THE STRANGE HOUSE AT SCALBY
To pretend that Paul Renishaw and the sham detective, Josiah Sawdry,
were not tremendously excited by the prospect of their visit to Scalby
would be both useless and foolish. Naturally enough, the two men
looked forward to this interview with poor demented Rebecca Charlton
with the greatest anxiety and eagerness, though no doubt each was
urged forward by a totally different reason.
Thus, the journalist, for example, only cared that the innocence of
his friend, Arthur Hudson, should be proved and set above the
suspicion of the censorious. If that act implicated Ventris
Blake--good. The man was a rogue, and it was only right that the mask
of a respectable life should be torn from his features, and that he
should stand revealed to the whole world as the impudent satyr he
undoubtedly was. If, on the contrary, the millionaire escaped his just
deserts, and some other figure loomed forward as the murderer of
Aimée Blake, the venture would answer equally well. Arthur would be
released. His marriage with Winifred Pontifex would be hurried
forward. The girl, too, would be saved.
On the other hand, Josiah Sawdry’s thoughts were all for himself. He
had mixed much too deeply in the shady throng that flit goblin-like
through the dirty bye-paths of city life to care seriously whether one
more innocent man was hanged, or a true love hopelessly ruined and
broken. To his mind, indeed, the one factor in that expedition was his
own cleverness. Had he not been the one to see that the criminal could
be no other than this wild, weird creature freshly released from
Brentwood Asylum? And on the principle of “to the vulture, the
carcase,” or, perhaps, more politely still, “to the victor, the
spoils,” was he not entitled to claim his own payment out of it? In
this case, commercial and social rehabilitation and a life appointment
in the snug and comfortable offices of “Palamountains Limited” that
meant ease and a certain five pound a week? Consequently, his feelings
were not very far different to those he had experienced in his early
days in the city, when he had, to use the vernacular of the Stock
Exchange, tried to “pull a good thing off.” This alliance with Paul
was “a good thing,” he was certain. By hook or by crook, it must be
cemented by success.
So that strangely assorted pair, the optimist and the opportunist,
stepped forward briskly in the crisp January air. Maybe, neither of
them was quite right in his mental outlook--maybe, the absolutely
unselfish man is as foolish as the man who cannot see anything except
that precise gap where he “comes in,” but from the point of view of
accomplishing what they had set themselves to do, the alliance was a
good one enough, and few of us to-day have any doubt as to the one
person with whom we would have exchanged places had we been proffered
the chance.
Very soon, too, they reached the house they sought--a picturesque but
deserted looking farm residence, built about the time of Queen
Elizabeth and set back some fifty yards from the road on a raised lawn
which was dominated by a huge Crimean cannon. The first plot of land
reached, on passing through the familiar white gate, was also grass
laid, with trees running along the side, fringed by a deep, dank,
stagnant pool. To this succeeded another gate, and a drive, and then
the house itself, over which a strange silence and melancholy seemed
to brood. The place, in point of fact, was too remote from the road
for any sounds of passing traffic to penetrate, and as the farm
buildings were deserted, and no fowls wandered about the yards or the
orchard, there was over all a sense of infinite mystery and
desolation.
“What a dreadful place for a born Londoner like Rebecca Charlton to
take refuge in,” whispered Sawdry. “If she wasn’t mad when she came
here, the gloom and oppressive atmosphere of this ancient pile are
quite enough to wear out every nerve and sound thought she could ever
have, away from her dear murky Thames and the ceaseless roll and boom
of the traffic up and down Queen Victoria Street.”
“I am only afraid this may have so preyed on her mind that she will be
too far gone to be of any practical use to us,” added Paul. “After
all, we want something coherent out of her, remember. We shan’t be
able to produce her as the real criminal unless we can more or less
prove her guilt in open court.”
