllables, is said to be willing to come to the rescue.
Lastly, as to the traitress, you will see to it that she to
whose hands vengeance has been intrusted shall fail on the 3rd.
This was in the letter; and as Inspector Clarke's eyes fell on the date,
"the 3d," his clenched hand rose triumphantly in air. It was on July
_the 3d_ that Rose de Bercy had been done to death!
When Clarke again walked onward his eyes were alight with a wild
exultation. He was thinking:
"Now, Allah be praised, that I didn't show Furneaux this thing, as I
nearly was doing!"
He reached his house with a sense of surprise--he had covered so much
ground unconsciously, and the dominant thought in his mind was that the
race was not always to the swift.
"Luck is the thing in a man's career," he said to himself, "not wit, or
mere sharpness to grasp a point. Slow, and steady, and lucky--that's the
combination. The British are a race slower of thought than some of the
others, just as _I_ may be a slower man than Furneaux, but we Britons
rule the world by luck, as we won the battle of Waterloo by luck. Luck
and prime beef, they go together somehow, I do believe. And what I am
to-day I owe to luck, for it's happened to me too often to doubt that
I've got the gift of it in my marrow."
He put his latch-key into the door with something of a smile; and the
next morning Mrs. Clarke cried delightedly to him:
"Well, something must have happened to put you in this good temper!"
At that same hour of the morning Furneaux, for his part, was at
Osborne's house in Mayfair, where he had an appointment with Mrs. Hester
Bates, Osborne's housekeeper. He was just being admitted into the house
when the secretary, Miss Prout, walked up to the door--rather to his
surprise, for it was somewhat before the hour of a secretary's
attendance. They entered together and passed into the library, where
Hylda Prout invited him to sit down for a minute.
"I am only here just to collect and answer the morning's letters," she
explained pleasantly. "There's a tree which I know in Epping Forest--an
old beech--where I'm taking a book to read. See my picnic
basket?--tomato and cress sandwiches, half a bottle of Chianti, an
aluminum folding cup to drink from. I'll send for Mrs. Bates in a
moment, and leave her to your tender inquiries. But wouldn't you prefer
Epping Forest on a day like this? Do you like solitude, Inspector
Furneaux? Dreams?"
"Yes, I like solitude, as boys like piracy, because unattainable. I can
only just find time to sleep, but not time enough to dream."
Hylda lifted her face beatifically.
"I _love_ to dream!--to be with myself--alone: the world in one
compartment, I in another, with myself; with silence to hear my heart
beat in, and time to fathom a little what its beating is madly trying to
say; an old tree overhead, and breezes breathing through it. Oh, _they_
know how to soothe; _they_ alone understand, Inspector Furneaux, and
_they_ forgive."
Furneaux said within himself: "Well, I seem to be in for some charming
confidences"; and he added aloud: "Quite so; _they_ understand--if it's
a lady: for Nature is feminine; and only a lady can fathom a lady."
"Oh, women!" Hylda said, with her pretty pout of disdain,--"they are
nothing, mostly shallow shoppers. Give me a man--if he is a man. And
there have been a few women, too--in history. But, man or woman, what I
believe is that for the greater part, we remain foreigners to ourselves
through life--we never reach that depth in ourselves, 'deeper than ever
plummet sounded,' where the real _I_ within us lives, the real,
bare-faced, rabid, savage, divine _I_, naked as an ape, contorted,
sobbing, bawling what it cannot speak."
Furneaux, who had certainly not suspected this blend of philosopher and
poet beneath that mass of red hair, listened in silence. For the second
time he saw this strange girl's eyes take fire, glow, rage a moment like
a building sweltering in conflagration, and then die down to utter
dullness.
Though he knew just when to speak, his reply was rather tame.
"There's something in that, too--you are right."
She suddenly smiled, with a pretty air of confusion.
"Surely," she said. "And now to business: first, Mrs. Bates----"
"One moment," broke in Furneaux. "Something has caused me to wish to ask
you--do you know Mr. Osborne's relatives?"
"I know _of_ them. He has only a younger brother, Ralph, who is at
Harvard University--and an aunt."
"Aunt's name Rosalind?"
"No--Priscilla--Priscilla Emptage."
"Who, then, may 'Rosalind' be?"
"No connection of _his_. You must have made some mistake."
Furneaux held out the note of Rupert Osborne to Janoc intended for
Clarke, holding it so folded that the name of the hotel was not
visible--only the transferred word "Rosalind."
And as Hylda Prout bent over it, perplexed at first by the seeming
scrawl, Furneaux's eye was on her face. He was aware of the instant when
she recognized the handwriting, the instant when reasoning and the
putting of two-and-two together began to work in her mind, the instant
when her stare began to widen, and her tight-pressed lips to relax, the
rush of color to fade from her face, and the mask of freckles to stand
out darkly in strong contrast with her ivory white flesh. When she had
stared for a long minute, and had had enough, she did not say anything,
but turned away silently to stand at a window, her back to Furneaux.
He looked at her, thinking: "She guesses, and suffers."
Suddenly she whirled round. "May I--see that letter?" she asked in a low
voice.
"The whole note?" he said; "I'm afraid that it's private--not _my_
secret--I regret it--an official document, you know."
"All right," she said quietly. "You may come to me for help yet"--and
turned to the pile of letters on the desk.
"Anyway, Rosalind is not a relative, to your knowledge?" he persisted.
