THEY HAVE NO HEART
As to what occurred in the heart of the fog on that night in November
four years ago, most of you no doubt will remember. Those who do not I
must refer to the morning papers of the following day.
A perfect harvest for journalists. Gossip and detail sufficient to
fill column upon column of newspaper: gossip that grew as the hours
sped on, and the second day of fog pursued its monotonous course.
A man had been found murdered in a taxicab, his throat stabbed through
from ear to ear, the jugular pierced, life absolutely extinct; the
murderer vanished.
Drama in the midst of reality.
Such things are, you know. No amount of so-called realistic
literature, no amount of sneers at what is dubbed melodrama, will
prevent this fact occurring--and occurring very frequently in the
streets of a mighty city.
Just a man murdered and the murderer disappeared. A very real thing
that, and London has had to face such facts often enough, more often
than has an audience at Drury Lane or the Adelphi. The superior-minded
critic who spells British Drama with a capital B and D, and pronounces
it Pritish Trama sat in the stalls of a London theatre on this very
same foggy evening in November, four years ago. The play was one that
did not appeal to the superior-minded critic: it was just a simple
tale of jealousy which led to the breaking of that great commandment:
"Thou shalt do no murder!"
And the superior-minded critic yawned behind a well gloved hand and
dubbed the play melodramatic, unreal, and stagey, quite foreign to the
life of to-day. But just at that hour--between nine and ten o'clock--a
man was murdered in a taxicab, and his murderer vanished in the fog.
London doesn't dub such events melodrama; she does not sneer at them
or call them unreal. She knows that they are real: there is nothing
stagey or artificial about them: they have even become commonplace.
They occur so often! And most often whilst society dines or dances and
the elect applaud with languid grace the newest play by Mr. Bernard
Shaw.
Only in this case, the event gained additional interest. The murdered
man was a personality. Some one whom everybody that was anybody had
talked about, gossiped, and discussed for the past six months. Some
one whom few had seen but many had heard about--Philip de
Mountford--the son of the late Arthur de Mountford--Radclyffe's newly
found heir, you know.
The news spread as only such news can spread, and when Society poured
out from theatres, from houses in Grosvenor Square, or from the
dining-room of the Carlton, every one had heard the news.
It was as if the sprite of gossip had been busy whispering in
over-willing ears.
"Philip de Mountford has been murdered."
"He was found in a taxicab; his throat was cut from ear to ear."
"No! no! not cut, I understand. Pierced through with a sharp
instrument--a stiletto, I presume."
"How horrible!"
"Poor Lord Radclyffe--such a tragedy----"
"He'll never live through it."
"He has looked very feeble lately."
"The scandal round the late Arthur's name broke him up, I think."
"It seems Arthur de Mountford had married a negress."
"No! no! Philip did not look like a half-caste. I saw him once or
twice. He was dark but nice looking."
"Still, there was some scandal about the marriage!"
"Nothing to what this scandal will be!"
"What scandal?"
"Seek whom the crime benefits, you know."
"Then you think?--You really think Luke de Mountford did it?"
"I thought so the moment I heard the story."
"I've always thought that Luke de Mountford a queer sort of fellow."
"And he took his cousin's advent very badly."
"Well one can't wonder at that exactly--to lose a future peerage all
of a sudden--and he has no private fortune either----"
"Poor beggar."
"I heard there were awful rows between the cousins until Lord
Radclyffe himself turned Luke and the others out of the house."
"And now Philip de Mountford has been murdered."
"And the police will seek him whom the crime benefits."
"It certainly looks very suspicious."
"A real _cause célèbre_! Won't it be exciting."
"Something to read about in one's morning papers."
"I shall try and get reserved seats for the trial. I hate a crush,
don't you?"
"Will they hang him, do you think?"
"If he is found guilty--English justice is no respecter of persons."
"How awful."
And tittle-tattle, senseless talk, inane remarks, were wafted on the
grimy wings of the fog. They penetrated everywhere, in the lobbies of
the theatres, the boudoir of madame and the smoking room of my lord.
