THE DARK HORSE
Sergeant Ridgway, turning up punctually to his appointment, was
shown into Sir Calvin’s study, where he found, not his former
employer, but the Baron Le Sage, seated alone. Characteristically, the
detective showed as little surprise at seeing who awaited him as he
did embarrassment over his return to a house whose hospitality he had,
according to Mr. Bickerdike, so cruelly abused. He could have
understood, no doubt, no reason for his feeling any. His commission
had been to discover the murderer of Annie Evans, and, according to
the best of his lights, he had executed that commission. It was not
his fault if it had led him in a direction tragically counter to the
expectations of his employer. He had been engaged for a particular
purpose, and he had dutifully pursued that purpose--inevitably, if
unfortunately, to a regrettable end. But sentiment could not be
allowed to affect the detectival philosophy, or the Law became a dead
letter. In professional matters he was, and had to be, a simple
automaton; wherefore no sign of uneasiness was visible in his
expression as he entered the room, nor was there discernible there a
trace of animus of any sort. He was quite prepared, if necessary, to
own himself in the wrong. His high superiors had expressed themselves
as dissatisfied with a certain portion of the evidence. Very well, he
would bow to their scruples, and make a thorough re-investigation of
that part of the case. He understood that the landlord of the Red Deer
inn had been warned, and was to meet him here this afternoon.
Personally, he did not hope much from the interview, or attach great
importance to a rumour which he understood had got about since the
Inquest. But whether that rumour embodied a fact, or proved on
examination as unsubstantial as most _canards_ of its kind, the
finding of the murderer of Annie Evans remained, as it had been, his
sole object and purpose in undertaking the case.
All this, or the moral gist of it, the detective took it upon himself
to explain to the Baron in the course of the brief conversation which
ensued between them. He spoke drily, deliberately, as if measuring
out his words, rather with the air of plain-stating a professional
view-point, and instructing Counsel, than of asking for sympathy. His
hearer made a curious study of him the while, wondering and
calculating why he was being chosen the recipient of this
extrajudicial confidence. Perhaps, after all, there was a thought more
embarrassment under the surface than the other cared to admit, perhaps
just a hint of a human desire to make a friend in a difficult pass.
For the rest, it was the familiar figure of their knowledge which had
returned upon them--keen, handsome, dark-eyed, economical of speech,
potent in suggestion of a certain inscrutable order of mentality, and
exhibiting, as always, that faint discrepancy between mind and
material--distinction in the one, a touch of theatricalism and
vulgarity in the other.
Le Sage took him up on one point. The Baron, who was looking
extraordinarily pink and cheery, had already explained that Sir Calvin
was engaged with a visitor in another room, and had asked him to
receive and entertain the Sergeant during the short period of his
absence.
“Am I to be allowed to opine,” he said with a smile, “that the rumour
to which you refer bears upon your instructions, and is connected
somehow with Mr. Cleghorn’s mysterious double?”
The detective looked at the speaker curiously.
“Meaning?” he said.
“Meaning that supposititious figure on the hill, about which Mr. Fyler
was so inquisitive at the Inquest, but which he seemed most
unaccountably to overlook before the magistrates.”
“Ah!” said the detective drily, “I expect he’d come to the conclusion,
which was my own, that it wasn’t really worth another thought.”
“O! so I’m mistaken in fancying any association between that and your
particular mission? Well, well, it shall be a lesson to my
self-sufficiency. By the by, Sergeant, we’ve never had our
long-deferred game of chess. What do you say to a duel now while we’re
waiting?”
“No time, sir. Chess takes a lot of thought.”
“So it does. But it can be sampled in a problem. These tests are
rather a weakness of mine. Look here,”--he led the way to the window,
which, it being a mild warm day, stood wide open, and in which was
placed the usual table with the board on it, and half a dozen pieces
on the squares--“there’s a neat one, I flatter myself. I was at work
on it when you came in--black Knight (or dark horse, shall we call
it?) to play, and mate in three moves. Take the opposition, and see if
you can prevent it.”
He moved the Knight; mechanically the detective put down his hand and
responded with a Bishop: at the Baron’s third move the other looked
up, and looked his adversary full in the face. Le Sage had stepped
back. He had a way sometimes of thrusting his hands into the tail
pockets of his coat, and bringing them round in front of him. So he
stood now, with a curious smile on his lips.
“Dark horse wins,” said he. “My mate, I think, Sergeant John Ridgway.”
The door opened with the word, spoken pretty loudly, and there came
quickly into the room an inspector and two constables of the local
police, followed by Sir Calvin and another gentleman.
“I have the pleasure,” said M. le Baron to the new-comers, “of
introducing to you the murderer of Annie Evans, _alias_ Ivy Mellor.”
He had hardly spoken when the detective turned and leapt for the open
window. The table, which stood between him and escape, went down with
a crash: he had his foot on the sill, when a shot slammed out, and he
stumbled and fell back into the room. The Baron’s bullet had caught
him neatly on the heel of his shoe, knocking his leg from under him at
the critical moment. Before he could rise the police were on him, and
he was handcuffed and helpless.
