THE LETTER
Two days later, not Britain alone, but no small part of the two
hemispheres, was stirred to the depths by the adjourned inquest on the
Feldisham Mansions crime. Nevertheless, though there were sensations in
plenty, the public felt vaguely a sense of incompleteness in the
process, and of dissatisfaction with the result. The police seemed to be
both unready and unconvinced; no one was quite sincere in anything that
was said; the authorities were swayed by some afterthought; in popular
phrase, they appeared "to have something up their sleeve."
Furneaux, this time, figured for the police; but Winter, too, was there
unobtrusively; and, behind, hidden away as a mere spectator, was Clarke,
smiling the smile that knows more than all the world, his hard mouth set
in fixed lines like carved wood.
As against Osborne the inquiry went hard. More and more the hearts of
the witnesses and jury grew hot against him, and, by a kind of electric
sympathy, the blood of the crowd which gathered outside the court caught
the fever and became inflamed with its own rage, lashing itself to a
fury with coarse jibes and bitter revilings.
Furneaux, bringing forth and marshaling evidence on evidence against
Osborne, let his eye light often on Winter; then he would look away
hastily as though he feared his face might betray his thoughts.
In that small head of his were working more, by far more, secret things,
dark intents, unspoken mazy purposes, than in all the heads put together
in the busy court. He was pale, too, but his pallor was nothing compared
with the marble forehead of Winter, whose eyes were nailed to the
ground, and whose forehead was knit in a frown grim and hard as rock.
It was rarely that he so much as glanced up from the reverie of
pitch-black doubts weltering through his brain like some maelstrom
drowned in midnight. Once he glanced keenly upon William Campbell, the
taxicab driver, who kept twirling his motor-cap round and round on his
finger until an irritated coroner protested; once again did he glance at
Mrs. Bates, housekeeper, and at the fountain of tears that flowed from
her eyes.
Campbell was asked to pick out the man whom he had driven from Berkeley
Street to Feldisham Mansions, if he saw him in court. He pointed
straight at Osborne.
"You will swear that that is the man?" he was asked.
"No, not swear," he said, and looked round defiantly, as if he knew that
most of those present were almost disappointed with his non-committal
answer.
"Just think--look at him well," said the Treasury representative, as
Osborne stood up to confront the driver with his pale face.
"That gentleman is like him--very like him--that's all I'll swear to.
His manner of dress, his stand, his height, yes, and his face, his
mustache, the chin, the few hairs there between the eyebrows--remarkably
like, sir--for I recollect the man well enough. It may have been his
double, but I'm not here to swear positively it was Mr. Osborne, because
I'm not sure."
"We will take it, then, that, assuming there were two men, the one was
so much like the other that you swear it was either Mr. Osborne or his
double?" the coroner said.
"Well, I'll go so far as that, sir," agreed Campbell, and, at this
admission, Furneaux glanced at a veiled figure that sat among the
witnesses at the back of the court.
He knew that Rosalind Marsh was present, and his expression softened a
little. Then he looked at another veiled woman--Hylda Prout--and saw
that her eyes were fastened, not on the witness, but ever on Rosalind
Marsh, as though there was no object, no interest, in the room but that
one black-clothed figure of Rosalind.
Campbell's memory of the drive was ransacked, and turned inside out, and
thrashed and tormented by one and another to weariness; and then it was
the turn of Hester Bates, all tears, to tell how she had seen someone
like unto Osborne on the stairs at five to eight, whose feet seemed to
reel like a drunken man's, and who afterwards impressed her, when she
thought of it, as a shape rather of limbo and spirit-land than of
Mayfair and everyday life.
Then the flint ax-head, or celt, was presented to the court, and Hylda
Prout was called to give evidence against her employer. She told how she
had missed an ax-head from the museum, and also a Saracen dagger, but
whether this was the very ax-head that was missing she could not say. It
was very like it--that was all--and even Osborne showed his amaze at her
collectedness, her calm indifference to many eyes.
"May I not be allowed to examine it?" he asked his solicitor.
"Why not?" said the coroner, and there was a tense moment when the celt
was handed him.
He bent over it two seconds, and then said quietly: "This is certainly
one of my collection of flints!"