They penetrated to the magnificent reception rooms of the Danish
Legation, and Louisa heard the remarks even before she knew the full
details of the story. Louisa had a well-trained contralto voice, and
had been asked to sing, in the course of the evening. Just as she
stood in an outer room selecting her music, she heard a group of
idlers--men and women--talking over the mysterious murder in the
taxicab.
They had at first been unconscious of her presence. She had her back
toward them, turning over the leaves of of her song. Suddenly there
was a hush in the conversation; one of the chatterboxes must have
pointed her out to the others.
Whereupon Louisa, serene and smiling, a roll of music in her hand,
joined the merry group.
"Please," she said, "don't stop. I have heard nothing yet. And of
course I want to know."
One of the men laughed inanely and the ladies murmured silly nothings.
"Oh!" said some one, "it mayn't be true. Such lots of wild rumours get
about."
"What," asked Louisa placidly, "mayn't be true? Some one said just now
that Philip de Mountford has been murdered."
"Well," murmured one of the ladies, "they say it was Mr. de Mountford;
but they can't be sure, can they?"
The group was dissolving: almost, it seemed, as if it had vanished
into thin air. When Louisa first heard them talking there were about a
dozen men and women, a brilliant throng of gaily plumaged birds; now
the ladies remembered that they wanted to hear the latest infant
prodigy who had been engaged to entertain the guests at the
post-dinner reception to-night, and the men too, feeling uncomfortable
and awkward, made good their escape.
People--the pleasure-loving people of to-day--have no use for latent
tragedy. Excitement, yes! and drama; but only from the secure distance
of a private seat at an Old Bailey trial. The murder of Philip de
Mountford could be discussed with quite an amount of enjoyment between
a dinner party and a ball supper, but not in Louisa Harris's presence!
By Gad! too much of a good thing you know!
Within a very few minutes Louisa found herself almost alone, just the
one or two near her to whom she had directly spoken
and--fortunately--Colonel Harris in the door-way, come to look for his
daughter.
"The infant with the violin," he said as soon as he caught sight of
Louisa, "is just finishing his piece, poor little rat! You promised
you would sing next, Lou. What songs have you got?"
"I was just making a selection when you came, father. What would you
like me to sing?"
With an unexpressed sigh of relief the last two of the original group
of gossips dwindled away into the reception room beyond,
congratulating themselves on having successfully engineered their
exit.
"Dooced awkward, don't you know, Miss Harris asking questions."
"I suppose she doesn't realize----"
"She will soon enough----"
"She ought to have broken off her engagement long ago."
"Isn't it awful?--Poor thing."
Louisa, left alone with her father, could allow her nerves to ease
their fearful tension. She had no need to hide from him the painful
quiver of her lips, or the anxious frown across her brow.
"Do you know," she asked, "anything about this awful business,
father?"
"There's a lot of gossip," he replied: his voice was not only gruff
but hoarse, which showed that he was strangely moved.
"But," she insisted, "some truth in the gossip?"
"They say Philip de Mountford has been murdered."
"Who says so?"
"Some people have come on from the theatres, and men from the clubs.
The streets are full of it--and evening papers have brought out
midnight editions which are selling like hot cakes."
"And do they say that Luke has killed Philip de Mountford?"
"No"--with some hesitation--"they don't say that."
"But they hint at it."
"Newspaper tittle-tattle."
"How much is actual fact?"
"I understand," he explained, "that at nine o'clock or thereabouts two
men in evening dress hailed a passing taxicab just outside the Lyric
Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue and told the chauffeur to drive to Hyde
Park corner, just by the railings of the Green Park. The driver drew
up there and one of the two men got out. As he reclosed the door of
the cab he leaned toward the interior and said cheerfully, "S'long old
man. See you to-morrow." Then he told the chauffeur to drive on to 1
Cromwell Road opposite the museum, and turning on his heel disappeared
in the fog. When the chauffeur drew up for the second time no one
alighted from the cab. So he got down from his box and opened the
door."
