OF A VISIT MICHAEL PAID HIS AUNT, AND OF A FISH HE NEARLY CAUGHT.
THE PIGEONS, NEXT DOOR, AND A PINT OF HALF-AND-HALF. MISS JULIA
HAWKINS AND HER PARALYTIC FATHER. HOW A MAN IN THE BAR BROKE HIS
PIPE. OF A VISIT MICHAEL'S GREAT-AUNT PAID MISS HAWKINS. TWO
STRANGE POLICEMEN. HOW MR. DAVERILL MIGHT HAVE ESCAPED HAD HE NOT
BEEN A SMOKER. A MIRACULOUS RECOVERY, SPOILED BY A STRAIGHT SHOT
Michael Ragstroar's mysterious attraction to his great-aunt at
Hammersmith was not discountenanced or neutralised by his family in
Sapps Court, but rather the reverse: in fact, his visits to her
received as much indirect encouragement as his parents considered might
be safely given without rousing his natural combativeness, and
predisposing him against the ounce of influence which she alone
exercised over his rebellious instincts. Any suspicion of moral culture
might have been fatal, holy influences of every sort being eschewed by
Michael on principle.
So when Michael's mother, some weeks later than the foregoing incident,
remarked that it was getting on for time that her branch of the family
should send a quartern of shelled peas and two pound of cooking-cherries
to Aunt Elizabeth Jane as a seasonable gift, her lord and master had
replied that he wasn't going within eleven mile of Hammersmith till
to-morrow fortnight, but that he would entrust peas and cherries, as
specified, to "Old Saturday Night," a fellow-coster, so named in
derision of his adoption of teetotalism, his name being really Knight.
He was also called Temperance Tommy, without irony, his name being
really Thomas. He, a resident in Chiswick, would see that Aunt Elizabeth
Jane got the consignment safely.
Michael's father did this in furtherance of a subtle scheme which
succeeded. His son immediately said:--"Just you give _him_ 'em, and see
if he don't sneak 'em. See if he don't bile the peas and make a blooming
pudd'n of the cherries. You see if he don't! That's all I say, if you
arsk me." A few interchanges on these lines ended in Michael undertaking
to deliver the goods personally as a favour, time enough Sunday morning
for Aunt Elizabeth Jane herself to make a pudding of the cherries,
blooming or otherwise.
As a sequel, Michael arrived at his aunt's so early on the following
Sunday that the peas and the cherries had to wait for hours to be
cooked, while Aunt Elizabeth Jane talked with matrons round in the
alley, and he himself took part in a short fishing expedition, nearly
catching a roach, who got away. The Humanitarian--is that quite the
correct word, by-the-by?--must rejoice at the frequency of this result
in angling.
"The 'ook giv'," said Michael, returning disappointed. "Wot can you
expect with inferior tarkle?" He then undertook to get a brown Toby jug
filled at The Pigeons; though, being church-time--the time at which the
Heathen avail themselves of their opportunity of stopping away from
church--the purchase of one pint full up, and no cheating, was a
statutable offence on the part of the seller.
But when a public has a little back-garden with rusticated woodwork
seats, painful to those rash enough to avail themselves of them, and a
negotiable wall you and your jug can climb over and descend from by the
table no one ever gets his legs under owing to this same rusticity of
structure, then you can do as Michael did, and make your presence felt
by whistling through the keyhole, without fear of incriminating the
Egeria of the beer-fountain in the locked and shuttered bar, near at
hand.
Egeria was not far off, for her voice came saying:--"Say your name
through the keyhole; the key's took out.... No, you ain't Mrs. Treadwell
next door! You're a boy."
"Ain't a party-next-door's grandnephew a boy?" exclaimed Michael
indignantly. "She's sent me with her own jug for a pint of arfnarf!
Here's the coppers, all square. You won't have nothing to complain of,
Miss 'Orkins."
