ALL ABOUT THOSE GLASS EYES
Rebecca Charlton finished her strange story with a sigh; and for a
few moments that oddly-assorted trio sat in the cellar of that
deserted house at Scalby without exchanging a word.
On both Paul Renishaw and Josiah Sawdry indeed the effect of her
recital had been little short of marvellous. At first they had
listened to her laborious explanations as to Kilroy and his twin
brother with something like looks of indulgent good nature. Then, as
the dramatic character of the plot began to unfold itself, and they
saw how clearly she had pieced in all those different and opposing
elements in the lives and fortunes of the persons involved in this
exceedingly modern tragedy of love and hate and passion until at last
the whole hideous mystery stood out boldly and distinctly as it had
been conceived in the minds of the monster who had originated it,
their faces changed like magic. Open scepticism gave way to doubt--for
several minutes their convictions hung nicely poised in the balance,
midway between absolute rejection and acceptance--until finally she
reached the most baffling point of all. “Why did some absolute
stranger personate Arthur Hudson in that sham marriage at
Peterborough?”
That was the real crux--and when that was solved in the perfect
complete way it was, they looked at each other, both convinced that
this woman spoke the truth, and nodded. For the rest of her story they
were plain level-headed yet sympathetic and unbiassed auditors. No
longer did they seek to persuade themselves that she was not a most
daring and cunning adventuress. They were her keen and eager partisans
and they simply tested each statement as she put it forth to assure
themselves that when it came before a judge and assize, and was torn
to pieces by the most acute legal minds they could find a way to prop
it up and make it emerge unshaken from the ordeal.
“We won’t trouble to discuss all the remarkable but convincing facts
you have put before us,” said Paul, rising at length and taking up one
of the lighted candles preparatory to making an ascent into the
daylight. “If we did we should sit here all night, and one of the
greatest scoundrels existing--Duncan Kilroy I mean--might escape from
justice. There is, however, one matter I don’t understand quite as
plainly as I ought to do. It is this. In what state of mind did you
leave Kilroy after the murder?”
“Distracted,” said the woman quietly. “Up to a point, of course,
everything went splendidly with him. His disguise was perfect. He
shewed himself about so that everybody might give such a description
of the murderer as would tally with the exact personal appearance of
Arthur Hudson, but when he went into the greenhouse whilst I waited
for him he got an ugly shock that quite turned his brain. A boy’s face
suddenly appeared at the glass! True, he threw something at it and
dashed out into the open, but, when he reached my side, his mind
seemed to have gone quite. At that time a bit of wind was playing
through the telegraph wires; and the doleful dirge-like sound racked
his nerves to such a degree that he could think of nothing else.
‘Listen to the law’s sleuth hounds’ he kept saying, stopping suddenly
and pointing to the lines over our heads. ‘How they whisper! How they
hate me! What dark evil things they will do to me when they get the
chance.’”
“No wonder he conceived that mad idea of tapping them,” rejoined
Sawdry, who had been quietly turning over the woman’s story to see if
he could find any weak point in it too, but could discover none. “Mrs.
Charlton has certainly disposed of the only difficulty which I could
see in the way of an arrest of the unworthy clergyman of St.
Sepulchre’s--that was the explanation of his gift of £500 to the
telegraph clerk Drummond. I have also just been glancing over the
bundle of bank notes she gave me, and which were handed to her by
Kilroy as a price of his silence. What do you think I have found
stamped on them? Why the same mark as I saw on the pile that were
given to Drummond--the mark of the Piccadilly branch of the London and
Westminster Bank, where doubtless we shall learn the Rev. Duncan
Kilroy, M.A., D.D., as he delights to call himself, has his private
account.”
“If that be so, the police will have got on his track before this for,
as you must remember, I sent what I will call the Drummond package of
Bank of England notes down to the Scarborough police station by a
local constable before we started to go to Scalby at all. Doubtless
the local detectives would at once wire that branch of the London and
Westminster Bank, and are now puzzling their brains to know why the
manager has wired back they were issued to a respectable West End
clergyman, and not, as they were certain, to my poor friend Arthur
Hudson.”
“Still,” remarked the Jew diplomatically, “we shan’t do much good in
confronting these Yorkshire Sherlock Holmeses unless we have something
pretty substantial to back up our opinions. What do you say, Mrs.
Charlton? You see, everything turns on you. Are you prepared to go
down with us to the Scarborough police station, and to make a clean
breast of all you have heard and known and suffered? If so, you
needn’t employ a firm of private detectives and spend a thousand
pounds on proving poor Hudson’s innocence. The police will do that for
you free?”
