THE CAUSE OF THE INTERRUPTION
What she saw, and what they saw, spoke eloquently of the engrossed
attention with which they had watched the work of destruction being
carried on. So absorbed had they been in Bruce Graham's proceedings
that, actually without their knowledge, a burglarious entry had been
all but effected into the very room in which they were.
There was the proof before them.
The window had been raised, the blind and curtains pushed away, and a
man's head and shoulders thrust inside.
When Ella's exclamation called their attention to the intruder's
presence, they stared at him, as well they might, for a moment or two
with stupefied amazement; the impudence of the act seemed almost to
surpass the bounds of credibility. He, on his part, met their gaze
with a degree of fortitude, not to say assurance, which was more than
a little surprising.
To the fellow's character his looks bore evidence. The buttoning of
his coat up to his chin failed to conceal the fact that his neck was
bare, while the crushing of a dilapidated billycock down over his
eyes served to throw into clearer relief his unshaven cheeks and
hungry-looking eyes.
For the space of perhaps thirty seconds they looked at him, and he at
them, in silence. Then Jack moved hastily forward.
"You're a cool hand!" he cried.
But Madge caught him by the arm.
"Don't!" she said. "This is the man who stared through the window."
Jack turned to her, bewildered.
"The man who stared through the window? What on earth do you mean?"
"Don't!" she repeated. "I think that Mr. Graham knows this man."
The man himself endorsed her supposition.
"Yes, I'm rather inclined to think that Mr. Graham does."
His voice was not a disagreeable one; not at all the sort of voice
which one would have expected from a person of his appearance. He
spoke, too, like an educated man, with, however, a strenuous something
in his tone which suggested, in some occult fashion, the bitterness of
a wild despair.
Seeing that he remained unanswered, he spoke again.
"What's more, if there is a cool hand it's Mr. Graham, it isn't me. I
am a poor, starving, police-ridden devil, being hounded to hell, full
pelt, by a hundred other devils--but, Bruce Graham, what are you?"
They turned to the man who was thus addressed.
At the moment of interruption he had been levering a strip of wainscot
from its place with the aid of the inserted chisel. He still kept one
hand upon the handle, holding the hammer with the other, while he drew
his body back against the wall as close as it would go, and, with
pallid cheeks and startled eyes, he stared at the intruder as if he
had been some straggler from the spiritual world. From between his
lips, which seemed to tremble, there came a single word--
"Ballingall!"
"Yes, Ballingall! That's my name. And what's yours--cur, hound, thief?
By God! there have been people I've used badly enough in my time, but
none worse than you've used me."
"You are mistaken."
"Am I? It looks like it. What are you doing here?"
"You know what I'm doing."
"By God! I do--you're right there. And it's because you know I know,
that, although you're twice my size, and have got all the
respectability and law of England at your back, you stand there
shivering and shaking, afraid for your life at the sight of me."
"I am not afraid of you. I repeat that you are mistaken."
"And I say you lie--you are afraid of me, penniless, shoeless, hungry
beggar though I am. Your face betrays you; look at him! Isn't there
cowardice writ large?"
The man stretched out his arm, pointing to Graham with a dramatic
gesture, which certainly did not tend to increase that gentleman's
appearance of ease.
"Do you think I didn't see you the other day, knowing that the time
was due for me to come out of gaol, trying to screw your courage to
the striking point to play the traitor; how at the sight of me the
blood turned to water in your veins? Deny it--lie if you can."
"I do not wish to deny it, nor do I propose to lie. I repeat, for the
third time, that in the conclusions you draw you are mistaken. Miss
Brodie, this is the person of whom I was telling you--Charles
Ballingall."
"So you have told them of me, have you? And a pretty yarn you've spun,
I bet my boots. Yes, madam, I am Charles Ballingall, lately out of
Wandsworth Prison, sent there for committing burglary at this very
place. My God, yes! this house of haunting memories of a thousand
ghosts! I only came out the day before yesterday, and that same night
I committed burglary again--here! And now I'm at it for the third
time, driven to it--by a ghost! And, my God! he's behind me now."