"No."
She stuffed the letters into a drawer, bowed, and was gone, leaving him
sorry for her, for he saw a lump working in her throat.
Some minutes after her disappearance, a plump little woman came in--Mrs.
Hester Bates, housekeeper in the Osborne _ménage_. Her hair lay in
smooth curves on her brow as on the upturned bulge of a china bowl.
There was an apprehensive look in her upward-looking eyes, so Furneaux
spoke comfortingly to her, after seating her near the window.
"Don't be afraid to speak," he said reassuringly. "What you have to say
is not necessarily against Mr. Osborne's interests. Just state the facts
simply--you did see him here on the murder night, didn't you?"
She muttered something, as a tear dropped on the ample bosom of her
black dress.
"Just a little louder," Furneaux said.
"Yes," she sobbed, "I saw his back."
"You were--where?"
"Coming up the kitchen stairs to talk to Mr. Jenkins."
"Don't cry. And when you reached the top of the kitchen stairs you saw
his back on the house stairs--at the bottom? at the top?"
"He was nearer the top. I only saw him a minute."
"A moment, you mean, I think. And in that one moment you became quite
sure that it was Mr. Osborne? Though it was only his back you saw?"
"Yes, sir...."
"No, don't cry. It's nothing. Only are you certain sure--that's the
point?"
"Yes, I am sure enough, but----"
"But what?"
"I thought he was the worse for drink, which was a mad thing."
"Oh, you thought that. Why so?"
"His feet seemed to reel from side to side--almost from under him."
"His feet--I see. From side to side.... Ever saw him the worse for drink
before?"
"Never in all my life! I was amazed. Afterwards I had a feeling that it
wasn't Mr. Osborne himself, but his spirit that I had seen. And it may
have been his spirit! For my Aunt Pruie saw the spirit of her boy one
Sunday afternoon when he was alive and well in his ship on the sea."
"But a spirit the worse for drink?" murmured Furneaux; "a spirit whose
feet seemed to reel?"
She dropped her eyes, and presently wept a theory.
"A spirit walks lighter-like than a Christian, sir."
"Did you, though," asked Furneaux, making shorthand signs in his
notebook, "did you have the impression that it might be a spirit at the
time, or was it only afterwards?"
"It was only afterwards when I thought matters over," said Mrs. Bates.
"Even at the time it crossed my mind that there was something in it I
didn't rightly understand."
"Now, what sort of something?--can't you say?"
"No, sir. I don't know."
"And when you saw Mr. Jenkins immediately afterwards, did you mention to
him that you had seen Mr. Osborne?"
"No, I didn't say anything to him, nor him to me."
"Pity.... But the hour. You have said, I hear, that it was five minutes
to eight. Now, the murder was committed between 7.30 and 7.45; and at
five to eight Mr. Osborne is said by more than one person to have been
at the Ritz Hotel. If he was there, he couldn't have been here. If he
was here, he couldn't have been there. Are you sure of the hour--five to
eight?"
As to that Mrs. Bates was positive. She had reason to remember, having
looked at the clock _à propos_ of the servants' supper. And Furneaux
went away from her with eyes in which sparkled a light that some might
have called wicked, and all would have called cruel, as when the cat
hears a stirring, and crouches at the hole's rim with her soul crowded
into an unblinking stare of expectation.
He looked at his watch, took a cab to Waterloo, and while in the vehicle
again studied that scrawled "Rosalind" on Osborne's letter to Janoc.
"A trip to Tormouth should throw some light on it," he thought. "If it
can be shown that he is actually in love--again--already----" and as he
so thought, the cab ran out of St. James's Street into Pall Mall.
"Look! quick! There--in that cab!" hissed a man at that moment to a girl
with whom he was lurking in a doorway deep under the shadow of an awning
near the corner. "Look!"
"That's him!"
"Sure? Look well!"
"The very man!"
"Well, of all the fatalities!"
The cab dashed out of sight, and the man--Chief Inspector
Winter--clapped his hand to his forehead in a spasm of sheer distraction
and dismay. The woman with him was the murdered actress's cook, Bertha
Seward, the same whom Inspector Clarke had one morning seen in earnest
talk with Janoc under the pawnbroker's sign in St. Martin's Lane.
Winter walked away from her, looking on the ground, seeking his lost
wits there. Then suddenly he turned and overtook her again.
"And you swear to me, Miss Seward," he said gravely, "that that very man
was with your mistress in her flat on the evening of the murder?"
"I would know him anywhere," answered the slight girl, looking up into
his face with her oblique Chinese eyes that were always half shut as if
shy of light. "I thought to myself at the time what a queer, perky
person he was, and what working eyes the little man had, and I wondered
who he could be. That's the very man in that cab, I'm positive."
"And when you and Pauline went out to the Exhibition you left him with
your mistress, you say?"
"Yes, sir. They were in the drawing-room together; and quarreling, too,
for her voice was raised, and she laughed twice in an angry way."
"Quarreling--in French? You didn't catch--?"
"No, it was in French."
Inspector Winter leant his shoulder against the house-wall, and his head
slowly sank, and then all at once dropped down with an air of utter
abandonment, for Furneaux was his friend--he had looked on Furneaux as a
brother.
Furneaux, meantime, at Waterloo was taking train to Tormouth, and his
fixed stare boded no good will to Rupert Osborne.