Sawdry took the old rust-eaten, weather-beaten knocker in his hand,
and gave a knock that seemed to go reverberating through empty
galleries and dozens of deserted furnitureless rooms. There followed
some scuffling, scratching sounds, almost immediately afterwards.
“Rats, only rats,” explained Paul, whose hearing was more acute than
his companion’s, and he drew back a step and gazed up at the windows
in front of the house. All were closed and shuttered, the glass being
stained mud colour with storm and dust and rain.
Not a sign, indeed, showed that the place was inhabited. Not a shutter
moved. The chimneys remained smokeless. Sawdry bent down and applied
both ear and eye to the keyhole. Everything appeared as still and as
desolate as a tomb.
“It’s no good,” he said at length rising and facing the journalist.
“We can’t stay here all day when such momentous results depend on our
action. We must strike at once, or the poor creature may get some
other crazy notion in her head and take herself off to sea--to Holland
or some God-forsaken country like that, and may never be heard of
again, for her thoughts might turn to suicide and she might even
plunge into the Scheldt.”
“Well, let us break in then,” returned Paul calmly. “I am no advocate
of sitting down and waiting like those poor creatures did in the Bible
for an angel to come down and a miracle to happen. After all, you have
plenty of excuse for doing so. The woman wrote to her husband and
asked him to send you up here to her at once. Well, you’ve come,
that’s all.” And the Jew nodded and looked round for some suitable
object with which he could smash in the panels of the door.
“Stop! Stop! don’t let us be violent,” said Paul with a shudder as he
saw Sawdry’s crude preparations.
“‘Gently go-ee
Monkey catch-ee,’
as ‘B.P.’ told his comrades at Mafeking. After all, a loud noise might
frighten her so much that she would throw herself from an upstairs
window to escape our attentions. Besides, I don’t think it will be
necessary to make any real noise over the business. I forgot to tell
you that once I had a lesson in housebreaking from one of the
cleverest men that ever used a ‘jemmy’,” smiling, as he recalled how
his experiences in this line had already proved of service to Arthur
when they wished to spy on “The Three Glass Eyes” in the millionaire’s
garret, and it was necessary to break into the caretaker’s deserted
rooms.
A moment later Renishaw had dropped to his knees, and gently pressed
his shoulder against the woodwork. As he had suspected, he now proved
from the way in which the door gave in places, that no bolts had been
shot in their sockets. All that stood against them indeed, was simply
an antiquated lock--but as the key had been conveniently left in it,
all that was necessary for any cracksman, amateur or professional, to
do was to take a miniature pair of pincers (which he always carried in
his revolver pocket) and to fix them on the shaft of the key and turn
it, which as a matter of fact, he did with one turn of the wrist.
“Now we can enter,” he cried with a smile of gratification, and
springing to his feet again he twisted round the handle of the door,
which yielded, and both men stepped swiftly across the threshold.
A damp, musty smell like that of newly turned earth assailed their
nostrils immediately they did so. It shewed, at all events, that the
door had not been opened very recently, but as the hall was so dark,
it was difficult to see very far beyond the doorway; and when the door
itself was closed, so that no chance passers by might become
suspicious, they found themselves completely enveloped in blackness.
Luckily, Paul carried a box of wax vestas, and lighting one of these
they pressed forward to one of the rooms the door of which stood open.
As they had surmised, this was bare of all decoration or furniture,
but the Jew’s quick eyes caught a glimpse of an empty beer bottle
containing a piece of candle in the fireplace--and instantly he
pounced on this and lit the candle which was three or four inches in
length.
“Now you’ve got your hands free,” he said to Paul. “Just draw your
shooting iron, will you? I don’t expect for a moment that you will
have to use it--that anybody will dare to molest us--but it is just as
well to show even Mrs. Charlton (if she has got any glimmering of
reason left) that we are quite prepared if she desires to be nasty, to
be nasty too.”