Miss Hawkins, the daughter of The Pigeons, or at least of their
proprietor, opened the door and admitted Michael Ragstroar. Her father
had drawn his last quart for a customer many long years ago, and his
right-hand half was passing the last days of its life in a bedroom
upstairs. A nonagenarian paralysed all down one side may be described as
we have described Mr. Hawkins. He was still able to see dimly, with one
eye, the glorious series of sporting prints that lined the walls of his
room; and such pulses as he had left were stirred with momentary
enthusiasm when the Pytchley Hunt reached the surviving half of his
understanding. The other half of him had lived, and seemed to have died,
years ago. The two halves may have taken too much when they were able to
move about together and get at it--too much brandy, rum, whisky; too
many short nips and long nips--too cordial cordials. Perhaps his
daughter took the right quantity of all these to a nicety, but
appearances were against her. She was a woman of the type that must have
been recognised in its girlhood as stunning, or ripping, by the then
frequenters of the bar of The Pigeons, and which now was reluctant to
admit that its powers to rip or stun were on the wane at forty. It was
that of an inflamed blonde putting on flesh, which meant to have
business relations with dropsy later on, unless--which seemed
unlikely--its owner should discontinue her present one with those nips
and cordials. She had no misgivings, so far, on this point; nor any,
apparently, about the seductive roll of a really fine pair of blue eyes.
While as for her hair, the bulk and number of the curl-papers it was
still screwed up in spoke volumes of what its release would reveal to an
astonished Sunday afternoon when its hour should come--not far off now.
There was a man in the darkened bar, smoking a long clay. Michael felt
as if he knew him as soon as he set eyes on him, but it was not till the
pipe was out of his mouth that he saw who he was. He had been ascribing
to the weight or pressure of the pipe the face-twist which, when it was
removed, showed as a slight distortion. It was the man he had seen
twice, once in the garden he had just left, and once at Sapps Court.
Michael considered that he was entitled to a gratuity from this man,
having interpreted his language as a promise to that effect, and having
received nothing so far.
He was not a diffident or timid character, as we know. "Seen you afore,
guv'nor!" was his greeting.
The man gave a start, breaking his pipe in three pieces, but getting no
farther than the first letter of an oath of irritation at the accident.
"What boy's this?" he cried out, with an earnestness nothing visible
warranted.
"Lard's mercy, Mr. Wix!" exclaimed the mistress of the house, turning
round from the compounding of the half-and-half. "What a turn you giv'!
And along of nothing but little Micky from Mrs. Treadwell next door!
Which most, Micky? Ale or stout?"
"Most of whichever costis most," answered Michael, with simplicity.
Thereon he felt himself taken by the arm, and turning, saw the man's
face looking close at him. It was the sort of face that makes the end of
a dream a discomfort to the awakener.
"Now, you young beggar!--_where_ have you seen me afore? I ain't going
to hurt you. You tell up straight and tell the truth."
"Not onlest you leave hold of my arm!"
"You do like he says, Mr. Wix.... Now you tell Mr. Wix, Micky. _He_
won't hurt you." Thus Miss Julia, procuring liberty for the hand to
receive the half-and-half she was balancing its foam on.
Michael rubbed the arm with his free hand as he took the brown
jug, to express resentment in moderation. But he answered his
questioner:--"Round in Sappses Court beyont the Dials acrost Oxford
Street keepin' to your left off Tottenham Court Road. You come to see
for a widder, and there warn't no widder for yer. Mean to say there
was?"
"Where I sent you, Mr. Wix," said Miss Julia. "To Sapps Court, where
Mrs. Treadwell directed me--where her nephew lives. That's this boy's
father. You'll find that right."
"Your Mrs. Treadmill, _she's_ all right. Sapps Court's all right of
itself. But it ain't the Court I was tracking out. If it was, they'd
have known the name of Daverill. Why--the place ain't no bigger than a
prison yard! About the length of down your back-garden to the water's
edge. It's the wrong Court, and there you have it in a word. She's in
Capps Court or Gapps Court--some * * * of a Court or other--not Sapps."
A metaphor has to be omitted here, as it might give offence. It was not
really a well-chosen or appropriate one, and is no loss to the text.
"What's this boy's name, and no lies?" he added after muttering to
himself on the same lines volcanically.
"How often do you want to be told _that_, Mr. Wix? This boy's Micky
Rackstraw, lives with his grandmother next door.... Well--her sister
then! It's all as one. Ain't you, Micky?"
"Ah! Don't live there, though. Comes easy-like, now and again. Like the
noospapers."
"He's a young liar, then. Told me his name was Ikey." Miss Hawkins
pointed out that Ikey and Micky were substantially identical. But she
was unable to make the same claim for Rackstraw and Ekins, when told
that Micky had laid claim to the latter. She waived the point and
conducted the beer-bearer back the way he came, handing him the brown
jug over the wall, not to spill it.