“But,” said the woman craftily, “suppose they insist on my giving up
the other thousand, what then? Poor Charlton will be as poor as ever
and maybe neither of us will get a cent.”
“I will promise in Mr. Hudson’s name to make good any loss like that,”
interposed Paul promptly. “Just leave it to me. You shall only gain in
pocket by speaking the truth.”
“And what’s going to happen to me,” queried the Jew with a comical
little grin. “I was promised a berth at Palamountain’s, worth £5 a
week for life, if a little theory of mine came off. It didn’t--but
still if it hadn’t been for it you might never have discovered Mrs.
Charlton and this little retreat of hers at Scalby and got, at a bound
as it were, right on top of the track.”
“My promise holds good still whoever is convicted,” said Paul, holding
out his hand which was shaken warmly by both his companions in turn.
“I only ask Mrs. Charlton to give me her word in one other little
matter. It is this--that until Mr. Hudson is liberated she will not go
on a drunken burst like this again;” and he pointed very gravely to
the hundreds of beer bottles that littered the floor of the cellar.
The woman flushed and hung down her head. “I promise,” she said. “You
can trust me. Had I not been mad indeed I would never have done it. As
it happened though it proved my salvation. It enabled me to
forget--everything--even my insensate rage against Aimée Blake. When
next I came to my senses I was a changed woman. I saw things in a
totally different light--in a word, I became quite sane again. And so
I shall remain. I shall touch no more drink.”
“Good,” said Paul gaily, secretly overjoyed. “Now we all understand
each other perfectly, we had better get off.” And waving the light he
carried, he advanced towards the cellar steps, and a few moments later
all three were soon stepping briskly along the road towards the
village.
Luckily just then an empty cab rumbled up to them. The driver had been
taking a well-known Scarborough tradesman to his home in this suburb,
to dine and was only too glad to get a fare on the return journey
which, spurred by the promise of double payment, he performed in an
incredibly short time.
Inside and outside the police station things had assumed their normal
appearance. The crowd that had listened to the proceedings with
breathless interest and attention when Arthur had been brought before
the local magistrates, had vanished now, and the street on the north
side were as quiet and deserted as though “The Romantic Affair at
Scarborough” was a story nine days old. Darkness, too, had set in that
January night. A cold wind swept past the Castle and went whistling
hungrily in and out of the doors and windows of the police station,
making the fat old sergeant who was dozing over the fire draw his
stool a little nearer and grunt a little more than was even his custom
when duty interfered with comfort.
“May I see the Chief Constable?” said Paul suddenly, looming up
against the counter flanked by his two companions.
The old fellow started up. “Certainly,” he replied, and before he
quite realised what he was doing he shewed the three of them into the
private office of the Chief Constable, who happened to be talking very
excitedly to two keen-looking men in plain clothes, detectives.
Naturally all three recognised Paul, and, gathering from his manner
that he had something important to communicate, they dropped the
bundle of bank notes and series of telegrams that had caused them all
this commotion, and let him take a chair and tell his story through
from beginning to end without any interruption.
Even the journalist felt that there was something strangely uncanny,
unnatural, in the way they took his disclosures. All their faces might
have been made of wax, so little emotion did they exhibit. Even when
he pushed forward Rebecca Charlton, and she filled in a complete
account of how she had talked and reasoned with Kilroy just after the
commission of the crime, and then advanced Josiah Sawdry and produced
the other bundle of notes, similar to those they had on the table in
front of them, the officers expressed neither surprise, dissent, nor
pleasure. They just let all three run themselves down before they
shewed a sign of the tremendous surprise they had in store for these
self-invited investigators who were actually prepared with evidence to
knock all their card castles to pieces. Then the Chief Constable rose,
and standing with his back to the fire, spoke:
“I am sure we are very much obliged to you for all the trouble you
have taken, Mr. Renishaw, and for this most valuable evidence which
you have put into our possession; also, I want to thank you for that
bundle of notes you sent down to me by one of our officers on the
South Cliff. They enabled me to wire to Scotland Yard, who sent one of
their best inspectors to the bank they came from. He quickly heard
that they had been given to Mr. Duncan Kilroy, but when he went to St.
Sepulchre’s Vicarage he found himself just five minutes too late.”
“Too late,” cried Paul. “Too late. What do you mean?”
“That this wretched man five minutes earlier had stabbed Ventris Blake
to the heart and then blown out his own brains.”