A sudden curious change took place in the expression of the fellow's
countenance. Partially withdrawing his head, he turned and looked
behind him--as if constrained to the action against his will. His
voice shrank to a hoarse whisper.
"Is that you, Tom Ossington?"
None replied.
Madge moved forward, quite calm, and, in her own peculiar fashion,
stately, though she was a little white about the lips, and there was
an odd something in her eyes.
"I think you had better come inside--and, if convenient, please
moderate your language."
At the sound of her voice the man turned again, and stared.
"I beg your pardon. Were you speaking to me?"
"I was, and am. Mr. Graham has spoken to me of you, and I am quite
certain that in doing so he has told us nothing but the exact and
literal truth. In the light of what he has said, I know that I am
giving expression to our common feeling in saying that we shall feel
obliged to you if you will come in."
The man hesitated, fumbling with his hands, as if nonplussed.
"It's a good many years since I was spoken to like that."
"Possibly it's a good many years since you deserved to be spoken to
like that. As a rule, that sort of speech is addressed to us to which
we are entitled."
"That's true. By God, it is!"
"I believe I asked you to moderate your language."
"I beg your pardon; but it's a habit--of some standing."
"Then if that is the case, probably the time is come that it should
die. Please let it die--if for this occasion only. Must I repeat my
invitation, and press you to enter, in face of the eagerness to effect
an entrance which it seems that you have already shown?"
Mr. Ballingall continued to exhibit signs of indecision.
"This isn't a trap, or anything of that kind?"
"I am afraid I hardly understand you. What do you mean by a trap?"
"Well"--his lips were distorted by what was possibly meant for a
grin--"it doesn't want much understanding, when you come to think of
it."
"We ask you to come in. If you accept our invitation you will of
course be at liberty to go again whenever you please. We certainly
shall make no effort to detain you, for any cause whatever."
"Well, if that's the case, it's a queer start, by----" He seemed about
to utter his accustomed imprecation; then, catching her eyes,
refrained, adding, in a different tone, "I think I will."
He did, passing first one leg over the sill, and then the other. When
the whole of his body was in the room he removed his hat, the action
effecting a distinct improvement in his appearance. The departure of
the disreputable billycock disclosed the fact that his head was not by
any means ill-shaped. One perceived that this had once been an
intelligent man, whose intelligence was very far from being altogether
a thing of the past. More, it suggested the probability of his having
been good-looking. Nor did it need a keen observer to suspect that if
he was shaven and shorn, combed and groomed, and his rags were
exchanged for decent raiment, that there was still enough of manliness
about him to render him sufficiently presentable. He was not yet of
the hopelessly submerged; although just then he could scarcely have
appeared to greater disadvantage. His clothes were the scourings of
the ragman's bag--ill-fitting, torn, muddy. His boots were odd ones,
whose gaping apertures revealed the sockless feet within. In his whole
bearing there was that indefinable, furtive something which is the
hall-mark of the wretch who hopes for nothing but an opportunity to
snatch the wherewithal to stay the cravings of his belly, and who sees
an enemy even in the creature who flings to him a careless dole. This
atmosphere which was about him, of the outcast and the pariah, was
heightened by the obvious fact that, at that very moment, he was
hungry, hideously hungry. His eyes, now that they were more clearly
seen, were wolfish. In their haste to begin their treasure-hunting
they had not even waited to take away the tea-things. The man's
glances were fastened on the fragments of food which were on the
table, as if it was only by an effort of will that he was able to keep
himself from pouncing on them like some famished animal.
Madge perceived the looks of longing.
"We are just going to have supper. You must join us. Then we can talk
while we are eating. Ella, help me to get it ready. Sit down, Mr.
Ballingall, I daresay you are tired--and perhaps you had better close
the window. Ella and I shall not be long."
