What could he know?
“Ah, I see you hesitate, my boy! And, after all, quite naturally,” he
said, with a faint smile. “Read that!” And he placed in my hands a
typed memorandum headed: “From the Assistant Commissioner,
Metropolitan Police, New Scotland Yard, S.W.”
My eyes fell upon a statement which held me breathless. I sat
staggered, speechless, as one in a dream. The words I read were:
“The prisoner Dufour, on remand to the London Sessions yesterday, made
a statement to the Governor of Brixton Prison, that the criminal Tuggy
Wilson was shot by a jealous woman known as Illona Hipwell, a member
of the criminal gang. In consequence Superintendent Nethersole this
afternoon went to the house in Sheen Lane, where the woman was in
hiding, but before he could arrest her on suspicion she committed
suicide by swallowing prussic acid. A marriage certificate found in
the dead woman’s possession shows her to have been the wife of Mr.
Lionel Hipwell of Sackville Street, Piccadilly, who is well-known to
you.”
Below was scribbled “C.L.,” the initials of Mr. Cunningham Lee.
The typed words danced before my eyes. Death, the penalty of a crime,
had broken the fetters that bound me to the ill-shapen woman who had
so cleverly deceived and enmeshed me, and I was free--_free to marry
Joan!_
After the first few moments in which I realized all that the tragic
occurrence meant to me, I turned to my love’s father, and in very
lame, halting sentences, I fear, told him of my many strange and
bitter experiences, of the two years’ blank in my life in which I had
become an expert jewel-thief. I told him, too, of my accident in Rome
which had reunited the threads of my lost memory, and brought me to
realize the ghastly truth of my own impossible position.
Without seeking to conceal one single fact concerning either my
follies, my offences, or my undesirable friends, I poured out my soul
to the one man, save my father, in whom I trusted, and begged of him
his advice.
He heard me through, making few comments. At last, after a brief
silence, in which his legal mind worked quickly, he said:
“Lionel, you certainly have been more sinned against than sinning. I
feel certain that the world would forgive you your offences which were
committed while your brain was in an abnormal condition on account of
that drug administered to you with malice aforethought. As regards the
criminal Felix Zuroff, guilty though he is, no doubt, we must
recollect that it was through his warning to you of the woman Illona’s
intentions that we discovered poor Joan, just at the crucial moment
when delay must certainly have resulted in my poor child’s death.”
“But Zuroff has refused to release me!” I pointed out despairingly.
“Already Illona has cast suspicions upon me by denouncing me as being
in possession of Lady Rathgormly’s pearls.”
“Happily the public knows nothing of your connection with these
people, my dear Lionel--neither are they likely to know. Nethersole is
in ignorance that it was the woman now dead who denounced you
anonymously, so why should we disclose anything further?”
“I may be denounced by others,” I remarked despondently.
“Not if you make your peace with Zuroff,” replied the eminent counsel.
“And surely that need not present any great difficulty. He is
apparently living in retirement on his ill-gotten gains. Therefore a
promise of silence on your part will effect a firm compact between
you. Appeal to him again--and I feel you will not do so in vain.”
“I will follow your advice,” I declared promptly, full of heartfelt
thanks for his generous counsel.
“As for myself, knowing all that I do, I shall at once make excuse and
withdraw from the prosecution of the prisoners,” said the well known
King’s Counsel. “I could not act in such circumstances.”
He returned his brief next day.
At the trial on the following Monday, Owen, Dufour, and Booth were all
three found guilty of the smash-and-grab jewel raid at Appleyard’s and
sentenced. The first got five years’ penal servitude. The others got
three years each. While Dufour’s wife and the woman who had held Joan
in bondage--though nothing came out in the trial concerning my love’s
sufferings--each received a sentence of eighteen months as
accomplices.
A few days later I carried dispatches again to Lord Oxenwood at
Geneva. And, after delivering them, went on to Lausanne where, on the
same night, I had a long interview with the notorious bandit Zuroff.
His first words were to congratulate me on my freedom from the woman
who had been my most bitter enemy. Then, after I had begged of him to
release me, pointing out that my further association with him must
inevitably prove a danger to us both, he at last reluctantly consented
to a firm agreement which secured absolute silence for silence. This
we exchanged in writing, but in a very guarded way, of course.
When he handed me what was really my passport to peace and happiness,
I took it, I think, with perhaps the greatest satisfaction I have ever
experienced. Besides, when a few days later I handed it in confidence
to Joan’s father, he unhesitatingly gave his consent to our marriage.
That same night of our public engagement Joan, when alone with me, put
two questions to me which I had much difficulty in answering.
Apparently she had received an anonymous letter telling her of my
marriage with Illona, and she asked me for the truth. The second
question concerned the stolen bracelet she had discovered in my
pocket.
Both were, indeed, matters which I found considerable difficulty in
satisfactorily explaining. However, I called her father into the room,
and before him told her the truth, which he himself corroborated.
Afterwards I held her in my arms and kissed her passionately--the
first kiss since she had received her parents’ consent to our union.
* * * * * * * *
With greatest pleasure I here record that on the day of our wedding at
St. Mary Abbot, Kensington, my father and my father-in-law became
reconciled, a fact which gave all of us the most supreme satisfaction.
Felix Zuroff, the most daring and desperate jewel-thief Europe has
ever known and whose ramifications ran through the whole Continent,
restored Lady Rathgormly’s pearls to her, at my suggestion. Shortly
after that he died suddenly of heart-failure.
Visitors to the Black Museum at New Scotland Yard, where pieces of
evidence of great crimes are preserved, will find the actual piece of
sparkling aquamarine with the Double Nought upon it, which I carried
from Rome to the man Owen in London. They will find, as well, the
three double noughts of the key to one of the most ingenious of
criminal secret codes ever devised.