But she suggested, in consideration of the high quality of the
half-and-half, that her next-door neighbour might oblige by stepping in
by the private entrance, to speak concerning Sapps Court and its
inhabitants; all known to her more or less, no doubt. Which Aunt
Elizabeth was glad to do, seeing that the cherry-tart was only just put
in the oven, and she could spare that few minutes without risk.
Now, this old lady, though she was but a charwoman depending for
professional engagements rather on the goodwill--for auld lang syne--of
one or two families in Chiswick, of prodigious opulence in her eyes, yet
was regarded by Sapps Court, when she visited her niece, Mrs. Rackstraw,
or Ragstroar, Michael's mother, as distinctly superior. Aunt M'riar
especially had been so much impressed with a grey shawl with fringes and
a ready cule--spelt thus by repute--which she carried when she come of a
Sunday, that she had not only asked her to tea, but had taken her to pay
a visit to Mrs. Prichard upstairs. She had also in conversation taken
Aunt Elizabeth Jane largely into her confidence about Mrs. Prichard,
repeating, indeed, all she knew of her except what related to her
convict husband. About that she kept an honourable silence.
It was creditable to Miss Juliarawkins, whose name--written as
pronounced--gives us what we contend is an innocent pleasure, that she
should have suspected the truth about Wix or Daverill's want of
shrewdness when he visited Sapps Court. She had been biased towards this
suspicion by the fact that the man, when he first referred to Sapps
Court, had spoken the name as though sure of it; and it was to test its
validity that she invited Aunt Elizabeth Jane round by the private door,
and introduced her to the darkened bar, where the ex-convict was
lighting another pipe. She had heard Mrs. Treadwell speak of Aunt
M'riar; and now, having formed a true enough image of the area of the
Court, had come to the conclusion that all its inhabitants would be
acquainted, and would talk over each other's affairs.
"Who the Hell's that?" Mr. Wix started as if a wasp had stung him, as
the old charwoman's knock came at the private entrance alongside of the
bar. He seemed very sensitive, always on the watch for surprises.
"Only old Treadwell from next door. _She_ ain't going to hurt you, Tom.
You be easy." Miss Hawkins spoke with another manner as well as another
name now that she and this man were alone. She may never possibly have
known his own proper name, he having been introduced to her as Thomas
Wix twenty years ago. An introduction with a sequel which scarcely comes
into the story.
His answer was beginning:--"It's easy to say be easy ..." when the woman
left the room to admit Aunt Elizabeth Jane. Who came in finishing the
drying of hands, suddenly washed, on a clean Sunday apron. "Lawsy me,
Miss Hawkins!" said she. "I didn't know you had anybody here."
It was not difficult to _entamer_ the conversation. After a short
interlude about the weather, to which the man's contribution was a grunt
at most, the old lady had been started on the subject of her nephew and
Sapps Court, and to this he gave attention. If she had had her
tortoiseshell glasses she might have been frightened by the way he
knitted his brows to listen. But she had left them behind in her hurry,
and he kept back in a dark corner.
"About this same aged widow body," said he, fixing the conversation to
the point that interested him. "What sort of an age now should you give
her? Eighty--ninety--ninety-five--ninety-nine?" He stopped short of a
hundred. Nobody one knows is a hundred. Centenarians are only in
newspapers.
"I can tell you her age from her lips, mister. Eighty-one next birthday.
And her name, Maisie Prichard."
Mr. Wix's attention deepened, and his scowl with it. "Now, can you make
that safe to go upon?" he said with a harsh stress on a voice already
harsh. "How came the old lady to say her own christened name? I'll pound
it I might talk to you most of the day and never know your first name.
Old folks they half forget 'em as often as not."
Miss Hawkins struck in:--"Now you're talking silly, Mr. Wix. How many
young folk tell you their christened names right off?" But she had got
on weak ground. She got off it again discreetly. "Anyhow, Mrs. Treadwell
she's inventing nothing, having no call to." She turned to Aunt
Elizabeth Jane with the question:--"How come she to happen to mention
the name, ma'am?"
