"God knows what it is--perhaps murder. The girl heard it and fainted.
She'll be all right in a minute if I can lay her down. I never thought
any woman weighed half as much. Anyway, she's coming to and that's
something--if you could call a policeman, sir."
He was a self-possessed gentleman, I must say, and, looking up and down
the street, while I set the girl down on the footboard of the car, he
espied the little messenger boy who had helped us to carry the basket
into the house and sent him for a policeman. Betsy had opened her eyes
by this time, but all she could say had no meaning for me, nor was it
any clearer to him. When we had got her across to his surgery and left
her there, we returned to the house together, and as we went I tried to
tell him just what had happened and how I came to be mixed up in such a
strange affair. The story was still half told when we mounted the
steps of Bredfield and walked straight up to the basket which had
scared the girl out of her wits and left me wondering whether I was
awake or dreaming. Now, however, I had no doubt at all about the
matter, for whoever was under that lid was struggling pretty wildly to
get free, and would have broken the cords in another minute if the
doctor had not cut them.
A couple of slashes with a lancet severed the stout rope with which my
"bundle" had been tied, and a third cut the bit of string which bound
the hasp to the wickerwork. I stepped back instinctively as the
gentleman raised the lid, and so, to be honest, did he--the same
thought, I am sure, being in both our heads and the belief that our own
lives might be in danger. When the truth was revealed, my first
impulse was to laugh aloud, my second to set off in my car without a
moment's loss of time, and try to lay by the heels the pair of villains
who had done this thing.
In a word, I may tell you that the basket contained a young girl,
apparently not more than fifteen years of age; that she was dressed in
rags, though apparently a lady of condition, and that when we lifted
her out it appeared that her reason had gone and that her young life
might shortly follow it.
I've been through some strange times in my life; had many a peep into
the next world, so to speak; seen men die quick and die slow--but for
real right-down astonishment and pity I shall never better that scene
in the Boundary Road, St. John's Wood, if I live as long as the
patriarchs.
Just picture the brightly lighted hall and the open basket, and this
pretty little thing with yellow hair streaming over her shoulders and
her bare arms extended as though in entreaty toward the doctor and me,
and such cries upon her lips as though we, and not the men who had sent
her here, had been her would-be murderers. I tell you that I would
have sold my home to save her, and that's no idle word. Unhappily, I
could do nothing, and what I would have done the police forbade me to
do, for there were three of them in the room before five minutes had
passed; and I might be forgiven for saying that half the local force
was present inside half an hour.
Well, you know what a policeman is when anything big turns up; how
there's a mighty fine note-book about two foot long to be produced, and
perhaps a drop of whisky and soda to whet his pencil, and then the
questions and the answers and what not--all the time the thief is
running hard down the back street and the gold watch is sticking out of
his boot.
I answered perhaps a hundred and fifty questions that night, and nobody
any the wiser for them. Notes were taken of everything: the time I set
out, where my father was born, what they paid me for the job, the
address of the garage, Christian name and surname of Abraham
Moss--whether I'd had my licence endorsed or kept it clean--until at
last, able to stand it no longer, I told the inspector plainly that
this wasn't Colney Hatch, and the sooner he understood as much the
better.
"Here's my car and there's the street," said I; "will you drive to
Richmond Road and see the house for yourself or will you not? I tell
you there were two of them, and one may be there now. You can prove it
for yourself or let it go, as you like. But don't say it wasn't talked
about or I shall know how to contradict you."
He came down to ground at this and consented to go with me. We were
back again in the Richmond Road inside a quarter of an hour and
knocking at the door of the house where I had picked the basket up
about two minutes later. A very old woman opened to us this time, and
answered very civilly that the two strange gentlemen had left for the
Continent by the evening train, and she had no idea if they would
return or no. They had always paid her regularly, she said, though not
often at home; while as for their room, we could examine that with
pleasure. The more amazing confession came after, for when she was
pressed to tell us something about the young lady, she declared stoutly
that she had never seen one, and that the Messrs. Picton--for so she
called her lodgers--kept no female company, and very rarely had asked
even a gentleman to their rooms.
The inspector listened to all she had to say and then made a formal
search of the house. It would be waste of time to insist that he found
nothing--not so much as a scrap of paper or an empty collar-box to
enlighten him; but he gave strict orders that no one was to enter the
men's room upon any pretext whatsoever; and when he had locked it and
pocketed the key, he made me drive him back to the Boundary Road and
then up to the hospital at Hampstead, to which the little girl had been
carried and where she was then lying. Naturally I had the _entrêe_ as
well as he--for there were three or four swagger men from Scotland Yard
on the carpet by this time, and all of them mighty anxious to make my
acquaintance. From these I learned that the child was still incoherent
in her talk, and utterly unable to remember who she was or whence she
had come. Fright had paralysed her faculties. She might have been
born yesterday for all she knew about it.
For my part, I had a strong desire to talk to the girl myself and put a
few questions which had come into my head while we were waiting; but
the police would have none of this, and the most they would permit me
to do was to look at her from the far end of the ward, which I did for
a long time, watching her face very closely, and wondering how
beautiful it was.
