THE BARON RETURNS
(_From the Bickerdike MS._)
I had a long and interesting interview with Sir Calvin’s lawyers,
when I used the occasion to unburden my mind of some of the misgivings
which had been disturbing it. I spoke theoretically, of course, and
without prejudice, and no doubt considerably impressed my hearers, who
were very earnest with me to keep my own counsel in the matter until
one of the partners could run down--which he would do in the course of
a few days--to examine into all the circumstances of the case on the
spot; and, above all, not to let the Baron guess that he was in any
way an object of my suspicion. They had, of course, heard of the
murder and its sequel, and had been expecting their client’s
instructions for the defence. They were very sympathetic, but
naturally cautious about advancing any opinion one way or the other at
this stage of the affair, and the gist of the matter was relegated for
discussion _in diem_. I do not, however, describe the interview at
greater length for the simple reason that, as things came to turn out,
it bore no eventual fruit. But that will appear.
I stayed three nights in town, and returned to Wildshott on the fourth
day from my leaving it. Going to Sir Calvin’s study straightway, and
being bidden to enter, what was my chagrin and astonishment to find
the Baron already in the room before me, having anticipated my own
return by some twelve hours or so. He was seated talking with his
host--on some matter of grave import, I at once assumed, from the
serious expression on the faces of the two. Even Le Sage’s habitual
levity appeared subdued, while as to the General, I thought he looked
like a man in process of rallying from some great shock or recent
illness. He sat with his head hunched into his shoulders, all the
starch gone from him, and with a fixed white stare in his eyes, as if
he were battling with some inward torment. What had the man been
saying or doing to him? My gorge rose; I was seized with a fierce
anger and foreboding. Was I witnessing the effects of that very
villain blow so apprehended by me as in course of preparing when that
significant journey to London was first announced? My eyes,
instinctively hawking for evidence, pounced on the embrasure which
contained the safe. The curtain was drawn aside, the door open; and on
the table near Sir Calvin stood a packet of papers, the tape which had
bound them fallen to the carpet. Had he by chance been learning for
the first time of his loss--and too late? I was tired, and my temper,
perhaps, was short. In my infinite disgust at discovering how this man
had stolen a march on me, I made little attempt to control it. “What,
you back!” I exclaimed, for my only greeting.
“And you!” he responded placidly. “This is a happy coincidence, Mr.
Bickerdike.”
I passed him, and went to shake Sir Calvin by the hand. The look of my
poor friend as he gave me formal welcome inflamed my anger to that
degree that I could contain myself no longer. I felt, too, that the
moment had come; that it would be criminal in myself to postpone it
longer; that I must give this fellow to understand that his villainy
had not passed wholly undetected and unrecorded. Forgetting, I
confess, in my exasperation, my promise to the lawyers, I turned on
him in an irresistible impulse of passion.
“How, sir,” I said, “have you succeeded in reducing my friend the
General to this state?”
There followed a moment’s startled silence, and then Sir Calvin
stiffened, and sat up, and cleared his throat.
“Bickerdike,” he said, “don’t be a damned ass!”
“That’s as it may be, sir,” I said, now in a towering rage. “You shall
judge of the extent of my folly when you have heard what I insist upon
making known to you.”
He sat looking at me in a frowning, wondering sort of way; then
shrugged his shoulders.
“Very well--if you insist,” he said.
“I have no alternative,” I answered. “If I am to do my duty, as I
consider it, at this crucial pass, when the life of a dear friend
hangs in the balance, all stuff of punctilio must be let go to the
winds. If I hold the opinion that an evil influence is at work in
this house, operating somehow to sinister but mysterious ends, it
would be wickedness on my part to withhold the evidence on which that
opinion is founded. I do think such an influence is at work, and I
claim the condition in which I now find you as some justification for
my belief.”
“You are quite mistaken,” said my host, “utterly mistaken.”
I bowed. “Very well, sir; and I only wish I were as mistaken about the
character of this gentleman whom you have admitted to your
acquaintance and your hospitality.”
Sir Calvin looked at Le Sage, who sat still all this time with a
perfectly unruffled countenance. He laughed now good humouredly, and
bent forward to take a pinch of snuff.
“Come, come, Mr. Bickerdike,” he expostulated, brushing the dust from
his waistcoat; “of what do you accuse me?”
“That is soon said,” I answered, “and said more easily than one can
explain the general impression of underhandedness one receives from
you. I intend to be explicit, and I accuse you to your face of having
secretly left your room one midnight, when the house was asleep” (I
gave the date) “and stolen a paper from Sir Calvin’s desk here.”
He looked at me oddly.
“To be sure,” he said. “Do you know, Mr. Bickerdike, your half-face
looking round the post that night reminded me so ludicrously of those
divided portraits one sees in picture-restorers’ shops that I was near
bursting into laughter.”
“You may have eyes in your ears,” I cried, rallying from the shock;
“but that is not an answer to my charge.”
He turned to Sir Calvin: “The sixty-four Knight move problem: you
remember: I told you that, not being able to sleep, I had come down to
borrow it from your desk, and work it out in the small hours.”
The General nodded, and looked at me.