Paul nodded and took out his revolver, altering the trigger to full
cock. He had no sentimental objection to the use of a weapon--and he
had no intention of offering himself for a target to unseen, unknown
enemies without a fair chance of making himself objectionable to an
equal degree in return.
A door at the far end of this room led into a passage that
communicated with the kitchens, but just as he was about to open it he
was certain he heard a sound like a groan come from some space beneath
his feet. Instantly he stopped and listened again. Yes, there was no
doubt about it. He had heard aright. There was somebody in the cellar,
groaning, apparently in great distress.
Sawdry now caught the same sound, and nodding to his companion,
enjoining stealth and silence, he crept softly through the doorway
into the passage where he came upon a few steps that led downward to
another door which evidently communicated with the cellars.
Down these he crept like a shadow, Paul following him closely. Away in
the distance now they caught sight of some rays of artificial light
curiously like those of their own candle, and, guided by these, they
came quickly to an arched-in cellar brilliantly illuminated by candles
stuck in certain beer-bottles, hundreds of which had been scattered
about and literally covered the floor of the place almost to the
depths of their knees.
And in the centre of these, squatted the woman they sought, Rebecca
Charlton, who was seated on a truss of straw and fondling a big black
rat which she had evidently only recently tamed.
For a few seconds nobody uttered a word. That strange creature
remained where she was, seated on a pile of straw, crooning
meaninglessly over her pet rat, and rocking herself to and fro with
her eyes fixed on a piece of blank white-washed wall in front of her.
At a sign from the Jew, Paul Renishaw himself quietly pocketed his
revolver, and took a seat too on an upturned empty case beside Josiah
Sawdry, who now did nothing but nurse the empty beer bottle bearing a
lighted candle. And all about them were strewn the signs of the
woman’s wild debauch--of a woman who had gone to the task with all the
frenzy and delirium of the born dipsomaniac and had smashed or drunk
all that she could lay her hands on.
At that moment, however, it was obvious she was sober enough. There
was a steadiness about the swing of her body and the way she used her
fingers and her eyes when her pet, alarmed by the presence of
strangers, tried to make its escape, that showed her brain was not
much out of its normal balance. Just then too she spoke--and her tones
were clear and bell-like, and she came in a most unfeminine way
straight to the point.
“I am glad to see you, Josiah,” she said, twisting round and facing
Sawdry who contented himself with bowing. “Very glad. Somehow though I
knew that you would come. It seems to me now the time never was when
you were not a true friend of mine. Leastways now I need your
assistance.”
“Very good,” said the Jew briskly. “I shall be very glad to give it to
you. I may be blunt--but I can be relied on.” And quite unconscious of
his own hypocrisy, he put the bottle he was nursing down on the floor
and patted himself approvingly on the chest.
“That is so,” the woman returned, but there was no emotion or
suggestion of gratitude in her voice. “You always were true where
truth paid you. Why, however did you bring a gentleman, a stranger,
with you? How did you know that the business I wanted you for was not
quite private or confidential?”
“I couldn’t help it,” Sawdry answered quickly. “I wasn’t really equal
to finding you alone. Besides, Mr. Renishaw here is a gentleman.
Anything he hears now won’t be shouted all over Scarborough.”
“Very well,” replied Rebecca Charlton listlessly. “First of all, I
want you to take charge of these Bank of England notes.” She fumbled
in an old petticoat she was wearing, and then took therefrom a package
exactly similar to the one which the newsboy had found on the Filey
road and which it was supposed had been given to the
telegraph-operator Drummond by Aimée Blake’s murderer, but it was
considerably larger. “Count them,” she added. “In all, they ought to
total two thousand. And, perhaps, after all, it is well as that
gentleman came with you. He will see nobody robs you--or me!” And she
gave a low mirthless laugh.
Sawdry bent down and did as he had been directed. Yes, in all they
reached the respectable total of £2,000, and were also obviously
genuine. Paul also checked their number and narrowly inspected each
one for proof that they were not false. He had to agree they certainly
stood for a very solid and positive £2,000.