"Just as you or I might, Miss Julia. Mrs. Wardle she said, 'I was
remarking of it to Mrs. Treadwell,' she said, 'only just afore we come
upstairs, ma'am,' she said, 'that you was one of twins, ma'am,' she
said. And then old Mrs. Prichard she says, 'Ay, to be sure,' she says,
'twins we were--Maisie and Phoebe. Forty-five years ago she died, Phoebe
did,' she says. 'And I've never forgotten Phoebe,' she says. 'Nor yet I
shan't forget Phoebe not if I live to be a hundred!'"
"Goard blind my soul!" Mr. Wix muttered this to himself, and though Aunt
Elizabeth Jane failed to catch the words, she shuddered at the manner of
them. She did not like this Mr. Wix, and wished she had not forgotten
her tortoiseshell spectacles, so as to see better what he was like. The
words she heard him say next had nothing in them to cause a shudder,
though the manner of them showed vexation:--"If that ain't tryin' to a
man's temper! There she was all the time!" It is true he qualified this
last substantive by the adjective the story so often has to leave out,
but it was not very uncommon in those days along the riverside between
Fulham and Kew.
"I thought you said the name was Daverill," said Miss Hawkins, taking
the opportunity to release a curl-paper at a looking-glass behind
bottles. It was just upon time to open, and the barmaid had got her
Sunday out.
"Why the Hell shouldn't the name be Daverill? In course I did! Ask your
pardon for swearing, missis...." This was to the visitor, who had begun
to want to go. "You'll excuse my naming to you all my reasons, but I'll
just mention this one, not to be misunderstood. This here old lady's a
sort of old friend of mine, and when I came back from abroad I says to
myself I'd like to look up old Mrs. Daverill. So I make inquiry, you
see, and my man he tells me--he was an old mate of mine, you see--she's
gone to live at Sevenoaks--do you see?--at Sevenoaks...."
"Ah, I see! I've been at Sevenoaks."
"Well--there she had been and gone away to town again. Then says I,
'What's her address?' So they told me they didn't know, it was so long
agone. But the old woman--_her_ name was Killick, or Forbes was it?--no,
Killick--remembered directing on a letter to Mrs. Daverill, Sapps Court.
And Juliar here she said she'd heard tell of Sapps Court. So I hunted
the place up and found it. Then your Mrs. Wardle's husband--I take it he
was Moses Wardle the heavyweight in my young days--he put me off the
scent because of the name. The only way to make Prichard of her I can
see is--she married again. Well--did no one ever hear of an old fool
that got married again?"
"That's nothing," said Miss Hawkins. "They'll marry again with the
rattle in their throats."
That tart was in the oven, and had to be remembered. Or else Aunt
Elizabeth Jane wanted to see no more of Mr. Wix. "I must be running back
to my cooking," said she. "But if this gentleman goes again to find out
Sappses, he's only got to ask for my niece at Number One, or Mrs. Wardle
at Number Seven, and he'll find Mrs. Prichard easy." She did not speak
directly to the man, and he for his part noticed her departure very
slightly, giving it a fraction of a grunt he wanted the rest of later.
Nor did Aunt Elizabeth Jane seem in a great hurry to get away when Miss
Hawkins had seen her to the door. She lingered a moment to refer to
Aunt's M'riar's talk of Widow Prichard. Certainly Mrs. Wardle at Number
Seven _she_ said nothing of any second marriage, and thought Prichard
was the name of the old lady's first husband, who had died in Van
Diemen's Land. Miss Julia paid very little attention. What business of
hers was Widow Prichard? She was much more interested in a couple of
policemen walking along the lane. Not a very common spectacle in that
retired thoroughfare! Also, instead of following on along the riverside
road it opened into, they both wheeled right-about-face and came back.
Miss Julia, taking down a shutter to reinstate The Pigeons as a tavern
open to customers, noted that the faces of these two were strange to
her. Also that they passed her with the barest good-morning,
forbiddingly. The police generally cultivate intercourse with
public-house keepers of every sort, but when one happens to be a lady
with ringlets especially so; even should her complexion be partly due to
correctives, to amalgamate a blotchiness. These officers overdid their
indifference, and it attracted Miss Julia's attention.
Aunt Elizabeth Jane thought at the time she might have mistaken what
she heard one of them say to the other. For, of course, she passed them
close. The words she heard seemed to be:--"That will be Hawkins."
