THE BARON LAYS HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE
Sir Francis Orsden and the Baron Le Sage walked slowly up the
kitchen garden together. It was a windless autumn morning, such
serene and gracious weather as had prevailed now for some days, and
the primroses under the wall were already putting forth a little
precocious blossom or two, feeling for the Spring. There was a balm in
the air and a softness in the soil which communicated themselves to
the human fibre, reawakening it as it were to a sense of new life out
of old distress. Such feelings men might have who have landed from
perilous seas upon a smiling shore.
The two talked earnestly as they strolled, on a subject necessarily
the most prominent in their minds. Said Le Sage:--
“Are we not a little apt to judge a man by his business--as that a
lawyer must be unfeeling, a butcher cruel, a doctor humane, and a
sweep dishonest? But it is not his profession which makes a man what
he is, but the man who makes his profession what it appears in him. A
lawyer does not appropriate trust funds because he is a lawyer, but
because he is a gambler: so, a detective is not impeccable because he
is a detective, but because he is an honest man. You wonder that he
can be at the same time a detective and a desperate criminal. Well, I
don’t.”
“Ah! You’ve got a reason?”
“Just this. What is in that lawyer’s mind when he steals? Imagination.
It leaps the dark abyss to wing for the golden peaks beyond, where,
easy restitution passed, it sees its dreams fulfilled. What was in
Ridgway’s mind when he planned his tremendous venture? Imagination
again. It may be the angel or the devil of a piece, spur a Pegasus or
ride a broomstick. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker may
any of them have it, and still be the butcher, the baker, and the
candlestick-maker. The last thing of which a lawyer, as a lawyer,
would be guilty, would be the bringing himself within the grasp of the
law: the last thing of which a detective, as a detective, would be
guilty would be the making himself a subject for detection. What
induces either of them, then, to sin against the logic of his own
profession? Imagination alone and always, the primary impulse to
everything that is good and bad in the world. A man may be blessed
with it, or he may be cursed; contain it in his being like the seed of
beauty or the seed of dipsomania.”
“And Ridgway like the latter?”
“It would seem so. The man is by nature a romantic. I once got a
glimpse of the truth in a conversation I had with him. What flashed
upon me, in that momentary lifting of the veil, was a revelation of
fierce vision, immense passion. It was like taking a stethoscope to a
man’s heart and surprising its secret.”
“A d-diseased heart, eh?”
“One may say so--diseased with Imagination, which is like an aneurism,
often unsuspected and undetectable, until, put to some sudden strain,
it bursts in blood.”
“You mean, in this case----?”
“I mean that the murder was not premeditated; that is my sure
conviction. It was the result of a sudden frenzied impulse finding the
means ready to its hand. The man had plotted, but not that. Why should
he, since it meant the ruin of his visions?”
“Ah! You forget, Baron----”
“We will come to that. What I want to impress upon you at the outset
is that Ridgway was at soul a gambler. Circumstance, accident, may
have made him a detective: if it had made him a bishop it would have
been all the same. That fire, that energy, kept under and banked down,
would as surely have roared into flame the moment Fate drew out the
damper. That moment came, and with it the vision. He saw in it
certain hazards, leading to certain ruin or certain fortune; like a
gambler he counted the cost and took the odds, since they seemed worth
to him. What he failed to count on was a certain contingency which a
less imaginative man than he might have foreseen--the possible
treachery of a confederate.”
“And such a confederate.”
“Exactly. It was to sin most vilely against all his instinctive code;
and worse--it was to stab him with a double-edged dagger.”
“I th-think I can pity him for that.”
“And so can I; and for this reason. Coolness is, or should be, the
first quality of a gambler; gamblers, for that reason, do not easily
fall in love. But when they do fall they fall hard, they fall
headlong, they do not so much fall as plunge, as a gambler plunges,
all heaven or all hell the stake. There is no doubt that Ridgway’s
passion for this girl was a true gambler’s passion. To gain or lose
her meant heaven or hell to him.”
“I can quite believe it, Baron. But, d-damn it! how much longer are
you going to keep me on tenterhooks?”
Le Sage laughed. They had been strolling, and pausing, and strolling
again, until they had approached by degrees the upper boundary of the
estate, where, amid great bushes of lavender and sweet marjoram, stood
a substantial thatched summer-house, cosily convenient for the view.
“Let us go and sit in there,” he said, “and I will unfold my tale
without further preamble.”
As he spoke a figure dodging about among the raspberry canes came into
view.
“Hullo!” cried Orsden: “Bickerdike. What’s he doing here?”
“I think I know,” said the Baron. He went over to the elaborately
unconscious gentleman--who, pretending to see him for the first time,
glanced up with a start and an expression of surprise which would not
have deceived a town-idiot--and accosted him genially:--
“Looking for anything, Mr. Bickerdike?”
“Just the chance of a late raspberry the birds may have left,” was the
answer.
“O! I wonder if I can provide any fruit as much to your taste. You
haven’t a half-hour to spare, I suppose?”
Mr. Bickerdike came promptly out from among the canes.
“Certainly,” he said. “I am quite at your service. What is it?”