His solicitor, taken quite aback, muttered an angry protest, and a queer
murmur made itself felt. Osborne heard both the lawyer's words and the
subdued "Ah!" of the others echoing in his aching heart. By this time he
was as inwardly sensitive to the opinion of the mob as a wretch in the
hands of inquisitors to the whim and humors of his torturers.
"That evidence will be taken on oath in due course," said the coroner,
dryly official, and the examination of Miss Prout went on after the
incident.
"And now as to the dagger," resumed the Treasury solicitor, "tell us of
that."
She described it, its shape, the blunt edges of the long and pointed
blade, the handle, the label on it with the date. It was Saracen, and
it, too, like the celt, had once been used, in all probability, in the
hands of wild men in shedding blood.
"And you are sure of the date when you first missed it from its place in
the museum?"
"It was on the third day after the murder"--and Hylda Prout's glance
traveled for an instant to the veiled, bent head of Rosalind, as it
seemed to droop lower after every answer that she gave.
"And you are unable to conceive how both the dagger and the celt could
have vanished from their places about that time?"
"Yes, I conceive that they were stolen," she said--"unless Mr. Osborne
made them a present to some friend, for I have known him to do that."
"'Stolen,' you say," the Treasury man remarked. "But you have no grounds
for such a belief? You suggest no motive for a thief to steal these two
objects and no other from the museum? You know of no one who entered the
room during those days?"
"No, I know of no one--except Inspector Furneaux, who seems to have
entered it about six o'clock on the evening of the murder."
The coroner looked up sharply from his notes. This was news to the
court.
"Oh?" said the examiner. "Let us hear how that came about."
She explained that Furneaux had called to see Mr. Osborne, and, while
awaiting his coming in the library, had apparently strolled into the
museum. Jenkins, Mr. Osborne's valet, was her informant. It was not
evidence, but the statement was out before the court well knew where it
was leading. Winter's lip quivered with suppressed agitation, and over
Clarke's face came a strange expression of amazement, a stare of utter
wonderment widening his eyes, as when one has been violently struck, and
knows not by what or whom.
When Hylda Prout stepped down, the coroner invited the officer in charge
of the case to explain the curious bit of intelligence given by the last
witness.
Furneaux, not one whit disturbed in manner, rose to give his evidence of
the incident. Oddly enough, his eyes dwelt all the time, with a dull
deadness of expression in them, upon the lowered face of Winter.
It was true, he told the court, that he had called upon Mr. Osborne that
evening; it was true that he was asked to wait; and he seemed to
remember now that he _had_ wandered through a doorway into a room full
of curios to have a look at them in those idle moments.
"So you knew Mr. Osborne _before_ the murder?" inquired the court.
"Yes. I knew him very well by sight and repute, as a man about town,
though not to speak to."
"And what was the nature of the business on which you called to see
him?"
"It was a purely personal matter."
The coroner paused, with the air of a man who suddenly discovers a
morass where he imagined there was a clear road.
"And did you see Mr. Osborne that evening?" he asked at length.
"No, sir. After I had waited some time the valet entered and told me
that Mr. Osborne had just telephoned to say that he would not be home
before dinner. So I came away."
"Have you spoken to Mr. Osborne _since_ then about the matter on which
you called to see him that evening?"
"No, sir."
"Why not?"
"Because after that evening there was no longer any need!"
Well, to the more experienced officials in court this explanation had an
unusual sound, but to Winter, who slowly but surely was gathering the
threads of the murder in the flat into his hands, it sounded like a
sentence of death; and to Clarke, too, who had in his possession Rose de
Bercy's diary taken from Pauline Dessaulx, it sounded so amazing, that
he could scarce believe his ears.
However, the coroner nodded to Furneaux, and Furneaux turned to
Osborne's solicitor, who suddenly resolved to ask no questions, so the
dapper little man seated himself again at the table--much to the relief
of the jury, who were impatient of any red herring drawn across the
trail of evidence that led unmistakably to the millionaire.
Then, at last, appeared six witnesses who spoke, no longer against, but
for Osborne. Four were International polo-players, and two were waiters
at the Ritz Hotel, and all were positive that at the hour when Mrs.