Something in them rang false with her concept of the situation. But
there was the cherry-tart to be seen to, and some peas to boil. Only not
the whole lot at once for only her and Michael! As for that boy, she had
sent him off to the baker's, the minute he came back, to wait till the
bit of the best end of the neck was sure to be quite done, and bring it
away directly minute.
* * * * *
That day there was an unusually high spring-tide on the river, and
presumably elsewhere; only that did not concern Hammersmith, which
ascribed the tides to local impulses inherent in the Thames. Just after
midday the water was all but up to the necks of the piers of Hammersmith
Bridge, and the island at Chiswick was nearly submerged. Willows
standing in lakes were recording the existence of towing-paths no longer
able to speak for themselves, and the insolent plash of ripples over
wharves that had always thought themselves above that sort of thing
seemed to say:--"Thus far will I come, and a little farther for that
matter." Father Thames never quite touched the landing of the
boat-ladder, at the end of the garden at The Pigeons, but he went within
six inches of it.
"The water wasn't like you see it now, that day," said a man in the
stern of a boat that was hanging about off the garden. "All of five foot
lower down, I should figure it. _He_ didn't want no help to get up--not
he!"
"It was a tidy jump up, any way you put it," said the stroke oar.
"Well--he could have done it! But he was aiming to help his man to a
seat in the boat, not to get a lift up for himself. I've not a word to
say against Toby Ibbetson, mind you! He took an advantage some wouldn't,
maybe. And then it's how you look at it, when all's done. You know what
Daverill was wanted for?" Oh yes--both oars knew that. "I call to mind
the place--knew it well enough. Out near Waltham Abbey. Lonely sort of
spot.... Yes--the girl died. Not before she'd had time to swear to the
twist in his face. He had been seen and identified none so far off an
hour before. Quite a young girl. Father cut his throat. So would you.
Thought he ought to have seen the girl safe home. So he ought. Ain't
that our man's whistle?" The boat, slowly worked in towards The Pigeons,
lays to a few strokes off on the slack water. The tide's mandate to stop
has come. The sergeant is waiting for a second whistle to act.
Inside the tavern the woman has closed the street-door abruptly--has
given the alarm. "There's two in the lane!" she gasps. "Be sharp, Tom!"
"Through the garden?" he says. "Run out to see."
She is back almost before the door she opens has swung to. "It's all up,
Tom," she cries. "There's the boat!"
"Stand clear, Juli-ar!" he says. "I'll have a look at your roof. Needn't
say I'm at home. Where's the key?"
"I'll give it you. You go up!" She forgets something, though, in her
hurry. His pipe remains on the table where he left it smoking, lying
across the unemptied pewter. _He_ forgets it, too, though he follows her
deliberately enough. Recollection and emergency rarely shake hands.
She meets him on the stairs coming down from the room where the
paralysed man lies, hearing but little, seeing only the walls and the
ceiling. "It's on the corner of the chimney-piece," she says. "_He's_
asleep." Daverill passes her, and just as he reaches the door remembers
the pipe. It would be fatal to call out with that single knock at the
house-door below. Too late!
She still forgets that pipe, and only waits to be sure he is through, to
open the door to the knocker. By the time she does so he has found the
key and passed through the dormer door that gives on the leads. The
paralysed man has not moved. Moreover, he cannot see the short ladder
that leads to the exit. It is on his dead side.
"You've a party here that's wanted, missis. Name of Wix or Daverill. Man
about five-and-forty. Dark hair and light eyes. Side-draw on the mouth.
Goes with a lurch. Two upper front eye-teeth missing. Carries a gold
hunting-watch on a steel chain. Wears opal ring of apparent value.
Stammers slightly." So the police-officer reads from his warrant or
instructions, which he offers to show to Miss Hawkins, who scarcely
glances at it.
Who so surprised and plausible as she? Why--her father is the only man
in the house, and him on his back this fifteen years or more! What's
more, he doesn't wear an opal ring. Nor any ring at all, for that
matter! But come in and see. Look all over the house if desired. _She_
won't stand in the way.
"Our instruction is to search," says the officer. He looks like a
sub-inspector, and is evidently what a malefactor would consider a "bad
man" to have anything to do with. Miss Hawkins knows that her right of
sanctuary, if any, is a feeble claim, probably overruled by some police
regulation; and invites the officers into the house, almost too
demonstratively. Just then she suddenly recollects that pipe.