“A clean shot, though I say it,” said the Baron coolly, as he returned
the revolver to his pocket. “No, he’s not hurt, though I may have
galled his kibe. Look out for him there!”
They had need to. They had got the man to his feet, and were holding
him as if in doubt whether he needed support or not, when he resolved
the question for them, and in unmistakable fashion. This way and that,
foaming, snarling, tearing with his manacled hands, now diving
head-foremost, now nearly free, and caught back again into the human
maelstrom--three stout men as they were, they had a hard ado to keep
and restrain him. But they got him exhausted and quiet at last, and he
stood among them torn and dishevelled, his chest heaving convulsively,
dribbling at the mouth, his face like nothing human.
“You, you!” he gasped, glaring at his denouncer, “if I had only
guessed--if I had only known!”
“It would have been short shrift for me, I expect,” said the Baron
shrewdly.
“It would,” said the prisoner--“that inn-keeper! It was you contrived
the trap, was it! You damned, smiling traitor!”
The mortal vehemence he put into it! “What I had always suspected, but
could never quite unmask,” thought Le Sage. “The dramatic fire,
vicious and dangerous--banked down, but breaking loose now and again
and roaring into uncontrollable flame!”
The second gentleman--who was in fact the Chief Constable of the
County--put in a reproving word:--
“Come, Ridgway, keep a civil tongue in your head, my man.”
The detective laughed like a devil.
“Civility, you old fool! If words could blister him, I’d ransack
hell’s language for them till he curled and shrivelled up before me.”
“Well,” said the gentleman reasonably, “you’re not improving your
case, you know, by all this.”
“My case!” cried the other. “I’ve got none. It was always a gamble,
and I knew it well enough from the first. But I’d have pulled it
through, if it hadn’t been for him--I’d have pulled it through and
hanged my fine gentleman--his son there--as sure as there’s a God of
Vengeance in the world.”
He wrenched himself in the hold that gripped him, and, bare-chested,
snarling like a dog in a leash, flung forward to denounce the
father:--
“Curse you, do you hear? I’d have ruined and hanged that whelp of
yours as surely as he ruined and murdered the girl that was mine till
he debauched and stole her from me. When I put the shot into her, it
was as truly his hand that fired it as if his finger had pulled on the
trigger. She’d betrayed me, and it was him that led her to it, and by
doing so made himself responsible for the consequences.”
The Inspector thought it right here to utter the usual official
warning. It was curious to note in his tone, as he did so, a suspicion
of deference, almost of apology, such as might characterise a
schoolboy forced to bear witness against his headmaster. Ridgway
turned on him with a jeering oath:--
“You can save your breath, Cully. That devil spoke true. It was I
killed Ivy Mellor; and him, that old dog’s son, that ought to hang for
it.”
M. le Baron spoke up: “Is it necessary to go further, gentlemen, since
he confesses to the double crime?”
“I think not,” said the Chief Constable. “Remove him, Inspector.”
The three closed about the prisoner, who submitted quietly to being
taken away. But he forced a stop a moment as he passed by Sir
Calvin--who, greatly overcome, had sunk into a chair, the Baron
leaning above him--and spoke, with some faint return to reason and
self-control:--
“I don’t know how much you think you’ve found out. You’ve got to prove
it, mind. No confession counts to hang a man, unless there’s proof to
back it.”
“_Par exemple_,” said the Baron, looking up, “a skeleton key, a coat
button, a packet of letters, a false character, a falser
impersonation, a proposed disinheritance, and, to end all, a
confederate murdered, and the plot to hang an innocent man for the
deed!--altogether a very pretty little list, my friend.”
Ridgway, to those who held him, seemed to stagger slightly. He stood
gazing with haggard eyes into the face of this deadly jocular Nemesis,
who, so utterly unsuspected by him, had all this time, it appeared,
while he smiled and smiled, been silently weaving his toils about his
feet. He had not a word to answer; but a sort of stupor of horror grew
into his expression, as if for the first time a cold mortal fear were
beginning to possess him. Then suddenly he stiffened erect, turned,
and passed mutely out of the room.
The Chief Constable lingered behind a moment.
“Come, Calvin, old man,” he said: “pull yourself together. The thing’s
over, and well over, thanks to your wonderful friend here--by George,
as remarkable a shot, sir, as you are a strategist! I don’t know which
I admired most, the way you stalked your quarry, or the way you
brought him down.”
“Really quite simple little matters of deduction and sighting,”
answered the Baron, beaming deprecation, “if you make a practice, as I
do, of never loosening your bolt in either case till you’re sure of
your aim.”
“Ha!” said the gentleman. “Well, I congratulate you, Calvin, and I
congratulate us all, on this happy termination to a very distressing
business. I hope now the order of release won’t be long in coming, and
that your poor unfortunate lad will be restored to you before many
hours have passed.”
A pallid, but wondering, face peered round the door.
“May I come in?” said Mr. Bickerdike.