"My dear Denzil, there is a little law in this country invented for the
confusion of the poetic. The greatest exponent of the Beautiful is only
allowed the same number of wives as the greengrocer. I do not blame
you for not being satisfied with Jane--she is a good servant but a bad
mistress--but it was cruel to Kitty not to inform her that Jane had a
prior right in you, and unjust to Jane not to let her know of the
contract with Kitty."
"They both know it now well enough, curse 'em," said the poet.
"Yes; your secrets are like your situations--you can't keep 'em long. My
poor poet, I pity you--betwixt the devil and the deep sea."
"They're a pair of harpies, each holding over me the Damocles sword of an
arrest for bigamy. Neither loves me."
"I should think they would come in very useful to you. You plant one in
my house to tell my secrets to Wimp, and you plant one in Wimp's house to
tell Wimp's secrets to me, I suppose. Out with some, then."
"Upon my honour, you wrong me. Jane brought _me_ here, not I Jane. As for
Kitty, I never had such a shock in my life as at finding her installed in
Wimp's house."
"She thought it safer to have the law handy for your arrest. Besides, she
probably desired to occupy a parallel position to Jane's. She must do
something for a living; _you_ wouldn't do anything for hers. And so you
couldn't go anywhere without meeting a wife! Ha! ha! ha! Serve you right,
my polygamous poet."
"But why should _you_ arrest me?"
"Revenge, Denzil. I have been the best friend you ever had in this cold,
prosaic world. You have eaten my bread, drunk my claret, written my book,
smoked my cigars, and pocketed my money. And yet, when you have an
important piece of information bearing on a mystery about which I am
thinking day and night, you calmly go and sell it to Wimp."
"I did-didn't," stammered Denzil.
"Liar! Do you think Kitty has any secrets from me? As soon as I
discovered your two marriages I determined to have you arrested for--your
treachery. But when I found you had, as I thought, put Wimp on the wrong
scent, when I felt sure that by arresting Mortlake he was going to make a
greater ass of himself than even nature had been able to do, then I
forgave you. I let you walk about the earth--and drink--freely. Now it is
Wimp who crows--everybody pats him on the back--they call him the mystery
man of the Scotland Yard tribe. Poor Tom Mortlake will be hanged, and all
through your telling Wimp about Jessie Dymond!"
"It was you yourself," said Denzil, sullenly. "Everybody was giving it
up. But you said 'Let us find out all that Arthur Constant did in the
last few months of his life.' Wimp couldn't miss stumbling on Jessie
sooner or later. I'd have throttled Constant, if I had known he'd touched
her," he wound up with irrelevant indignation.
Grodman winced at the idea that he himself had worked _ad majorem
gloriam_ of Wimp. And yet, had not Mrs. Wimp let out as much at the
Christmas dinner?
"What's past is past," he said gruffly. "But if Tom Mortlake hangs, you
go to Portland."
"How can I help Tom hanging?"
"Help the agitation as much as you can. Write letters under all sorts of
names to all the papers. Get everybody you know to sign the great
petition. Find out where Jessie Dymond is--the girl who holds the proof
of Mortlake's innocence."
"You really believe him innocent?"
"Don't be satirical, Denzil. Haven't I taken the chair at all the
meetings? Am I not the most copious correspondent of the Press?"
"I thought it was only to spite Wimp."
"Rubbish. It's to save poor Tom. He no more murdered Arthur Constant
than--you did!" He laughed an unpleasant laugh.
Denzil bade him farewell, frigid with fear.
Grodman was up to his ears in letters and telegrams. Somehow he had
become the leader of the rescue party--suggestions, subscriptions
came from all sides. The suggestions were burnt, the subscriptions
acknowledged in the papers and used for hunting up the missing girl. Lucy
Brent headed the list with a hundred pounds. It was a fine testimony
to her faith in her dead lover's honour.