The consternation that followed the Chief Constable’s announcement was
simply appalling. The poor woman, Rebecca Charlton, was carried out of
the police office in a fit of raving hysteria, while even Paul and
Sawdry turned sick and white with the horror of it all, and the
suddenness, and then the sense of its awful justice and completeness.
“How can it have happened?” they asked the two detectives who, it
appeared, had the case against Arthur Hudson in hand. “So far as we
are aware, not one of them had any suspicion that he was in danger. To
all intents and purposes, everything was prospering with their crimes.
All they had to do was to sit tight, and in the end the man they hated
so much would be ruined, if not hanged.”
“That no doubt was so,” said the Chief Constable, “only you forget two
circumstances. The first is--that Kilroy despatched a large number of
telegraphic messages to Aimée Blake. True, they were in the name of
Arthur Hudson, but, as we discovered several days ago, they were not
in Hudson’s handwriting, and were presumably in Kilroy’s own. That, I
am certain, made him so fearful of the telegraphic communication which
he saw everywhere about him and which was in all probability the cause
of his crazy bribe to the telegraphic clerk, Drummond. Secondly, you
must remember that almost immediately after the crime the man’s brain
gave way. In a word, he went mad, and, being mad, he must have thrown
all idea of prudence to the wind, and have gone with a knife for the
man whom, rightly enough, he may have blamed for the wretched tragic
pass to which he had come.”
“Then you have no actual particulars of the crimes through yet?”
queried Sawdry, steadying himself with an effort. “You don’t know
whether the thing was done in public or in private.”
“Not at all,” said the Chief Constable quickly. “I wired for further
information, but none has come through yet, except an intimation that
one of the officers from Scotland Yard who was early on the scene of
the tragedies is now travelling down to consult with me, and will give
me every information and assistance.”
“Then I shall go to the office of the local daily newspaper, the
_Daily Post_,” said Paul, suddenly rising and taking up his hat. “That
editor will get the news through sooner than anyone, I am certain; and
he is just the kind to oblige a brother journalist.”
“And I will go with you,” added Sawdry, stepping closely after his
companion. “The atmosphere of the police station never does agree with
me. It is too suggestive of what I have missed to make me breathe
quite easily, or to cause me to feel a longing to rest there and be
thankful that even on a bleak day like this I’ve got a Government roof
over my head and a Government fire whereat I may warm myself.”
As it chanced, too, they were lucky enough to find the editorial
offices of the paper open, and, at a word, the entire resources of the
organisation were placed at their disposal, and telegrams of enquiry
for full details were despatched to the three great newsgathering
organisations of the country--the Press Association, the Central News,
and the Exchange Telegraph Company, while the editor himself pieced
together a graphic, yet incisive account of the extraordinary
discovery that had been made and hurried out a special edition which
took Scarborough by storm from end to end.
The Press Association was the first to wire any fresh facts about the
crime at St Sepulchre’s, and it did so in the following terms:--
TERRIBLE TRAGEDY AT A LONDON VICARAGE.
A POPULAR PREACHER GOES MAD
AND STABS HIS BEST FRIEND.
At a late hour this afternoon the news became known of a shocking
occurrence at St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage, Piccadilly, the home of that
highly popular and successful preacher and parish worker, the Rev.
Duncan Kilroy, M.A., D.D.
The Rev. gentleman, it seems, had recently returned from the briefest
of visits to a well-known Yorkshire watering place for the benefit of
his health. His wife has noticed that ever since his behaviour was
distinctly curious, but, thinking that the recent scene in his church,
when a mad woman rushed forward just before he started his sermon and
denounced him, had slightly unhinged the balance of a naturally highly
strung and imaginative intellect, she contented herself with leaving
him free to do as he thought best.
Whether his most intimate friend, Mr. Ventris Blake, the famous Park
Lane millionaire, heard of his sad condition and simply called to
condole with him, or whether he was drawn thither by some specious but
evilly designed letter or message, is not yet known. This much is
clear: Mr. Blake called at the Vicarage about four o’clock this
afternoon, and, according to the housemaid’s story, went at once to
the unfortunate gentleman’s study. A moment later, the servant heard
the sound of a violent altercation, combined with maniacal ravings and
screams and then gibberish laughter. This she declares must have gone
on for fully ten minutes when suddenly the door of the study was flung
open and Ventris Blake rushed out with his face stricken with horror,
his eyes rolling fearfully and a knife plunged to the hilt in his
back.