Bates saw her employer at home, _they_ saw him elsewhere--or some among
them saw him, and the others, without seeing him, knew that he was
elsewhere.
Against this unassailable testimony was the obviously honest cabman, and
Osborne's own housekeeper: and the jury, level-headed men, fully
inclined to be just, though perhaps, in this instance, passionate and
prejudiced, weighed it in their hearts.
But Furneaux, to suit his own purposes, had contrived that the tag of
lace should come last; and with its mute appeal for vengeance everything
in favor of Osborne was swept out of the bosom of His Majesty's lieges,
and only wrath and abhorrence raged there.
Why, if he had actually killed Rose de Bercy, Osborne should carry about
that incriminating bit of lace in his bag, no one seemed to stop to ask;
but when the dreadful thing was held up before his eyes, the twelve good
men and true looked at it and at each other, and a sort of shuddering
abhorrence pervaded the court.
Even the Italian Antonio, who had contrived to be present as
representing some obscure paper in Paris--the very man who had put the
lace into the bag--shook his head over Osborne's guilt, being, as it
were, carried out of himself by the vigor and rush of the mental
hurricane which swept around him!
When Osborne, put into the box, repeated that the "celt" was really his,
this candor now won no sympathy. When he said solemnly that the bit of
lace had been secreted among his belongings by some unknown hand, the
small company of men present in court despised him for so childish a
lie.
His spirit, as he stood in that box, exposed to the animus of so many
spirits, felt as if it was being hurried by a kind of magnetic gale to
destruction; his fingers, his knees shivered, his voice cracked in his
throat; he could not keep his eyes from being wild, his skin from being
white, and in his heart his own stupefied conscience accused him of the
sin that his brothers charged him with.
Though the jury soon ascertained from the coroner's injunctions what
their verdict had to be, they still took twenty minutes to think of it.
However, they knew well that the coroner had spoken to them under the
suggestion of the police, who, no doubt, would conduct their own
business best; so in the end they came in with the verdict of "willful
murder committed by some person or persons unknown."
And now it was the turn of the mob to have their say. The vast crowd was
kept in leash until they were vouchsafed just a glimpse of Osborne, in
the midst of a mass of police guarding him, as he emerged from the court
to his automobile. Then suddenly, as it were, the hoarse bellow of the
storm opened to roar him out of the universe--an overpowering load of
sound for one frail heart to bear without quailing.
But if Osborne's heart quailed, there was one heart there that did not
quail, one smooth forehead that suddenly flushed and frowned in
opposition to a world's current, and dared to think and feel alone.
As the mob yelped its execration, Rosalind Marsh cried a protest of
"Shame, oh, shame!"
For now her woman's bosom smote her with ruth, and her compassion
championed him, believed in him, refused to admit that he could have
been so base. If she had been near him she would have raised her veil,
and gazed into his face with a steady smile!
As she was about to enter the carriage that awaited her, someone said
close behind her:
"Miss Marsh."
She looked round and saw a small man.
"You know me," he said--"Inspector Furneaux. We have even met and spoken
together before--you remember the old man who traveled with you in the
train from Tormouth? That was myself in another aspect."
His eyes smiled, though his voice was respectful, but Rosalind gave him
the barest inch of condescension in a nod.
"Now, I wish to speak to you," he muttered hurriedly. "I cannot say when
exactly--I am very occupied just now--but soon.... To speak to you, I
think, in your own interests--if I may. But I do not know your address."
Very coldly, hardly caring to try and understand his motive, she
mentioned the house in Porchester Gardens. In another moment she was in
her carriage.
When she reached home she saw in her mother's face just a shadow of
inquiry as to where she had been driving during the forenoon; but
Rosalind said not a word of the inquest. She was, indeed, very silent
during the whole of that day and the next. She was restless and woefully
uneasy. Through the night her head was full of strange thoughts, and she
slept but little, in fitful moments of weariness. Her mother observed
her with a quiet eye, pondering this unwonted distress in her heart, but
said nothing.