“Upon my word, Bickerdike,” he said, “you mustn’t bring these
unfounded charges. I don’t know what’s put this stuff about the Baron
into your head; but you must understand that he’s my very good friend,
and much better known to me than he seems to be to you. Come, if I
were you, I’d just apologize and say no more about it.”
It was the collapse of my life. I will own to it fairly, and save my
credit at least for a sense of humour. To think that all this time I
had been building such a structure on such a foundation! I was
bitterly mortified, bitterly humbled; but I trust that I did the
gentlemanly thing in at once accepting Sir Calvin’s advice. I went
straight up to the Baron and apologized.
“It seems I’ve been making a fool of myself,” I said.
“And I know how that must distress you,” he answered heartily. “Think
no more about it. Your motive has been all through an excellent
one--to help your friend at somebody else’s expense; and if I’ve
failed you at a pinch, it’s not for want of a real good try on your
part. And as to my underhand ways----”
“O, they necessarily disappear with the rest,” I interrupted him.
“When one’s moon-stricken one sees a bogey in every bush.”
“Well, well,” said Sir Calvin impatiently. “That’s enough said. We
hadn’t quite done our talk when you came in, Bickerdike. Shut the door
when you go out, there’s a good fellow.”
The hint was plain to starkness. I slunk away, feeling my tail between
my legs. In the hall, to add to my discomfiture, I came upon Audrey.
Her face fell on seeing me.
“O, have _you_ come back?” she said in a discharmed voice, fairly
paying me with my own bad coin.
“Yes,” I said: “and now I have, everybody seems to love me.”
She looked at me queerly.
“The Baron has returned too: isn’t that delightful?” She laughed and
moved away, then came again, on a mischievous thought: “O, by the by!
There was another thing I might have told you about him the other day.
All the half-crowns he wins at chess he puts into a benevolent fund
for poor chess-players. He says a half-crown on a game is like a
Benedictine--neither too much nor too little. It is just enough to
bring out the brilliancy in a player without intoxicating him.”
I said meekly, “Yes, Audrey. I expect he is very right; and it is a
good thought of his for the poor Professors.”
She stood staring at me a moment, said, “What is the matter with you?”
then turned away, moving much more slowly than before.
All the wind seemed knocked out of me by this blow, and I remained in
a very depressed mood. It was my greatest mortification to realize on
what vain and empty illusions I had been building a case for my
friend. I will do myself so much justice. But whatever I planned
seemed to go wrong. I had better retire, I thought, and leave it to
better heads than mine to grapple with the problem. Nor did my
_amour-propre_ achieve any particular reinstatement for itself from my
interview with Sir Calvin on the subject of my journey, made entirely
on his behalf. I found him, when at length he called me to it, very
_distrait_, and I thought not particularly interested in what I had to
tell him. He seemed to listen attentively, but in fact his answers
proved that he had done nothing of the sort. Everything since my
return appeared somehow wrong and peculiar. It might have struck one
almost as if a cloud had passed away, and a threatened tempest been
forgotten. And yet Hugo was in his prison, and nothing new that I
could see had happened. I told his father, as he had asked me to do,
about the circumstances of his wrong-doing, and even in that failed
greatly to interest the General. He did not appear to be particularly
shocked. No doubt his principles in such respects were old-fashioned,
and took for their text that licentious proverb which, in the name of
love and war, exempts a gentleman from those bonds of truth and honour
which alone make him one. He was in a strange state altogether,
distraught, nervous, excited by turns, and yet always with a look
about him which I should have described as exultant pride at high
tension. What was the meaning of everything?
During the following day or two I kept myself studiously in the
background, proffering no opinions on anything, and only pleading
mutely to be put to any use I could reasonably serve. My attitude
commended itself to Audrey at last. “Frank and the Baron,” she once
said to me, “have been meeting and having a long talk together. I
wonder if you will disapprove, Mr. Bickerdike?”
“Two heads are better than one,” I answered, “and as good as three
when the Baron’s is counted in. I’m not sure you weren’t right,
Audrey, and that I’m not a worse judge of character than I supposed.”
She looked at me in that queer way of hers.
“That’s jolly decent of you,” she said; “and so I’ll say the same to
you. It’s something to be a gentleman, after all.”
Cryptic, but meant to be propitiatory. I forgave her. She had
recovered her spirits wonderfully. She knew, or felt, I think, that
something was in the air, though she could not tell what, and it made
her confident and happy. I fancy it was her dear friend the Baron who
kept her on that prick of expectancy, without quite letting her into
the secret. Sometimes now she would even condescend to speak with me.
“Do you know,” she said one day, “that Sergeant Ridgway is coming down
again from Scotland Yard to see us?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “He can’t have the atrocious bad taste.”
“O, but he is!” she said. “The First Commissioner, or the Public
Prosecutor, or the Lord High Executioner, or somebody, isn’t satisfied
with Henstridge’s evidence, and he’s got to come down and go through
all that part of it again. He’s to be here to-morrow to see my father
at two o’clock.”
“Well,” I said, “I hope we shan’t run across one another, that’s all.”
“No,” she answered, in a rather funny way: “I don’t suppose you
exactly love him.”
I will say no more, since I have reached the threshold of that
extraordinary event which was to falsify at a blow every theory which
I, in common with hundreds of others, had built up and elaborated
about the Wildshott Murder Case.