They made a curious trio, the three men, while the two girls made
ready. Ballingall closed the window, with an air half sheepish,
half defiant. Then placed himself upon a seat, in bolt upright
fashion, as if doubtful of the chair's solidity. Jack took up a
position in the centre of the hearthrug, so evidently at a loss for
something appropriate to say as to make his incapacity almost
pathetic--apparently the unusual character of the situation had tied
his tongue into a double knot. Graham's attitude was more complex. The
portion of the wainscot which he had undertaken to displace not having
been entirely removed, resuming his unfinished task, he continued to
wrench the boards from their fastenings as if intentionally oblivious
of the new arrival's presence.
Nor was the meal which followed of a familiar type. The resources of
the larder were not manifold, but all that it contained was placed
upon the table. The _pièce de resistance_ consisted of six boiled
eggs.
"If you boil all those eggs," Ella declared, when Madge laid on them a
predatory hand, "there'll be nothing left in the house for breakfast."
"The man is famished," retorted Madge with some inconsequence.
"What does breakfast matter to us if the man is starving." So the six
were boiled. And he ate them all. Indeed he ate all there was to
eat--devoured would have been the more appropriate word. For he
attacked his food with a voracity which it was not nice to witness,
bolting it with a complete disregard to rules which suggest the
advisability of preliminary mastication.
It was not until his wolf-like appetite was, at least, somewhat
appeased by the consumption of nearly all the food that was on the
table, that Madge approached the subject which was uppermost in all
their thoughts.
"As I was saying, Mr. Ballingall, Mr. Graham has told us of all that
passed between you."
At the moment he had a piece of bread in one hand and some cheese in
the other--all the cheese that was left. The satisfaction of his
appetite seemed to have increased his ferocity. Cramming both morsels
into his mouth at once, he turned on her with a sort of half-choked
snarl.
"Then what right had he to do that?"
"It seems to me that he had a good deal of right."
"How? Who's he? A lawyer out of a job, who comes and offers me his
services. I'm his client. As his client I give him my confidence.
Looking at it from the professional point of view only, what right has
he to pass my confidence on to any one?--any one! He's been guilty of
a dirty and disgraceful action, and he knows it. You know it, you do."
He snarled across the board at Graham. "If I were to report him to the
Law Society they'd take him off the rolls."
"I question it."
Madge's tone was dry.
"You may question it--but I know what I'm talking about. What use does
he make of the confidence which he worms out of me?"
"I wormed nothing out of you." The interruption was Graham's.
"Whatever you said to me was said spontaneously, without the slightest
prompting on my part."
"What difference does that make?--Then what use does he make of what I
said spontaneously? He knows that I am a poor driven devil, charged
with a crime which I never committed. I explain to him how it happened
that that crime comes to be laid against me, how I've been told that
there's money waiting for me in a certain place, which is mine for the
fetching, and how, when I went to fetch it, I was snapped for
burglary. I'm found guilty of what I never did, and I get twelve
months. In this country law and justice are two different things.
What does my lawyer--my own lawyer, who pressed on me his services,
mind!--do, while I'm in prison for what I never did? He takes
advantage of my confidence, and without a word to me, or a hint of any
sort, he goes and looks for my money--my money, mind!--on his own
account--and for all I know he's got it in his pocket now."
"That he certainly has not."
This was Madge.
"Then it isn't his fault if he hasn't. Can you think of anything
dirtier? not to speak of more unprofessional? Why one thief wouldn't
behave to another thief like that--not if he was a touch above the
carrion. Here have I, an innocent man, been rotting in gaol, think,
think, thinking of what I'd do with the money when I did come out, and
here was the man who ought to have been above suspicion, and whom I
thought was above suspicion, plotting and planning all the time how he
could rob me of what he very well knew was the only thing which could
save me from the outer darkness of hell and of despair."
Graham motioned Madge to silence.
