He threw off his dress clothes with the repulsion that every man feels
for such garments after an all-night sitting. He was tired out, capable
only of attending to the trivial and personal things that immediately
concerned him; thanked God, with the fervour which the average man
expresses for none but the trifling mercies of Providence, that no case
compelled his attendance in court at ten o’clock; stretched himself,
yawned, stumbled shiveringly into bed, where, drawing the bedclothes
tightly around him, he sank at once into the heavy sleep of the weary
man. A confused sound broke upon his slumbers. In a waking dream it
seemed to him that Minna was battering with a hammer at some formless
material object which his mind identified as marriage. He awoke to find
the noise that of knocking at his door. In reality, he had slept some
hours, but he was conscious of only a few minutes’ repose. He called out
angrily to be left alone. The knocking continued. He called out again.
Then a strange voice was heard “Can I see you for a minute, sir?”
Exasperated, he jumped out of bed and opened the door.
“What the devil is it?”
He recoiled in some astonishment at the sight of Israel Hart’s butler,
Samuels. The man looked greasy, unkempt, agitated. Behind him flashed
the retreating figure of Mrs. Parsons, the porter’s wife.
“Come in, if you want to speak to me,” said Hugh, for the cold draught
was sweeping down the passage through the open flat-door. Samuels
obeyed.
“An awful thing, sir. I think you had better come round at once. My
master was murdered during the night.”
If he had suddenly received a blow from a life-preserver, Hugh could not
have been, for the moment, more stunned and dazed.
“Murdered--your master--last night?”
He stared at the man. It was inconceivable. The incredible horror of
it was that he had passed the night, keenly awake, in the house. Israel
Hart murdered, a few yards away from him, without uttering a cry, giving
out a sound in the death-struggle--it passed realisation.
“Yes, sir, in his study,” said the butler with tears in his eyes and
with quivering lips. “The housemaid found him at a quarter to seven this
morning.”
“How did it happen?”
“Someone hit him with something heavy--just over here.”
The man passed his hand upwards from his temple to his skull.
“It has been terrible work this morning,” he added, with a shiver.
The first shock over, Hugh recovered his balance.
“I will come with you at once. Tell me the details while I dress.”
And while he hurried into his clothes and afterwards ate a crust of
bread and drank a cup of coffee, Samuels told his story. In brief, what
had occurred was this. The housemaid, coming to lay the study fire, had
discovered her master lying huddled together on the hearth-rug. As she
approached with her candle, a glance had showed her a streak of blood
in his grey hair. She had screamed, rushed up to Samuels and given
the alarm. He had come down, seen the body, recognised that life was
extinct, had sent out at once for a doctor and a policeman. Pending
their arrival, he had caused Miss Hart to be roused by her maid, and
had remained in the study to prevent any of the servants disturbing
the arrangements of the room. Miss Hart had come downstairs, wild with
terror, and had fainted away, so that she had to be carried up to bed
again. The policeman had come in the course of a few minutes, followed
soon afterwards by the doctor, who was a near neighbour. Then the
Inspector had arrived, and later a Scotland Yard official, and they
were at present engaged in investigations. There did not seem to be the
slightest clue. It was an awful mystery.
“And Miss Hart--how was she when you left?” asked Hugh, as they went
down the steps of the mansion.
“It seems she came to very soon, sir,” answered Samuels, “and then she
would dress and come down, and now she’s bearing up wonderfully. It was
she and the Inspector that agreed you were to be fetched, as you were
the last person--except the other--that saw him alive.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “I remember him telling you to go to bed.”
“Oh, I saw him again after that, sir, when he went upstairs.”
“Then how could I be the last? Besides I thought he was found in the
study--I don’t follow you.”
“He went upstairs to get something from his bedroom safe--and then went
down again. I was seeing to the fire in his room--and he told me again
to go to bed. I thought you were still there, sir.”
“What time was that?” Hugh asked, sharply.
“That was five minutes to twelve.”
“Oh, I left him at half-past eleven,” said Hugh.
They arrived at The Lindens. A knot of idlers were standing at the
gates discussing the straws of information that floated among them.
A policeman on duty marched slowly round the drive, his footprints
indistinguishable from countless others that had broken up the thin and
melting coat of snow. On the steps stood an Inspector in talk with a
couple of pressmen, who were taking notes with red, cold fingers.