"You can find your way in, mister," she says; and goes through to the
bar. The moment she does so the officer shows alacrity.
"Keep an eye to that cellar-flap, Jacomb," he says to his mate, and
follows the lady of the house. He is only just in time. "Is that your
father's pipe?" he asks. In another moment she would have hidden it.
"Which pipe?--oh, this pipe?--_this_ pipe ain't nothing. Left stood
overnight, I suppose." And she paused to think of the best means of
getting the pipe suppressed. There was no open grate in the bar to throw
it behind. She was a poor liar, too, and was losing her head.
"Give me hold a quarter of a minute," says the officer. She cannot
refuse to give the pipe up. "Someone's had a whiff off this pipe since
closing-time last night," he continues, touching the still warm bowl;
for all this had passed very quickly. And he actually puts the pipe to
his lips, and in two or three draws works up its lingering spark. "A
good mouthful of smoke," says he, blowing it out in a cloud.
"You can look where you like," mutters the woman sullenly. "There's no
man for you. Only you won't want to disturb my father. He's only just
fell asleep."
"He'll be sleeping pretty sound after fifteen year." Thus the officer,
and the unhappy woman felt she had indeed made a complete mess of the
case. "Which is his room now, ma'am? We'll go there first."
Up the stairs and past a window looking on the garden. The day is hot
beneath the July sun, and the two men in uniform who are coming up the
so-called garden, or rather gravelled yard, behind The Pigeons, are
mopping the sweat from their brows. They might have been customers from
the river, but Miss Hawkins knows the look of them too well for that.
The house is surrounded--watched back and front. Escape is hopeless,
successful concealment the only chance.
"Been on his back like that for fifteen years, has he?" So says the
officer looking at the prostrate figure of the old man on the couch. He
is not asleep now--far from it. His mouth begins to move, uttering
jargon. His one living eye has light in it. There is something he wants
to say and struggles for in vain. "Can't make much out of that," is the
verdict of his male hearer. His daughter can say that he is asking his
visitor's name and what he wants. He can understand when spoken to, she
says. But the intruder is pointing at the door leading to the roof.
"Where does that go to?" he asks.
"Out on the tiles. I'll see for the key and let you through, if you'll
stop a minute." It is the only good bit of acting she has done. Perhaps
despair gives histrionic power. She sees a chance of deferring the
breaking-down of that door, and who knows what may hang on a few minutes
of successful delay? Before she goes she suggests again that the
paralysed man will understand what is said to him if spoke to plain.
Clearly, he who speaks plain to him will do a good-natured act.
Whether the officer's motives are Samaritan or otherwise, he takes the
hint. As the woman gets out of hearing, he says:--"You are the master of
this house, I take it?" And his hearer's crippled mouth half succeeds in
its struggle for an emphatic assent. He continues:--"In course you are.
I'm Sub-Inspector Cardwell, N Division. There's a man concealed in your
house I'm after. He's wanted.... Who is he?"--a right guess of an
unintelligible question--"You mean what name does he go by? Well--his
name's Daverill, but he's called Thornton or Wix as may be. P'r'aps you
know him, sir?" Whether or no, the name has had effect electrically on
its hearer, who struggles frantically--painfully--hopelessly for speech.
The officer says commiseratingly:--"Poor devil!--he's quite off his
jaw"; and then, going to the open window, calls out to his mates of the
river-service, below in the garden:--"Keep an eye on the roof, boys."
Then he goes out on the stair-landing. That woman is too long away--it
is out of all reason. As he passes the paralytic man, he notes that he
seems to be struggling violently for something--either to speak or to
rise. He cannot tell which, and he does best to hasten the return of the
woman who can.
Out on the landing, Miss Hawkins, who has not been looking for keys, but
supplying her first Sunday customers in their own jugs, protests that
she has fairly turned the house over in her key-hunt--all in vain! Her
interest seems vivid that these police shall not be kept off her roof.