When they sent me away at last I returned to the garage down West, and
so to my bed, but not to sleep. It must have been three o'clock of the
morning by this time, and I lay until I heard some noisy church-clock
striking seven, when I determined to stop there tossing about no
longer, but to get up and read the morning papers. Few of them,
however, had more than a brief paragraph announcing the fact, and we
had to wait for the "evenings" to discover the real sensation. My
word, how thick they laid it on--and what a hero they made of me. I
must have been interviewed a dozen times that day, and when the
following morning's papers came, I read for the first time that a
reward of five hundred pounds had been offered for the capture of the
perpetrators of this outrage, and that it would be paid by the Editor
of the _Daily Herald_ on the day that the mystery was solved.
Of course, there were many theories. Some believed it to be a case of
abduction pure and simple, some of revenge; a few recommended the
doctors to follow the poison clue and to ascertain if the child had
been drugged before she was put into the basket.
Speaking for myself, I had an idea in my head, which I didn't mention
even to Betsy Chambers, whom it was necessary for me to see pretty
often about that time, and generally of evenings. This idea, I
suppose, would have knocked the Scotland Yard braves silly with
laughing; but I had no fancy to share five hundred with them--more
especially since they took seven fifteen off me at Kingston last Petty
Sessions--so I just kept a quiet tongue in my head and mentioned the
matter to nobody. Perhaps it was unfortunate I did not; I can't tell
you more than this, that the next ten days found me walking about Soho
as though I had a fancy to buy up the neighbourhood, and that on the
eleventh day precisely I found what I wanted--found it by what I might
have called a turn of Providence if I didn't know now it was something
very different.
I should remind you hereabouts that the case was still the rage of the
town, though hope of bringing the would-be assassins to justice had
almost been abandoned.
The little girl now began to remember her past in a dim sort of way,
and had told the police that she lived in a foreign country by the
sea--which was not the same as saying Southend-on-the-Mud by a long
way. Her father she recollected distinctly, and cried out for him very
often in her sleep. She did not seem to think she had a mother, and of
what happened in the Richmond Road her mind recalled nothing. I had
seen her twice; but she was so frightened when I went near her that the
police forbade me to go at all--and I do believe, upon my solemn word,
that if it hadn't been for the witnesses they would have said I had
something to do with the job myself.
This, be sure, didn't trouble me at all. What was in my mind was the
five hundred sterling offered by the _Daily Herald_ for the solution of
the mystery; and that sum I did not lose sight of night or day. To win
it I must discover the Yankee with the voice like a saw-mill, and the
little cove with the saucer eyes, and for these, upon an instinct which
I can hardly account for even to myself (save to say it was connected
with three days I spent in Paris eight months ago) I hunted Soho for
eleven days as other men hunt big game in Africa. And, will you
believe it, when I discovered one of them at last, it was not by my
eyes, but by his, for he spotted me at the very top of Wardour Street,
and, coming across the road, he slapped me on the shoulder, just as
though I had been his only brother let loose on society for the
especial purpose of shaking him by the hand.
"Why," says he, "I guess it's the coachman."
"Coachman be d----d," says I; "hasn't Pentonville taught you no better
manners than that? You be careful," says I, "or they'll be cancelling
your ticket-of-leave----"
He wasn't to be affronted, for he continued to treat me as though he
loved me and life had been a misery since we lost each other.
"Say," cried he, "you got through with the basket all right. Well, see
here, now; do you want to get that five hundred, Britten, or do you
not? I'll play the White Man with you--do you want to get it?"
"Oh," cried I, "if it's a matter of five hundred being put in the
cloak-room because there isn't a label on it----"
"Then come along," he rejoined, and, taking me by the arm, he led me
along the street, turned sharp round to the right into a place that
looked like a disused coach-house; and before I could wink my eye, he
dragged me through a door into a room beyond, and then burst out
laughing fit to split.
"Britten," says he, "you're fairly done down. I've got the cinch on
you, Britten. Don't you perceive that same?"
Well, of all the fools! My head spun with the thought; not at first
the thought of fear, mind you, though fear followed right enough, but
just with the irony of it all, and the rightdown lunacy which sent me
into this trap as a fly goes into a spider's web. And this man would
suck me dry; I hadn't a doubt of it; a word might cost me my life.
"Well," I rejoined, knowing that my safety depended upon my wits, "and
what if I am? Do you suppose I came here without letting Inspector
Melton know where I was coming? You'd better think it out, old chap.
There may be two at the corner and both on the wrong side. Don't you
make no mistake."
He laughed very quietly, and as though to make his own words good he
put up the shutters on the only window the miserable den of a place
possessed. We were in a kind of twilight now, in a miserably furnished
shanty, with the paper peeling off the walls and the fire-grate all
rusted and the very boards broken beneath our feet. And I believed he
had a pistol in his pocket, and that he would use it if I so much as
lifted my hand.
"Oh," says he presently, and in a mocking tone which ran down my back
like cold water from a spout. "Oh, you're a brave boy, Britten, and
when you spread yourself about the tecs, I like you. Now, see here,
did I try to murder that girl or did I not? Fair question and fair
answer. Am I the man the police are looking for, or is it another?"