On the third morning Rosalind was sitting in a rocking-chair, her head
laid on the back, her eyes closed; and with a motion corresponding with
the gentle to-and-fro motion of the chair her head moved wearily from
side to side. This went on for some time; till suddenly she brought her
hand to her forehead in a rather excited gesture, her eyes opened with
the weak look of eyes dazzled with light, and she said aloud:
"Oh, I _must_!..."
Now she sprang up in a hurry, hastened to an escritoire, and dashed off
a letter in a very scamper of haste.
At last, then, the floods had broken their gates, for this is what she
wrote:
My dear, my dear, I was brutal to you that night at the
sun-dial. But it was necessary, if I was to maintain the
severity which I felt that your lack of frankness to me
deserved. Inwardly there was a terribly weak spot, of which I
was afraid; and if you had come after me when I left you, and
had commanded me, or prayed me, or touched me, no doubt it would
have been all up with me. Forgive me, then, if I seemed over
harsh where, I'm afraid, I am disposed to be rather too
infinitely lenient. At present, you see, I quite lack the
self-restraint to keep from telling you that I am sorry for
you.... I was present at the inquest.... Pity is like lightning;
it fills, it burns up, it enlightens ... see me here struck with
it!... You are not without a friend, one who knows you, judges
you, and acquits you.... If you want to come to me, come!... I
once thought well of a Mr. Glyn, but, like a flirt, will forget
him, if Osborne is of the same manner, speaks with the same
voice.... My mother is usually good to me....
She enclosed it in a flurry of excitement, ran to the bell-rope, rang,
and while waiting for a servant held the envelope in the manner of one
who is on the very point of tearing a paper in two, but halts to see on
which cheek the wind will hit. In the midst of this suspense of
indecision the door opened; and now, straightway, she hastened to it,
and got rid of the letter, saying rapidly in a dropped voice,
confidentially:
"Pauline, put that in the pillar-box at once for me, will you?"
Another moment and she stood alone there, with a shocked and beating
heart, the deed done, past recall now.
As for Pauline Dessaulx, she was half-way down the stairs when she
chanced to look at the envelope. "Rupert Osborne, Esq." She started!
Everything connected with that name was of infinite interest to her! But
she had not dreamt that Miss Marsh knew it, save as everyone else knew
it now, from public gossip and the papers.
She had never seen Rosalind Marsh, or her mother, till the day of their
arrival from the country. It was but ten days earlier that she had
become the servant of a Mrs. Prawser, a friend of Mrs. Marsh's, who kept
a private boarding-house, being in reduced circumstances. Then, after
but an interval of peace and security, the Marshes had come, and as she
let them in, and they were being embraced by Mrs. Prawser, Inspector
Clarke had appeared at the door, nearly striking her dead with
agitation, and demanding of her the diary, which she had handed him.
Luckily, luckily, she had been wise enough before that to scratch out
with many thick scratches of the pen the name that had been written by
the actress before the initials C. E. F. in that passage where the words
appeared: "If I am killed this night it will be by ---- or by C. E. F."
But suppose she had not shown such sense and daring, what then? She
shivered at the thought.
And a new problem now tortured her. Was it somehow owing to the fact
that Miss Marsh knew Osborne that Inspector Clarke had come upon her at
the moment of the two ladies' arrival? What was the relation between
Miss Marsh and Osborne? What was in this letter? It might be well to
see....
Undecided, Pauline stood on the stairs some seconds, letter in hand, all
the high color fled from lips and cheeks, her breast rising and falling,
no mere housemaid now, but a figure of anguish fit for an artist to
sketch there in her suspense, a well-molded girl of perfect curves and
graceful poise.
Then it struck her that Miss Marsh might be looking out of the window to
watch her hurrying with the letter to the pillar-box a little way down
the street, and at this thought she ran downstairs and out, hurried to
the pillar-box, raised her arm with the letter, inserted it in the slot,
drew it out swiftly and hiddenly again, slipped it into her pocket, and
sped back to the house.
In her rooms half an hour later she steamed the envelope open, and read
the avowal of another woman's passion and sympathy. It appeared, then,
that Miss Marsh was now in love with Osborne? Well, that did not
specially interest or concern her, Pauline. It was a good thing that
Osborne had so soon forgotten _cette salope_, Rose de Bercy. She,
Pauline, had conceived a fondness for Miss Marsh; she had detested her
mistress, the dead actress. At the first chance she crept afresh into
the street, and posted the letter in grim earnest. But an hour had been
lost, an hour that meant a great deal in the workings of this tragedy of
real life and, as a minor happening, some of the gum was dissolved off
the flap of the envelope.