The Inspector touched his cap as Hugh came up.
“A shocking affair, sir. If you will go in I will see you in a moment.”
Hugh entered, went up to the fireplace in the hall and warmed his hands,
wondering at the force of routine which had caused this fire to be lit
on a morning of such upheaval. The slight sound of an opening door made
him turn, and then he saw Minna’s pale and haggard face. She beckoned
to him hurriedly and disappeared into the dining-room. He followed her,
shutting the door behind him. The sight of the room brought a fresh
shock of associations. Was there ever such a ghastly morrow to a feast?
Minna stood by the table, one hand behind her resting upon it, her
eyes meeting his in dull defiance. She checked brusquely his first
half-articulated exclamation of sympathy.
“Yes. I know all that you can tell me. We can’t waste time over it. Have
you spoken to the Inspector?”
“Not yet.”
“Thank God I’ve seen you first. This does not interfere with our
compact. You won’t say a word about seeing me last night?”
“Certainly not,” he replied, turning away from her with a feeling of
repugnance. “As far as your father is concerned, I left this house at
half-past eleven.” She closed her eyes with a sigh of relief.
“I was afraid you might betray me--not wilfully--but indiscreetly.”
“Has this been your dominant emotion all the time?” he said, harshly. “I
am glad our ways lie separate.”
“I have my interests to protect,” she said.
He shrugged his shoulders, walked past her to the fireplace and
leant his broad shoulders against the black marble mantelpiece. Her
selfishness dumbfounded him. Her eyes bore no trace of tears, her
attitude not a suggestion of grief. Ill and worn she looked; but from
shock and strain and anxiety--not from sorrow. Had she no human feeling?
And yet she was the same woman whose heart had throbbed with wild tumult
against his; whose eyes had glowed with a burning passion in their
slumberous depths; whose voice had melted into murmurings like the deep
notes of the mating dove. Once he had compared her in his mind to a
volcano. The aptness of the similitude occurred to him now. She had
passed through her period of eruption. Now the molten fire of her nature
was cold and unlovely lava.
She moved suddenly from the table with the dragging step of exhaustion,
and flung herself into a chair and lay with her head bowed upon her arm.
“I know how you judge me,” she said, hoarsely. “You have always judged
me, and that is one of the things that made me hate you. You think I
ought to be in floods of tears. So I should have been, if it had not
been for last night. But I must protect myself now or never. No one can
do it for me. How was I to know that you would be discreet? I had ruin
staring me in the face. I have strained every nerve to keep my wits till
you came. You can’t tell the agony of the strain. How could you? And
this awful horror overwhelming me. Oh, God--don’t you think I feel the
horror of it?”
She did not raise her face, but remained with it buried on her arm in an
attitude of profound prostration. Soon a shudder ran through her frame.
She began to moan and sob. An impulse of pity brought him to her side.
“If I can be of any help to you, Minna, you only have to command me.”
But she did not heed him, only waved him away with her free hand.
“Go--leave me,” she said, scarce audibly.
“If you want me, send for me and I will come,” he said. He left her,
went into the hall, where he found the Inspector. To the latter’s
questions he gave what formal answers lay in his power. A news agency
representative joined them soon afterwards. Gradually Hugh acquainted
himself with all the meagre facts in the possession of the police. Mr.
Hart had been killed outright by one blow of a blunt, heavy instrument.
Death must have occurred during the small hours. The safe in the study
was found open. The only article apparently missing from it was a black
deed-box, which Mr. Hart’s confidential clerk, who had been summoned
immediately, stated to have contained bonds. There were no other signs
of robbery. A thorough inspection of the premises had discovered no
traces of burglarious entry, the only possibility of which was by means
of a window that had been left unsecured. Footprints there were none,
owing to the slight fall of snow. For the present the police were
entirely at a loss.
“Do you know if Mr. Hart had any enemies?” asked the Inspector.
“A man in his profession comes into intimate relations with many
people whom he could not call his friends,” replied Hugh. “But I am not
acquainted with any of his clients. As a private friend I always found
him kind and generous.”
“Could you supply me with any details concerning his private life?”
asked the pressman.