She suggests that a builder's yard in the Kew Road will furnish a ladder
long enough to reach the roof. "Shut on Sunday!" says Sub-Inspector
Cardwell conclusively. Then let someone who knows how be summoned to
pick the lock. By all means, if such a person is at hand. But no trade
will come out Sunday, except the turn-cock, obviously useless. That is
the verdict. "You'll never be for breaking down the door, Mr. Inspector,
with my father there ill in the room!"--is the woman's appeal. "Not till
we've looked everywhere else," is the reply. "I'll say that much. I'll
see through the cupboards in the room, though. _That_ won't hurt him."
Little did either of them anticipate what met their eyes as the door
opened. There on the couch, no longer on his back, but sitting up and
gasping for clearer speech, which he seemed to have achieved in part,
was the paralysis-stricken man. The left hand, powerless no longer, was
still uncertain of its purpose, and wavered in its ill-directed motion;
the right, needed to raise him from his pillow, grasped the level
moulding of the couch-back. Its fingers still showed a better colour
than those of its fellow, which trembled and closed and reopened, as
though to make trial of their new-found power. His eyes were fixed on
this hand rather than on his daughter or the stranger. His knees jerked
against the light bondage of a close dressing-gown, and his right foot
was striving to lift or help the other down to the floor. Probably life
was slower to return to it than to the hand, as the blood returns
soonest to the finger-tips after frost. Only the face was quite
changed from its seeming of but ten minutes back. The voice choked
and stammered still, but speech came in the end, breaking out with a
shout-burst:--"Stop--stop--stop!"
"Easy so--easy so!" says the police-officer, as the woman gives way to a
fit of hysterical crying, more the breaking-point of nerve-tension than
either joy or pain. "Easy so, master!--easy does it. Don't you be
frightened. Plenty of time and to spare!"
The old man gets his foot to the floor, and his daughter, under no
impulse of reason--mere nerve-paroxysm--runs to his side crying
out:--"No, dear father! No, dear father! Lie down--lie down!" She is
trying to force him back to his pillow, while he chokes out something he
finds it harder to say than "Stop--stop!" which still comes at
intervals.
"I should make it easy for him, Miss Hawkins, if I was in your place.
Let the old gentleman please himself." Thus the officer, whose
sedateness of manner acts beneficially. She accepts the suggestion,
standing back from her father with a stupid, bewildered gaze, between
him and the exit to the roof. "Give him time," says Sub-Inspector
Cardwell.
He takes the time, and his speech dies down. But he can move that hand
better now--may make its action serve for speech. Slowly he raises it
and points--points straight at his daughter. He wants her help--is that
it? She thinks so, but when she acts on the impulse he repels her,
feebly shouting out: "No--no--no!"
"Come out from between him and the clock, missis," says the officer,
thinking he has caught a word right, and that a clock near the door is
what the old man points at. "He thinks it's six o'clock."
But the word was not _six_. The daughter moves aside, and yet the finger
points. "It's nowhere near six, father dear!" she says. "Not one o'clock
yet!" But still the finger points. And now a wave of clearer
articulation overcomes a sibilant that has been the worst enemy of
speech, and leaves the tongue free. "Wix!" That's the word.
"Got it!" exclaims the officer, and the woman with a shriek falls
insensible. He takes little notice of her, but whistles for his mate
below--a peculiar whistle. It brings the man who was keeping watch in
the lane. "Got him all right," says his principal. "Out here on the
tiles. That's your meaning, I take it, Mr. Hawkins?" The old man nods
repeatedly. "And he's took the key out with him and locked to the door.
That's it, is it?" More nods, and then the officer mounts the short
ladder and knocks hard upon the door. He speaks to the silence on the
other side. "You've been seen, Mr. Wix. It's a pity to spoil a good
lock. You've got the key. We can wait a bit. Don't hurry!"
Footsteps on the roof, and a shout from the garden below! He is seen
now--no doubt of it--whatever he was before. What is that they are
calling from the garden? "He's got a loose tile. Look out!"
"Don't give him a chance to aim with it," says Jacomb below to his chief
on the ladder. Who replies:--"He's bound to get half a chance. Keep your
eyes open!" A thing to be done, certainly, with that key sounding in the
lock.
The officer Cardwell only waited to hear it turn to throw his full
weight on the door, which opened outwards. He scarcely waited for the
back-click to show that the door, which had no hasp or clutch beyond the
key-service, was free on its hinges. Nevertheless, he was not so quick
but that the man beyond was quicker, springing back sharp on the turn of
his own hand. Cardwell stumbled as the door gave, unexpectedly easily,
and nearly fell his length on the leads.