“The point is, what do you want me to do with them?” said Sawdry
finally, placing two very distinctive india-rubber bands around them
and thrusting them into his pocket. “Open an account at some good bank
for you, and invest the balance in good dividend-earning bank shares?
Or would you rather I bought you some gilt-edged securities like
consols or colonial inscribed stock, stuff that can’t break or melt
and will be always there when you want to lay your hands on the
solid?”
“Neither,” said the woman shortly. “If I had, I wouldn’t have sent for
you. I’d have gone to the bank or the stockbroker myself. No, I’ll
tell you what I want you to do for me. Split that two thousand into
two sums of a thousand each. Take the first thousand and buy a Post
Office annuity for my husband. He’ll probably drink himself to death
just like I shall, but then he’ll die happy if young, and nobody will
be the poorer for his loss.”
“And the other thousand?” queried the Jew greedily, moistening his
lips unconsciously in the hope that after all some pickings in this
unexpected windfall might come in his direction.
“Take it to the best detective that has ever chucked up his job at
Scotland Yard in disgust at the wooden way they there treat men with
brains. Give it to him and tell him to find the murderer of Aimée
Blake.”
“My!” The candle he had taken up again almost dropped from the hands
of Josiah Sawdry at the same moment as this expression of absolute
stupefaction fell from his lips. There was something indeed almost
ludicrous now in his looks of profound amazement. Either this woman
was the most finished actress he had ever seen or, what appeared more
likely, she had no hand in the doing to death of Ventris Blake’s
wife--in which event where would be his promised £5 a week?
For a second his reason quite deserted him. “Oh, talk to her
Renishaw,” he gasped. “I can’t. I’m stumped!” And he sprang to his
feet and began to pace up and down the cellar. Paul smiled
indulgently, but at the bottom he too began to fear that that house of
speculation they had built in that arbour off the Filey road after
they had found that gold link stamped “K” was perilously near
destruction. With an effort, nevertheless, he rallied himself.
“You wish them to find the murderer of Aimée Blake!” he said turning
and looking keenly at Rebecca Charlton. “But there is no need to spend
any more money on that quest. They have found the criminal. It was the
work of a wretch named Arthur Hudson, who is now safe enough in
Scarborough police station.”
“Don’t you believe it,” retorted the woman, with a cunning shake of
the head. “I know better than that. Arthur Hudson is no more guilty of
the crime than I am.”
Paul’s heart gave a great leap! After all, then, his theory that
Ventris Blake had really killed his wife to be free to win Winifred
Pontifex might not be so far out as Sawdry had contended. He would
move with caution. He seemed on the brink of great far-reaching,
startling discoveries.
“But how can you be so sure of it?” he questioned. “There are plenty
of witnesses against Hudson. The matter doesn’t seem to me to admit of
any doubt he did it, and fled at once back to London.”
“None the less, you are wrong,” persisted the woman; and then,
catching sight of Sawdry’s look of incredulity, which he had purposely
made as irritating as he could, she added: “And you, Josiah, needn’t
twist up your face in scorn like that. I haven’t forgotten what I said
to you in our old rooms in Queen Victoria Street. I did hate Aimée
Blake. I would willingly have given half my life to see her stretched
dead in front of me. Only I didn’t kill her.”
“What are you doing here in Scarborough then?”
The words came from Paul--and behind them seemed a clash of steel.
“I am hiding myself as I promised a certain party.”
“Who was that party?”
“Why the real murderer of Aimée Blake of course.”
Paul and Sawdry exchanged glances. By this time they had come to have
very grave doubts of the speaker’s sanity. Her replies were prompt
enough and clear enough, it was true--but they led to nothing and to
nowhere. Everything indeed that she said seemed to make the confusion
more confounded.
The Jew now took up the conversation.