"The other man," murmured Louisa vaguely, "was in the cab--dead!"
"That's about it."
"With his throat pierced from ear to ear by a sharp instrument which
might have been a skewer."
"You have heard it all then?"
"No, no!" she said hurriedly.
The room was swaying round her: the furniture started hopping and
dancing. Louisa, who had never fainted in her life, felt as if the
floor was giving way under her feet. Memory was unloading one of her
storehouses, looking over the contents of a hidden cell, wherein she
had put away a strange winter scene in Brussels, a taxicab, the
ill-lighted boulevard, the chauffeur getting down from his box and
finding a man crouched in the farther corner of the cab--dead--with
his throat pierced from ear to ear by an instrument which might have
been a skewer. And memory was raking out that cell, clearing it in
every corner, trying to find the recollection of a certain morning in
Battersea Park a year ago, when Louisa recounted her impressions of
that weird scene and told the tale of this crime which she had almost
witnessed. Memory found a distinct impression that she had told the
tale at full length and with all the details which she knew. She
remembered talking it all over, and, that when she did so, the ground
in Battersea Park was crisp with the frost under her feet, and an
inquisitive robin perched himself on the railings and then flew away
accompanying her and another all the way along as far as the gates.
Two pictures, vivid and distinct: that evening in Brussels, and the
morning in Battersea Park, her first meeting with Luke after his
letter to her--the letter which had come to her in the Palace Hotel
and which had made her the happiest woman in all the world.
Memory--satisfied--had at last emptied the storehouse of that one cell
and left Louisa Harris standing here, staring at her father, her ears
buzzing with the idle and irresponsible chatter of society jackdaws,
her mind seeing all that had happened outside 1 Cromwell Road: the cab
stopping, the chauffeur terrified, the crowd collecting, the police
taking notes. Her mind saw it as if her bodily eyes had been there,
and all that her father told her seemed but the recapitulation of what
she knew already.
"Where," she said after awhile, "is the dead man now?"
"I don't know," he replied. "I should imagine they would keep the
body at the police station until the morning. I don't suppose they'd
be such mugs as to disturb Lord Radclyffe at this time of night; the
shock might kill the old man."
"I suppose they are quite sure that it is Philip de Mountford who was
killed?"
"Why, yes; he had his pocket-book, his cards, his letters on him, and
money too--robbery was not the object of the crime."
"It was Philip de Mountford then?"
"Good God, yes! Of whom were you thinking?"
"I was thinking of Luke," she replied simply.
The old man said nothing more. Had he spoken at all then it would have
been to tell her that he, too, was thinking of Luke and that there was
perhaps not a single person in the magnificent house at that moment
who was not--in some way or another--thinking of Luke.
The hostess came in, elegant and worldly, with banal words to request
the pleasure of hearing Miss Harris sing.
"It is so kind of you," she said, "to offer. I have never heard you,
you know, and people say you have such a splendid voice. But perhaps
you would rather not sing to-night?"
She spoke English perfectly, but with a slight Scandinavian
intonation, which seemed to soften the banality of her words. Being
foreign, she thought less of concealing her sympathy, and was much
less fearful of venturing on delicate ground.
She held out a small, exquisitely gloved hand and laid it almost
affectionately on the younger woman's arm.
"I am sure you would rather not sing to-night," she said kindly.
"Indeed, Countess, why should you think that?" retorted Louisa
lightly. "I shall be delighted to sing. I wonder which of these new
songs you would like best. There is an exquisite one by Guy
d'Hardelot. Shall I sing that?"
And Her Excellency, who so charmingly represented Denmark in English
society, followed her guest into the reception room: she admired the
elegant carriage of the English girl, the slender figure, the soft
abundant hair.
And Her Excellency sighed and murmured to herself:
"They are stiff, these English! and oh! they have no feeling, no
sentiment!"
And a few moments later when Louisa Harris's really fine voice, firm
and clear, echoed in the wide reception room, Her Excellency
reiterated her impressions:
"These English have no heart! She sings and her lover is suspected of
murder! Bah! they have no heart!"