Inspector Furneaux, as he had promised after the inquest, called upon
Rosalind during the afternoon. They had an interview of some length in
Mrs. Prawser's drawing-room, which was otherwise untenanted. Furneaux
spoke of the picturesqueness of Tormouth, but Rosalind's downright
questioning forced him to speak of himself in the part of the decrepit
Mr. Pugh, and why he had been there as such. He had gone to have a look
at Osborne.
"Is his every step, then, spied on in this fashion?" asked Rosalind.
"No," answered Furneaux. "The truth is that I had had reason to think
that the man was again playing the lover in that quarter----"
"Ah, playing," said Rosalind with quick sarcasm. "It is an insipid
phrase for so serious an occupation. But what reason had you for
thinking that he was playing in that particular mood?"
"The reason is immaterial.... In fact, he had impressed on the back of a
letter a name--I may tell you it was 'Rosalind'--and sent it off
inadvertently----"
"Oh, poor fellow! Not so skilled a villain then, after all," she
murmured.
"But the point was that, if this was so, it was clear to me that he
could not be much good--I speak frankly----"
"Very, sir."
"And with a good meaning to _you_."
"Let us take it at that. It makes matters easier."
"Well, as I suspected, so I found. And--I was disgusted. I give you my
assurance that he had professed to Mademoiselle de Bercy that he--loved
her. He had, he had! And she, so pitifully handled, so butchered, was
hardly yet cold in her grave. Even assuming his perfect innocence in
that horrible drama, still, I must confess, I--I--was disgusted; I was
put against the man forever. And I was more than disgusted with him, I
was concerned for the lady whose inclinations such a weather-vane might
win. I was concerned before I saw you; I was ten times more concerned
afterwards. I travelled to town in the same compartment as you--I heard
your voice--I enjoyed the privilege of breathing the same air as you and
your charming mother. Hence--I am here."
Rosalind smiled. She found the detective's compliments almost
nauseating, but she must ascertain his object.
"Why, precisely?" she asked.
"I want to warn you. I had warned you before: for I had given a certain
girl whose love Mr. Osborne has inspired a hint of what was going on,
and I felt sure that she would not fail to tell you who 'Mr. Glyn' was.
Was I not right?"
Rosalind bent her head a little under this unexpected thrust.
"I received a note," she said. "Who, then, is this 'certain girl, whose
love Mr. Osborne has inspired,' if one may ask?"
"I may tell you--in confidence. Her name is Prout. She is his
secretary."
"He is--successful in that way," observed Rosalind coldly, looking down
at a spray of flowers pinned to her breast.
"Too much so, Miss Marsh. Now, I felt confident that the warning given
by Miss Prout would effectually quash any friendship between a lady of
your pride and quality and Mr. Glyn--Osborne. But then, through your
thick veil I noticed you at the inquest: and I said to myself, 'I am
older than she is--I'll speak to her in the tone of an old and
experienced man, if she will let me.'"
"You see, I let you. I even thank you. But then you notice that Mr.
Osborne is just now vilified and friendless."
"Oh, there is his Miss Prout."
Rosalind's neck stiffened a little.
"That is indefinite," she said. "I know nothing of this lady, except
that, as you tell me, she is ready to betray her employer to serve her
own ends. Mr. Osborne is my friend: it is my duty to refuse to credit
vague statements made against him. It is not possible--it cannot be----"
She stopped, rather in confusion. Furneaux believed he could guess what
she meant to say.
"It _is_ possible, believe me," he broke in earnestly. "Since it was
possible, as you know, for him to turn his mind so easily from the dead,
it is also possible----"
"Oh, the dead deceived him!" she protested with a lively flush. "The
dead was unworthy of him. He never loved her."
"_He_ deceived _her_," cried Furneaux also in an unaccountable heat--"he
deceived her. No doubt she was as fully worthy of him as he of her--it
was a pair of them. And he loved her as much as he can love anyone."