The release of the Jury had unloosed "The Greater Jury," which always
now sits upon the smaller. Every means was taken to nullify the value
of the "palladium of British liberty." The foreman and the jurors were
interviewed, the judge was judged, and by those who were no judges. The
Home Secretary (who had done nothing beyond accepting office under the
Crown) was vituperated, and sundry provincial persons wrote
confidentially to the Queen. Arthur Constant's backsliding cheered
many by convincing them that others were as bad as themselves; and
well-to-do tradesmen saw in Mortlake's wickedness the pernicious effects
of Socialism. A dozen new theories were afloat. Constant had committed
suicide by Esoteric Buddhism, as witness his devotion to Mme. Blavatsky,
or he had been murdered by his Mahatma or victimised by Hypnotism,
Mesmerism, Somnambulism, and other weird abstractions. Grodman's great
point was--Jessie Dymond must be produced, dead or alive. The electric
current scoured the civilised world in search of her. What wonder if the
shrewder sort divined that the indomitable detective had fixed his last
hope on the girl's guilt? If Jessie had wrongs why should she not have
avenged them herself? Did she not always remind the poet of Joan of Arc?
Another week passed; the shadow of the gallows crept over the days; on,
on, remorselessly drawing nearer, as the last ray of hope sank below the
horizon. The Home Secretary remained inflexible; the great petitions
discharged their signatures at him in vain. He was a Conservative,
sternly conscientious; and the mere insinuation that his obstinacy was
due to the politics of the condemned only hardened him against the
temptation of a cheap reputation for magnanimity. He would not even grant
a respite, to increase the chances of the discovery of Jessie Dymond. In
the last of the three weeks there was a final monster meeting of protest.
Grodman again took the chair, and several distinguished faddists were
present, as well as numerous respectable members of society. The Home
Secretary acknowledged the receipt of their resolutions. The Trade Unions
were divided in their allegiance; some whispered of faith and hope,
others of financial defalcations. The former essayed to organise a
procession and an indignation meeting on the Sunday preceding the Tuesday
fixed for the execution, but it fell through on a rumour of confession.
The Monday papers contained a last masterly letter from Grodman exposing
the weakness of the evidence, but they knew nothing of a confession. The
prisoner was mute and disdainful, professing little regard for a life
empty of love and burdened with self-reproach. He refused to see
clergymen. He was accorded an interview with Miss Brent in the presence
of a gaoler, and solemnly asseverated his respect for her dead lover's
memory. Monday buzzed with rumours; the evening papers chronicled them
hour by hour. A poignant anxiety was abroad. The girl would be found.
Some miracle would happen. A reprieve would arrive. The sentence would be
commuted. But the short day darkened into night even as Mortlake's short
day was darkening. And the shadow of the gallows crept on and on, and
seemed to mingle with the twilight.
Crowl stood at the door of his shop, unable to work. His big grey eyes
were heavy with unshed tears. The dingy wintry road seemed one vast
cemetery; the street lamps twinkled like corpse-lights. The confused
sounds of the street life reached his ear as from another world. He did
not see the people who flitted to and fro amid the gathering shadows of
the cold, dreary night. One ghastly vision flashed and faded and flashed
upon the background of the duskiness.
Denzil stood beside him, smoking in silence. A cold fear was at his
heart. That terrible Grodman! As the hangman's cord was tightening round
Mortlake, he felt the convict's chains tightening round himself. And yet
there was one gleam of hope, feeble as the yellow flicker of the gas-lamp
across the way. Grodman had obtained an interview with the condemned late
that afternoon, and the parting had been painful, but the evening paper,
that in its turn had obtained an interview with the ex-detective,
announced on its placard
"GRODMAN STILL CONFIDENT"
and the thousands who yet pinned their faith on this extraordinary man
refused to extinguish the last sparks of hope. Denzil had bought the
paper and scanned it eagerly, but there was nothing save the vague
assurance that the indefatigable Grodman was still almost pathetically
expectant of the miracle. Denzil did not share the expectation; he
meditated flight.
"Peter," he said at last, "I'm afraid it's all over."
Crowl nodded, heart-broken. "All over!" he repeated, "and to think that
he dies--and it is--all over!"
He looked despairingly at the blank winter sky, where leaden clouds shut
out the stars. "Poor, poor young fellow! To-night alive and thinking.
To-morrow night a clod, with no more sense or motion than a bit of
leather! No compensation nowhere for being cut off innocent in the pride
of youth and strength! A man who has always preached the Useful day and
night, and toiled and suffered for his fellows. Where's the justice of
it, where's the justice of it?" he demanded fiercely. Again his wet eyes
wandered upwards towards heaven, that heaven away from which the soul of
a dead saint at the Antipodes was speeding into infinite space.