“I am stabbed, I am stabbed,” he shouted in tones that struck horror
to the brains of all that heard them, and in a flash he had flung out
his arms wildly to grab furiously at the air, and then he collapsed,
and lay on the floor quite dead.
Almost instantly afterwards, Duncan Kilroy appeared attired only in
his shirt and trousers. “Where is the biggest scoundrel that ever
walked the earth gone to?” he yelled in a voice of thunder. “Take me
to him that I may complete the beneficent work I have begun!” And he
waved a revolver about wildly and cut some mad capers around the
corpse at his feet.
A moment later his mood changed. His looks altered. All at once the
expression on his face grew strangely grim and tense. “There is only
one thing in the wide world that is absolutely true. It is this,” he
screamed. “The wages of sin is death. So perish the last of the Three
Glass Eyes,” and he placed the weapon to his head and blew out his
brains, his body falling rigidly across the corpse of his friend whom
he had just slain.
Paul and Sawdry read this terrifying story through with dry eyes it is
true, but with fingers that trembled and hearts torn with emotion.
After all, they had not really expected so tragic and awful a finish
to their quest for the murder of Aimée Blake as this was--and for
some time they did not know what to do or what to say, so full seemed
the future of alarming possibilities.
Fortunately a few minutes later there came a second message from the
Press Association; and then they realised that Arthur Hudson would
indeed be cleared of the terrible odium that had fallen upon him, for
the following facts were now telegraphed:--
A MAN WITH A DOUBLE LIFE.
APPALLING CONFESSION OF THE PICCADILLY CLERGYMAN.
A NEW PERIL TO SOCIETY--“THE THREE GLASS EYES.”
Later inquiries into that dreadful affair at St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage
disclose a most appalling state of things. The Vicar who murdered
Ventris Blake, the millionaire, and then shot himself, left, it seems,
a long written confession which seems almost too horrible to be true.
Briefly the Rev. Duncan Kilroy was a man with a double life. He had,
he asserts, most vicious and depraved tastes, which he gratified in
secret, and so had Ventris Blake, whom he also accuses of poisoning
his first wife, a girl named Kaufmann. The second wife, Aimée Kilroy,
he admits he went to Scarborough to kill, and also that he managed to
do so. The reason for this crime is not very clear from his statement
but this much is evident--Kilroy had years ago at Peterborough
personated Mr. Arthur Hudson, who now is under arrest on the capital
charge--and he in that character had contracted a bigamous marriage
with Aimée Blake, who was then known as Burgoyne. Is it not time that
our marriage laws are altered, and that registrars take proofs of the
identity of the parties before they permit this sacred and
far-reaching ceremony to be solemnised?
The most thrilling of these awful disclosures, however, turn on what
the unhappy man calls “The Three Glass Eyes.” This, it appears, was a
band of three men who swore to each other they would never respect any
human life except each other’s, but would remove anybody they disliked
from their path by the use of a secret poison of which Blake alone
knew the secret. They had a kind of ritual and a horrible symbol of a
huge shield of black with three great staring rolling eyes of glass.
The Mystic Three, as they dubbed themselves were Blake, Kilroy and a
twin brother of Kilroy’s (now deceased) and their method of settling
their intended victims was to invite them to become the members of a
far-reaching and powerful Secret Society which they pretended had
relations with financial magnates all over the world. Many as time
went on consented--but in each case the procedure was the same.
The condemned wretch was conducted to a quaint looking old fashioned
garret in front of some draped curtains and made to sit in a certain
easy chair in the arms of which pins innoculated with this deadly
poison were hidden. The curtains then were rolled aside by the aid of
electricity, which also compelled those Three Terrible Eyes to revolve
at a tremendous rate until at last the victim, sick and dizzy, and
almost mesmerised, frantically caught hold of the arms of the chair.
Then instantly his hand would be pricked and the deadly poison would
be received into his system. Probably too he screamed.
At all events, the ceremony of initiation would be stopped, and the
poor doomed novice would be hurried off to his home, but he never
lived more than thirty to fifty minutes after the moment he actually
received the pin-point into his flesh. Usually he tried to walk to
recover from an apparent attack of faintness, and, the death register
kept by Blake which was found open in the study after the murder,
discloses one curious fact, that he nearly always fell under the feet
of some approaching horse; and an intelligent coroner’s jury
invariably returned a verdict of “Accidental Death,” varied sometimes
by a rider to the effect that the driver ought to be cautioned for not
having been more careful!!!