"Women are said to be the best judges in such matters, Inspector
Furneaux."
"So, then, you will not be guided by me in this?" Furneaux said,
standing up.
"No. Nevertheless, I thank you for your apparent good intent," answered
Rosalind.
He was silent a little while, looking down at her. On her part, she did
not move, and kept her eyes studiously averted.
"Then, for your sake, and to spite him, I accuse him to you of the
murder!" he almost hissed.
She smiled.
"That is very wrong of you, very unlike an officer of the law. You know
that he is quite innocent of it."
"Great, indeed, is your faith!" came the taunt. "Well, then," he added
suddenly, "again for your sake, and again to spite him, I will even let
you into a police secret. Hear it--listen to it--yesterday, with a
search-warrant, I raided Mr. Osborne's private apartments. And this is
what I found--at the bottom of a trunk a suit of clothes, the very
clothes which the driver of the taxicab described as those of the man
whom he took from Berkeley Street to Feldisham Mansions on the night of
the murder. And those clothes, now in the possession of the police, are
all speckled and spotted with blood. Come, Miss Marsh--what do you say
now? Is your trust weakened?"
Furneaux's eyes sparkled with a glint of real hatred of Osborne, but
Rosalind saw nothing of that. She rose, took an unsteady step or two,
and stared through the window out into the street. Then she heard the
door of the room being opened. She turned at once. Before a word could
escape her lips, Furneaux was gone.
One minute later, she was scribbling with furious speed:
Do not read my letter. I will call for it--unopened--in person.
ROSALIND MARSH.
She tugged at the bell-rope. When Pauline appeared, she whispered:
"Quickly, Pauline, for my sake--this telegram." And as Pauline ran with
it, she sank into a chair, and sat there with closed eyelids and
trembling lips, sorely stricken in her pride, yet even more sorely in
her heart.
Now, if her letter had gone by the post by which she had sent it,
Osborne would have read it two hours or more before the telegram
arrived. But it had been kept back by Pauline: and, as it was, the
letter only arrived five minutes before the telegram.
At that moment Osborne was upstairs in his house. The letter was handed
to Hylda Prout in the library. She looked at it, and knew the writing,
for she had found in Osborne's room at Tormouth a note of invitation to
luncheon from Rosalind to Osborne, and did not scruple to steal it. A
flood of jealousy now stabbed her heart and inflamed her eyes. It was
then near five in the afternoon, and she had on a silver tripod a kettle
simmering for tea, for she was a woman of fads, and held that the
servants of the establishment brewed poison. She quickly steamed open
the letter--which had been already steamed open by Pauline--and, every
second expecting Osborne to enter, ran her eye through it. Then she
pressed down the flap of the envelope anew.
Two minutes afterwards Rupert made his appearance, and she handed him
the letter.
He started! He stared at it, his face at one instant pale, at the next
crimson. And as he so stood, flurried, glad, agitated, there entered
Jenkins with a telegram on a salver.
"What is it?" muttered Osborne with a gesture of irritation, for he was
not quite master of himself in these days. Nevertheless, to get the
telegram off his mind at once before rushing upstairs to read the letter
in solitude, he snatched at it, tore it open, and ran his eye over it.
"Do not read my letter. I will call for it _unopened_...."
He let his two hands drop in a palsy of anger, the letter in one, the
telegram in the other--bitter disappointment in his heart, a wild
longing, a mad temptation....
He lifted the letter to allow his gaze to linger futilely upon it, like
Tantalus.... In spite of his agitation he could not fail to see that the
envelope was actually open, for, as a matter of fact, the gum had nearly
all been steamed away....
It was open! He had but to put in his finger and draw it out, and read,
and revel, like the parched traveler at the solitary well in the desert.
Would that be dishonest? Who could blame him for that? He had not opened
the envelope....
"Miss Prout, just give me the gum-pot," he said, for he could see that
the gum on the flap was too thin to be of any service.
Hylda Prout handed him a brush, and he pasted down the flap, but with
fingers so agitated that he made daubs with the gum on the envelope,
daubs which anyone must notice on examination.
Meantime, he had dropped the telegram upon the table, and Hylda Prout
read it.