“I am scarcely in a position to do so,” replied Hugh, in a manner that
precluded importunity.
He felt sick at heart, unhinged, and longed to be free from the sordid
horror of the house. His own hidden yet intimate connection with the
tragedy of the night oppressed him like an incubus. It was he who had
started the poor old man upon a train of thought and emotion that had
kept him from his bed, where the murderer, if safe-robbery had been his
only aim, might not have sought him. It was he who was responsible for
the unguarded window by which the murderer had entered. And, then, the
fact that he had been beneath the same roof discussing with the daughter
her inheritance, while the father was being done to death downstairs,
loomed grotesquely hideous before his eyes. It was like a situation in
some vulgar melodrama where simultaneous action is represented in two
separate and adjacent interiors.
At last he escaped police officials and reporters and found himself in
the Heath Road, glad to breathe the outer air again, grey and misty as
it was, covering the heath like a pall. Outside the Merriams, he paused,
seized with a sudden desire for the comfort of Irene’s voice and the
sympathy of her clear eyes. Mere intimacy, too, required that he should
inform her of the catastrophe. He entered with the latch-key which he
possessed by virtue of his intimacy, and knocked at the door of the
smoking-room, where Irene always worked in the mornings. As soon as he
appeared on the threshold, she rose quickly from her writing-table.
“You have come to tell me--I know it. The whole of Sunnington knows
it--a dreadful thing--that poor little girl!”
“I have just come from the house,” he said, gravely. “I had a short
interview with her. It is a terrible shock, of course, but she is
bearing it pretty well--better than I should have expected. You know I
was dining there yesterday, so I was nearly the last person who saw him
alive. For that reason they came to fetch me this morning.”
“Tell me what you know about it,” she said, drawing a chair towards him.
He sat down and put her in possession of the facts, as far as they
were known to the police. She listened intently, sitting by her
writing-table, supporting her chin on her hand.
“And have they no clue at all?”
“None. The poor old fellow found murdered. A deed-box gone from the
safe. A window left unsecured. Practically speaking, that is all they
can go upon.”
“Do you know, Hugh,” said Irene, “I am convinced it was no common
burglar. It was some desperate man who had borrowed money on some
securities which he knew lay in that box, and he committed this crime
to get them back. He was hiding in the house all the evening, possibly
somewhere in the study---and he opened that window to escape by the back
lane.”
He smiled in spite of himself at her feminine certainty. “I wish they
would put you in charge of the investigations, Renie,” he said.
“But don’t you think my theory is quite plausible?” she asked, accepting
his remark with a humble knitting of her brows. He admitted that it was,
observed that he had spoken not in satire but in admiration. The police
were standing about there, not knowing where to turn next.
“Well, the first thing,” said Irene, “would be to list the securities
in the deed-box--there must be a record of them somewhere--and then to
investigate the actions last night of each of the clients to whom the
securities belonged.”
“I never thought of that,” he exclaimed, sharply. “Yes, they’ll do that,
undoubtedly.”
Irene went on to speak of Minna; of the girl’s friendless isolation;
of the help that she herself might have offered, had Minna not so
resolutely repelled her advances. She would be even willing now to risk
a breach of good taste if she could befriend her. She asked his advice.
Her great-heartedness drew him very near to her--so near that it
required a moment’s struggle to stifle the craving to tell her all
the miserable history of his marriage, and his own connection with the
night’s tragedy. How could he advise her in the matter, knowing, as he
did, Minna’s inveterate jealousy and dislike?
“I think she will have some of her own people with her,” he remarked,
mendaciously. “She said something about it this morning.”
He rose to bid her good-bye. As she took his hand she scanned his face
earnestly.
“You are looking so ill and worn,” she said, affectionately. “Much more
so than when you came in. It has been all this discussion.”
“I’m afraid it is the want of my breakfast,” he said, forcing a laugh.
All Irene’s protective instincts were aroused.
“No breakfast--and you were going away without asking for anything to
eat! Sit down at once and let me get something for you.”
She ran out of the room in her impulsive way, leaving him standing on
the hearth-rug.
“Good God,” he said, throwing his hat and gloves onto the chair, “I
never thought of it.” And he remained staring blankly at a picture in
front of him until Irene returned.