“Look here, Rebecca,” he said sharply, taking up a position straight
in front of her; “put that wretched rodent you are hugging down for a
moment and talk quite plainly to me. What the deuce have you been up
to since you did that moonlight flit from your home? And where in this
bleak, desolate, deserted hole of a house did you raise a big sum like
this two thousand pounds.”
The woman gave a hoarse chuckle. “Money as ever, Josiah,” she replied
tauntingly. “Always money with you gentlemen of the crooked noses--and
consciences. That twist was placed on you Jews’ phizzes by your Maker
to shew plainly to everyone that clapped eyes on you, that you had a
twist in your mind as well. The mere sight of money sends you all
demented or frantic or consumed with covetousness!”
“Well, answer my questions that’s all,” said Sawdry sullenly. “Don’t
beat any more about the bush. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth.”
“All right,” said the woman changing her tone. “I won’t chaff you any
further. As a matter of fact, you annoyed me by your denseness. I
will, however, be patient and explain to you more fully so that there
can be no excuse for you not understanding me this time. Well, as you
ought to have guessed, I did come to Scarborough to kill Aimée Blake.
I bought a knife in Gray’s Inn Road for that precise purpose, and also
a return tourist ticket for a sovereign at the office at King’s Cross,
feeling sure that I should be able to drop on her when she took her
walks abroad, and to plunge it in her and to slip off before anybody
dared lift a finger to detain me.
“When I got to Scarborough I made a point of enquiring at all the
principal hotels, and I soon spotted the one she was at. For some
hours I hung about outside, but at length I was rewarded for she came
out when it was dark and late! and quite unattended, she set off at a
brisk walk along the Filey road. I followed her. My plan of action was
perfected. ‘When you turn to come home again I will spring out of the
shadow and bury this steel in your foul and treacherous heart,’ I told
myself, ‘I will not do it a moment sooner. I will not fail a moment
later.’
“For several miles she walked on. Apparently she was very excited and
very determined. I too had made up my mind, and so although I got some
fine chances to slip up behind her and to finish her off, I wouldn’t
do it. ‘A bargain’s a bargain even to yourself;’ said I. ‘Keep it, and
you will be all right.’ Only as it happened I wasn’t. The man she had
gone to meet was before me, and just as she reached a lonely spot he
sprang out from behind a hedge and dashed out her brains with a hedge
stick.”
“A man?” queried both her hearers dumbfounded. “What man?”
“A man you ought both of you to know very well. He’s a big public
character in London although this time he was made up to resemble
Arthur Hudson exactly.”
“His name, his name,” cried both hearers, distracted.
“Why, the Rev. Duncan Kilroy, of course, the man at St. Sepulchre’s
Vicarage. He it was who gave me the two thousand to shut my mouth and
to come here to lie low until all the hue and cry was over.”
At first Paul could scarcely restrain a strong inclination to laugh
aloud. Rebecca Charlton’s assertion appeared so preposterous. Then he
chanced to turn and look at his companion. Instead of Josiah Sawdry’s
face expressing incredulity and amazement, another and totally
different feeling seemed struggling for expression--as though the Jew
had been recalled suddenly, by a chance phrase or name, to a series of
events which he had long since forgotten, and was now searching
helplessly in and out amongst them--intent only on piecing them
together to construct a new, a certain, and an absolutely reliable
clue.
“Surely,” the journalist began irritably, “you don’t credit this
amazing statement! Why, it knocks the bottom out of your own theory
completely. It starts a totally new chain of surmise--the end of which
might even land us in a bishop’s palace before we had finished with
it!” And again he shrugged his shoulders and laughed scornfully.
“I am not so sure that I have not been in the wrong,” replied Sawdry,
passing his hand nervously across his forehead. “After all, Mrs.
Charlton’s words are not such a surprise as they ought to be in the
circumstances. They have recalled to me a lot of things about Ventris
Blake’s past which I had dismissed as absolutely irrelevant.”