"One moment, Miss Brodie. You must not suppose, Mr. Ballingall, that
because I suffer you to make your sweeping charges against me without
interruption, that I admit their truth, or the justice of the epithets
which you permit yourself to apply to me. On the contrary, I assert
that your statements are for the most part wholly unjustifiable, and
that where they appear to have some measure of justification, they are
easily capable of complete explanation. Whatever you may continue to
say I shall decline to argue with you here. If you will come to my
rooms I will give you every explanation you can possibly desire."
"Yes, I daresay,--and take the earliest opportunity of handing me over
to the first convenient copper. Unless I'm mistaken, that's the kind
of man you are."
Madge caught the speaker by the sleeve of his ragged coat, with a
glance at Graham, whose countenance had grown ominously black.
"If you will take my advice, Mr. Ballingall, since it is plain that
you know nothing of the mind of man Mr. Graham really is, instead of
continuing to talk in that extremely foolish fashion you will listen
to what I have to say. The night before last we were the victims of an
attempted burglary----"
"I did it--you know I did it. I give myself away--if there's any
giving about it. You can whistle for a constable, and give me into
charge right off; I'm willing. Perhaps it'll turn out to be the same
bobby I handled before, and then he'll be happier than ever."
"I am sorry to learn that you were the burglar--very sorry. My friend,
Miss Duncan, and I were alone in the house, a fact of which you were
probably aware." That Mr. Ballingall might still be possessed of some
remnants of saving grace was suggested by the fact that, at this
point, he winced. "Other considerations aside, it was hardly a heroic
action to break, at dead of night, into a lonely cottage, whose only
inmates were a couple of unprotected girls."
"There was a revolver fired."
"As you say, there was a revolver fired--by me, at the ceiling. Does
that tend to strengthen the evidence which goes to show that the deed,
on your part, was a courageous one?"
"I never said that it was."
"You are perfectly conscious that we shall not whistle for a
policeman, and that we shall not give you into charge. Is it necessary
for you to talk as if you thought we should?"
"Am I to be robbed----"
"I fancy that the robbing has not been all upon one side." Mr.
Ballingall did not look happier. "The burglar left behind him a scrap
of paper----"
"Oh, I did, did I? I wondered where it was."
"At present it is in the possession of the police."
"The devil!"
"You need not be alarmed." Mr. Ballingall had suddenly risen, as if
disturbed by some reflection. "That was before we knew by whom we had
been favoured. Now that we do know, the paper will not be used in
evidence against you--nor the police either. Before handing over that
scrap of paper we took a copy of the writing which was on it. That
writing was a key to two secret hiding-places which are contained
within this house."
"How do you know that?"
"By exercising a little of my elementary common sense. Observe, Mr.
Ballingall." Rising from her seat, she crossed to the door. "On that
paper which you were so good as to leave behind you it was written,
'Right'--I stand on the right of the door. 'Straight across'--I walk
straight across the room. 'Three'--I measure three feet horizontally.
'Four'--and four feet perpendicularly. 'Up'--I push the panel up; it
opens, and I find that there is something within. That, Mr.
Ballingall, is how I know the paper was a guide to two secret
hiding-places--by discovering the first. What is the matter with the
man? Has he gone mad?"
The question, which was asked with a sudden and striking change of
tone, was induced by the singularity of Mr. Ballingall's demeanour. He
had started when Madge took up her position at the door, eyeing her
following evolutions speechlessly, breathlessly, as if spellbound. Her
slightest movement seemed to possess for him some curious fascination.
As she proceeded, his agitation increased; every nerve seemed strained
so that he might not lose the smallest detail of all that happened,
until when, with dramatic gestures, she imitated the action of
striking the panel, raising it, and taking out something which was
contained within, he broke into cry after cry.
"My God!--my God!--my God!" he repeated, over and over again.
Covering his face with his hands, as if he strove to guard his eyes
against some terrible vision, he crouched in a sort of heap on the
floor.