“Only that I am under promise to Sir Francis to unfold for his
delectation the story of a certain mystery, and the steps by which I
came to arrive at its elucidation. It occurs to me--but, of course, if
it would bore you----”
“Not at all. I am all eagerness to hear.”
“Well, it occurs to me that you have a leading title to the
information, if you care to claim it, since it was in your company
that I found my first clue to the riddle.”
“Was it, indeed, Baron? You excite me immensely. What was that?”
“Let us all go in here, and I will tell you.”
They entered the summer-house, and seated themselves on the
semi-hexagonal bench which enclosed a stout rustic table.
“Now,” said Sir Francis, his eyes sparkling, “out with it every bit,
Baron, and give our hungering souls to feed.”
Le Sage took a pinch of snuff, laid the box handy, dusted his plump
knees with his handkerchief, and, leaning back and loosely twining his
fingers before him, began:--
“I have this, my friends, to say to you both before I start. What I
have to tell, my story--and not the most creditable part of it--is
fundamentally concerned with one about whom, it might be thought, my
obligations as his guest should keep me silent. That would be quite
true, were it not for a single consideration so vital as to constitute
in itself a complete moral justification of my candour. In a few days,
or weeks, the whole will be common property, and that figure
subjected, I fear, to a Pharisaic criticism, which will be none the
more bitter for his friends having anticipated it and rallied about
him. Moreover, he himself has bound me to no sort of silence in the
matter, but, on the contrary, has rather intimated to me that he
leaves to my discretion the choice and manner of his defence--or
_apologia_. It may be admitted, perhaps, that he does not see these
things quite from our point of view: he derives from another
generation and another code of morals: but for what he is, or has
been, he has paid a very severe penalty, and we must judge him now by
what he has suffered rather than by what he has deserved.
“So much for this confidence; which, I beg you to consider, is still,
though unenforced, a confidence, due to you, Sir Francis, through your
coming matrimonial connexion with the family”--(Mr. Bickerdike, with a
start and a positive gape, which lifted his eyebrows, looked across at
the young Baronet, who grinned and nodded)--“and to you, my friend,
for your unshakable loyalty to a much-tried member of it. And with
that I will quit grace and get to the joint.”
The Macuba came once more into action, the box was again laid aside,
and the two settled down finally to listen.
“In the following narrative,” said M. le Baron, “what was and remains
conjectural it must be left to events to substantiate. I claim so
much, though, for myself, I entertain no doubt as to the truth.”
“My story opens in the Café l’Univers in Paris, where we two, Mr.
Bickerdike, strangers to one another, were sitting one September
afternoon precisely a year ago. We got into talk on the subject of a
neighbour, an artist, and an object of interest to us both, who was
busily engaged in sketching into a book pencil-memoranda of the more
noticeable hats worn by passing ladies. He worked fast and cleverly,
and was manifestly an adept at his craft. Presently, after having
watched him for some time, I asked you if you had observed anything
peculiar about his hands. You had not, it seemed, and no more was
said. But there _was_ a peculiarity, and it was this: when he lifted
his right hand, as artists will do, to measure the perspective value
of an object, it was always the second finger of the hand which he
interposed before his eye. I watched him do it over and over again,
and it was persistently the same. Why, I found myself asking myself?
Was the trick due to some malformation of the first finger, or to some
congenital impulse? Not to the first, I was presently able to convince
myself. To the alternative proposition I was fated to receive an
answer both affirmative and illuminating: but it was not to come just
yet.
“You remember what followed. The stranger suddenly closed his book,
rose, started to cross the road, and was promptly knocked down and run
over by a passing cab. I hurried to his assistance, and found that he
was pretty badly injured. He was lifted into the cab, and, accompanied
by myself and a gendarme, was conveyed to the St. Antoine Hospital, in
which he remained for some weeks. Both there, and in his own
apartments after his discharge, I visited him frequently, and was able
to show him some small attentions, such as, in our relative positions,
mere humanity demanded of me. He was poor, in his art an enthusiast,
and very little sympathy was needed to win his general confidence.
His name was John Ridgway.”
The two listeners glanced at one another, in a puzzled, questioning
way; but neither would venture to interrupt, and the Baron
continued:--
“He was John, and Ridgway--pronounced Reedsvay--but for the sake of a
necessary distinction I will call him henceforth Jean.
“Jean lived with a friend, Caliste Ribault, in two rooms in the Rue
Bourbon-le-Château, a little dull out-of-the-way street in the Latin
Quarter. They both worked for a living on the _Petit Courrier des
Dames_; but with Jean it was a weariness and a humiliation, and always
he had before his eyes the prospect of ultimate manumission and
recognition. He was an artist from his soul outwards to his
finger-tips. But, alas! his immortality was destined to be of sooner
arrival. He never properly overcame the effects of his accident, and
last June he succumbed to them and left his friend alone.