“But what about your own clue?” cried Paul triumphantly, “the gold
link?”
“Yes,” said the Jew, slowly, “what about that gold cuff link you lost,
Mrs. Charlton? Have you any idea where you dropped it?”
“Of course I have--I let it fall in that garden off the Filey road,
where the murderer of Aimée Blake washed the blood-stains off his
hands. I went into the exact greenhouse he took refuge in, and, in
poking about, the sleeve of my blouse caught on a rusty nail, and
snapped the gold band in half. I looked everywhere for it, but I could
not see it. Have you got it?” And she stretched out her fingers for it
with the most natural air in the world.
Paul hesitated--but only for a second. Then he resolved to play an
entirely different role with her--to appear to believe every word that
she uttered; and he gave her the tiny piece of gold marked “K” without
any demur. “I wish you would tell us in your own words,” he said
kindly, “all that you know about the Reverend Duncan Kilroy’s
association with the Blakes and my friend Arthur Hudson. At present we
don’t doubt what you assert--but without more particulars, we find it
very hard to understand why this well-known London clergyman should be
mixed up at all in a squalid crime such as this?”
“Then you need not be,” answered Rebecca Charlton. “First and
foremost, you must get fixed in your mind this fact--Duncan Kilroy and
his twin-brother, who used to be employed in the same office as Mr.
Hudson, namely ‘Palamountains Limited,’ and Ventris Blake have been
intimate friends for a number of years. Naturally, Duncan Kilroy
resented Mr. Hudson’s triumph over his twin-brother, for he had
expected that his brother would not only feather his nest out of old
Allen Palamountain, and would succeed to that fine business in
Cheapside as a matter of course, and become one of the richest house
agents in the City of London, but also that he would get the old man
to leave him a nice snug fortune by which he might buy his way to very
high preferment in the Church.
“As a consequence, when his twin-brother came to him, broken,
despairing and hopeless, a confirmed dipsomaniac, his hatred grew
beyond all bounds. Just as the brother sank lower and lower, passing
through the Triple Chambers of the Drunkard’s Doom--beer, whiskey,
brandy--so his determination to be revenged on Hudson grew from the
plain desire to the burning wish, and then on to positive mania.
“Finally, the brother died a raving drink-maniac in a top-room of St.
Sepulchre’s Vicarage. By his deathbed Duncan swore to pay Arthur
Hudson one even if it cost him his position in the Church. Now, in
matters like this, the form which the revenge takes turns very much on
the nature of the man who pants to be avenged. For instance, some
cannot rest by day or by night until they have set about their task
and either demolished their opponent utterly, or been propelled
themselves to their own destruction. Others can wait--wait one year,
two years, aye, even twenty years if necessary--and these are the most
dangerous, for they go on adding blow to blow, trap to trap, torture
to torture, and never, never let themselves be beaten.
“As it happened, however, chance favoured Duncan in a very curious
fashion in his desire to ruin Mr. Hudson. As no doubt you have
gathered by this time, this clergyman is a bad lot in every sense--and
particularly where it turns upon questions of women. In the course of
his nocturnal wanderings about this time, he came upon Aimée
Burgoyne--in point of fact, during a visit he had paid to a fellow
vicar in Peterborough. His desire to make love to her overcame every
other impulse, good and bad. He hastened back to London, to my little
cottage in Blackfriars Road, and, on some petty pretexts, he got some
well-known costumier and wig-maker to come there and make him up so
that he resembled Arthur Hudson exactly.
“Then he went back to Peterborough, and, taking rooms at the Angel
Hotel, he soon managed to contrive to call on the woman on a matter of
business connected with the painting of a portrait--and that
acquaintanceship rapidly ripened into the marriage we have heard so
much of lately. I, as you know, was one of the witnesses, and I got
fifty pounds for my trouble, but it went very rapidly in drink, alas!