"Well, where was the justice for Arthur Constant if he, too, was
innocent?" said Denzil. "Really, Peter, I don't see why you should take
it for granted that Tom is so dreadfully injured. Your horny-handed
labour leaders are, after all, men of no aesthetic refinement, with no
sense of the Beautiful; you cannot expect them to be exempt from the
coarser forms of crime. Humanity must look to far other leaders--to the
seers and the poets!"
"Cantercot, if you say Tom's guilty I'll knock you down." The little
cobbler turned upon his tall friend like a roused lion. Then he added,
"I beg your pardon, Cantercot, I don't mean that. After all, I've no
grounds. The judge is an honest man, and with gifts I can't lay claim to.
But I believe in Tom with all my heart. And if Tom is guilty I believe in
the Cause of the People with all my heart all the same. The Fads are
doomed to death, they may be reprieved, but they must die at last."
He drew a deep sigh, and looked along the dreary Road. It was quite dark
now, but by the light of the lamps and the gas in the shop windows the
dull, monotonous Road lay revealed in all its sordid, familiar outlines;
with its long stretches of chill pavement, its unlovely architecture, and
its endless stream of prosaic pedestrians.
A sudden consciousness of the futility of his existence pierced the
little cobbler like an icy wind. He saw his own life, and a hundred
million lives like his, swelling and breaking like bubbles on a dark
ocean, unheeded, uncared for.
A newsboy passed along, clamouring "The Bow murderer, preparaitions for
the hexecution!"
A terrible shudder shook the cobbler's frame. His eyes ranged sightlessly
after the boy; the merciful tears filled them at last.
"The Cause of the People," he murmured brokenly, "I believe in the Cause
of the People. There is nothing else."
"Peter, come in to tea, you'll catch cold," said Mrs. Crowl.
Denzil went in to tea and Peter followed.
* * * * *
Meantime, round the house of the Home Secretary, who was in town, an
ever-augmenting crowd was gathered, eager to catch the first whisper of a
reprieve.
The house was guarded by a cordon of police, for there was no
inconsiderable danger of a popular riot. At times a section of the crowd
groaned and hooted. Once a volley of stones was discharged at the
windows. The newsboys were busy vending their special editions, and the
reporters struggled through the crowd, clutching descriptive pencils, and
ready to rush off to telegraph offices should anything "extra special"
occur. Telegraph boys were coming up every now and again with threats,
messages, petitions, and exhortations from all parts of the country to
the unfortunate Home Secretary, who was striving to keep his aching head
cool as he went through the voluminous evidence for the last time and
pondered over the more important letters which "The Greater Jury" had
contributed to the obscuration of the problem. Grodman's letter in that
morning's paper shook him most; under his scientific analysis the
circumstantial chain seemed forged of painted cardboard. Then the poor
man read the judge's summing up, and the chain became tempered steel. The
noise of the crowd outside broke upon his ear in his study like the roar
of a distant ocean. The more the rabble hooted him, the more he essayed
to hold scrupulously the scales of life and death. And the crowd grew
and grew, as men came away from their work. There were many that loved
the man who lay in the jaws of death, and a spirit of mad revolt surged
in their breasts. And the sky was grey, and the bleak night deepened, and
the shadow of the gallows crept on.
Suddenly a strange inarticulate murmur spread through the crowd, a vague
whisper of no one knew what. Something had happened. Somebody was
coming. A second later and one of the outskirts of the throng was
agitated, and a convulsive cheer went up from it, and was taken up
infectiously all along the street. The crowd parted--a hansom dashed
through the centre. "Grodman! Grodman!" shouted those who recognised the
occupant. "Grodman! Hurrah!" Grodman was outwardly calm and pale,
but his eyes glittered; he waved his hand encouragingly as the hansom
dashed up to the door, cleaving the turbulent crowd as a canoe cleaves
the waters. Grodman sprang out, the constables at the portal made way for
him respectfully. He knocked imperatively, the door was opened
cautiously; a boy rushed up and delivered a telegram; Grodman forced his
way in, gave his name, and insisted on seeing the Home Secretary on a
matter of life and death. Those near the door heard his words and
cheered, and the crowd divined the good omen, and the air throbbed with
cannonades of joyous sound. The cheers rang in Grodman's ears as the door
slammed behind him. The reporters struggled to the front. An excited knot
of working men pressed round the arrested hansom; they took the horse
out. A dozen enthusiasts struggled for the honour of placing themselves
between the shafts. And the crowd awaited Grodman.