Jacomb, on the second rung of the step-ladder, feels the wind of a
missile that all but touches his head. He does not look round to see
what it strikes, but he hears a cry; man or woman, or both. In front of
him is his principal, on his legs again, grasping the wrist of the right
hand that threw the tile, while his own is on its owner's throat.
"All right--all right!" says Mr. Wix. "You can stow it now. I could have
given you that tile under your left ear. But the right man's got the
benefit. You may just as well keep the snitchers for when I'm down.
There's no such * * * hurry." Nevertheless, the eyes of both officers
are keen upon him as he descends the ladder under sufferance.
On the floor below, beside the bed he lay on through so many weary
years, lies Miss Julia's old father, stunned or dead. Her own
insensibility has passed, but has left her in bewilderment, dizzy and
confused, as she kneels over him and tries for a sign of life in vain.
At the ladder-foot the officers have fitted their prisoner with
handcuffs; and then Cardwell, leaving him, goes to lift the old man back
to his couch. But first he calls from the window:--"Got him all right!
Fetch the nearest doctor."
Through the short interval between this and Daverill's removal, words
came from him which may bring the story home or explain it if events
have not done so already. "The old * * * has got his allowance. _He_
won't ask for no more. Who was he, to be meddling? You was old enough in
all conscience, July-ar!" His pronunciation of her name has a hint of a
sneer in it--a sneer at the woman he victimised, some time in the
interval between his desertion of his wife and his final error of
judgment--dabbling in burglary. She might have been spared insult; for
whatever her other faults were, want of affection for her betrayer was
not among them, or she would not have run the risks of concealing him
from the police.
Her paralytic father's sudden reanimation under stress of excitement
was, of course, an exceptionally well-marked instance of a phenomenon
well enough known to pathologists. It had come within his power to
avenge the wrong done to his daughter, and never forgiven by him.
Whether the officers would have broken down the door, if he had not
seized his opportunity, may be uncertain, but there can be no doubt that
the operative cause of Daverill's capture was his recovery of vital
force under the stimulus of excitement at the amazing chance offered him
of bringing it about.
The affair made so little noise that only a very few Sunday loiterers
witnessed what was visible of it in the lane, which was indeed little
more than the unusual presence of two policemen. Then, after a surgeon
had been found and had attended to the injured man, it leaked out that a
malefactor had been apprehended at The Pigeons and taken away in the
police-boat to the Station lower down the river.
That singular couple, Michael Ragstroar and his great-aunt, had got to
the cherry-tart before a passing neighbour, looking in at their window,
acquainted them what had happened. If after Michael come from the
bake-'us with the meat, which kep' hot stood under its cover in the sun
all of five minutes and no one any the worse, while the old lady boiled
a potato--if Michael had not been preoccupied with a puppy in this
interim, he might easy have seen the culprit took away in the boat. He
regretted his loss; but his aunt, from whom we borrow a word now and
then, pointed out to him that we must not expect everything in this
world. Also the many blessings that had been vouchsafed to him by a
Creator who had his best interests at heart. Had he not vouchsafed him a
puppy?--on lease certainly; but he would find that puppy here next time
he visited Hammersmith, possibly firmer in his gait and nothing like so
round over the stomach. And there was the cherry-tart, and the crust had
rose beautiful.
Michael got home very late, and was professionally engaged all the week
with his father. He saw town, but nothing of his neighbours, returning
always towards midnight intensely ready for bed. By the time he chanced
across our friend Dave on the following Saturday, other scenes of London
Life had obscured his memory of that interview at The Pigeons and its
sequel. So, as it happened, Sapps Court heard nothing about either.
The death of Miss Hawkins's father, a month later, did not add a
contemptible manslaughter to Thornton Daverill's black list of crimes.
For the surgeon who attended him--while admitting to her privately that,
of course, it was the blow on the temple that brought about the cause of
death--denied that it was itself the cause; a nice distinction. But it
seemed needless to add to the score of a criminal with enough to his
credit to hang him twice over; especially when an Inquest could be
avoided by accommodation with Medical Jurisprudence. So the surgeon, at
the earnest request of the dead man's daughter, made out a certificate
of death from something that sounded plausible, and might just as well
have been cessation of life. It was nobody's business to criticize it,
and nobody did.