Israel Sawdry was the other witness, and, as he stated, he went at the
request of the bride, but, growing suspicious, he started later to
make mischief; and so, to save his friend from exposure, Ventris Blake
gave the man a berth in his office in London, and then, finding him
utterly unscrupulous, he quickly promoted him to the confidential
position he now occupies.
“Unfortunately, the millionaire’s curiosity was aroused as to the kind
of woman for which his friend, Duncan Kilroy, had dared so much. In
return for saving him from the machinations of Israel Sawdry, he
stipulated that Duncan Kilroy should introduce him to the woman with
whom he had contracted this bigamous alliance. Fearful but powerless,
Kilroy did so. As the clergyman had dreaded, Aimée Burgoyne was
fascinated by Blake, particularly by his wealth. Indeed she loathed
the secrecy, the mystery, and the poverty, in which she was kept by
Kilroy, and finally the pair of them made Kilroy own his perfidy, and
then, to crown all, to marry them, which he did in some out of the way
village I can’t remember just now, but which act certainly brought him
many large gifts of money, both from the millionaire, and the woman
who had thrown him over for a better and a lawful union.
“At the same time it must not be supposed that Kilroy took to this
arrangement with any particular grace. As a matter of fact he did not.
He was inarticulate with rage over it--but, as I said at first, he was
the kind of man who could wait, and he waited, and finally evolved
this peculiarly diabolical scheme by which he confounded both his
enemies, Blake and Hudson, in one huge cataclysm of crime and
ill-starred passion. Of course, his initial difficulty was to get
Blake interested in Winifred Pontifex, but so curiously are the lives
of all of us mingled together, that he had a certain strand of a
connection to work upon in the fact of Russell Langford’s complicity
over a thing they call The Three Glass Eyes, and an old association
with her father, Colonel Pontifex. As it happened, too, Blake very
quickly wearied of his wife, and so he drank in greedily Kilroy’s
accounts of Winifred’s beauty and suggestions, how easy it would be
for him to terrorise Russell Langford and so get the niece entirely at
his mercy.
“When he had sufficiently inflamed Blake’s imagination, Kilroy took
the millionaire to a ball at Stamford, with the result you are
probably aware of. The girl’s charm but aloofness worked on the
wretched man like newly made wine, and, as Kilroy told me after the
murder, even Satan seemed at this point, to make a big move for him.
Not only was he able to produce that sham marriage certificate that
socially ostracised Arthur Hudson, but Aimée Blake herself suddenly
determined to get rid of Ventris and to make the clergyman take up
with her again. In vain Duncan Kilroy
wriggled--procrastinated--promised--protested. She was adamant; all at
once the woman seems to have realised what a terrible vampire she was
bound to and to have determined to free herself from him by the agency
of the very man who had led her into this pit of evil.
“For this precise purpose she went to Scarborough. From this place she
despatched telegram after telegram to St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage. The
burden of each one was the same. ‘Come to me. Go with me. Fail me, and
I expose you. But, I beseech you, go with me.’ In his despair, Kilroy
went to Blake and told him all about it. He begged him that just as he
had helped him over Israel Sawdry, he would assist him over this.
“But, of course, Blake did nothing of the sort. In the first place, he
told the wretched man that he never helped any lame dog more than once
over any critical stile. In the second, he suggested that it would pay
them both to see Mrs. Blake nicely interred in a freshly turfed grave,
and as he, Kilroy, was the one who was in danger from the woman it was
obviously Kilroy’s duty to take this little job in hand and to remove
the woman from their path for ever.
“Frantic and despairing Kilroy made that fatal appointment with Aimée
Blake on the Filey Road. As in the early Peterborough days, he had
only one idea--to use Arthur’s name and personality, and he did so in
this instance, so that when she scornfully rejected his appeal to
leave him alone, he fell on her without compunction, and killed her as
we have seen--certain that he would never be discovered.”