“Now, in the course of our conversations, Jean had told me a strange
story about himself--a story which I never knew at the time whether to
credit, or to part credit, or to attribute entirely to the invention
of an imaginative nature. Born ostensibly of humble parentage, he was
in reality, he said, the legitimate son of an English officer of
wealth and distinction, whose name he could claim, and whose heir he
could prove himself to be, contingent on the production of certain
documentary evidence which he knew to exist, but which, since it
remained in the possession of the putative father, it was impossible
to cite. This alleged evidence touched upon the question of a sham
marriage, a clerical impostor officiating, which had turned out to be
a true marriage; and the names of the contracting parties were
recorded, with that of the clergyman in question as witness, on the
fly-leaf of a little Roman Catholic _vade-mecum_, which had belonged
to Jean’s mother but of which her would-be wronger had secured
possession, and which he retained to this day.
“So much Jean told me, omitting only the father’s name, which he
withheld, he queerly stated, from a feeling of jealous pride for the
honour of that which was his own honour, but which was presently to be
suggested to me in a very singular fashion. You may perhaps recall,
Mr. Bickerdike, how at dinner on the night of our first arrival here,
our host, in answer to some observation of mine about a certain
picture hanging on the wall, raised the second finger of his right
hand before his eye to test an alleged misproportion in one of the
figures of the composition. The action--though, of course, I was
already familiar with Sir Calvin’s injury--instantly arrested my
attention. A vision of the Café l’Univers and of the busy hat-sketcher
leapt irresistibly into my mind: I saw again the lifted second finger,
and I saw, with astonishment, what, lacking that clue, had never yet
so much as occurred or suggested itself to me--the existence of a
subtle but definite family likeness between the two men. That
sign-manual had solved the problem of paternity, and given some
colour, at least, to my friend’s romantic tale. Let me put it quite
clearly. Before me sat, as I was convinced, the father of the man in
Paris calling himself John Ridgway, but who claimed the right, on
whatever disputable grounds, to call himself, if he would, John
Kennett.
“Judge of my feelings. From that moment I was possessed of a piece of
knowledge whose significance I could not then foresee, but which was
already half consciously associating itself in my mind with that other
curious discovery--that a well-known detective, who bore the very same
name as my friend, was operating on a case somewhere in the
neighbourhood.
“To return now to Jean’s story, and my natural comments thereon. I
asked him, assuming for the occasion the truth of his statement, if he
had never made an endeavour to assert his rights, and if not why not.
His answer did not strike me then as convincing, though I had full
reason later to alter my opinion. To attempt and fail, he said, would
be merely to disinter a long-buried scandal, and expose to renewed
odium the character of a mother whom he fondly loved. Moreover, for
himself he had no ambitions save such as centred in his art, to which
he was wholly devoted, nor any nerve or desire to take that position
in the world to which his birth entitled him. She had told him the
story one day, on the occasion of one of his rare visits to
England--where she lived--when she was lying very ill, thinking it
right that he should know, and leaving it to him to decide for himself
what action, in the event of her death, he should take or not take in
the matter. She was, I understood, a woman of French origin, in
modest circumstances, and many years the widow of a
quartermaster-sergeant in the British army. From that necessitous
household Jean himself had early broken away, to follow his bent in
Paris, in which city he had remained, working and struggling for a
livelihood, ever since the days of his adolescence. He was a man of
twenty-eight when I knew him.
“There for the present I will leave Jean’s story, turning from it to a
subject of more immediate interest to you--namely, the murder of Ivy
Mellor, and the methods by which I was enabled to bring the crime home
to the actual delinquent. I can claim no particular credit for my part
in the business. Destiny, acting blindly or providentially as you
will, had woven about me, as a web is woven about a spider, a most
extraordinary concatenation of coincidences, from whose central
observation-point I was able, as it were, to command all strands of
the design. My casual encounter with Mr. Bickerdike in Paris; the
discovery that he was there to meet Mr. Kennett, the son of a
gentleman already slightly known to me; the accident witnessed by us;
my subsequent visits to the patient, and his confiding to me of his
story; my second meeting with Mr. Bickerdike in London, and the
coincidence of our common invitation to Wildshott; the act which
betrayed Jean’s father to me, and seemed to confirm the truth of the
man’s story; the news that a second John Ridgway was at work in the
neighbourhood--in all this, considered alone, there lay some grounds,
perhaps, for wondering entertainment, but surely none for suspicion.
It was only when the murder occurred that any thought of a connexion
amongst the parts flashed inevitably into my mind; and since Fate had
placed, if in any hands, in mine, what clues might exist to the truth,
I was determined from that moment to pursue them to the end. _The Key
to it I found in a skeleton Key_.”
Again the Macuba came into requisition, and again the Baron savoured,
over a refreshing pinch, the excitement of his hearers.
“A skeleton key,” he repeated. “I discovered it before ever Sergeant
John Ridgway had had a chance of looking for it, on the very spot
where the poor thing’s body had lain. It must have been jerked from
her hand--she had probably just produced it from her pocket--by the
shot which killed her, and had remained there undetected during and
after her removal. I was fortunate in securing it only a few minutes
before the Sergeant came down to examine the place of the crime.
“Now, what had Annie Evans to do with a skeleton key--she, a modest
servant girl of irreproachable character, as the housekeeper had just
informed us? I examined the key. It was of the usual burglarious
pattern, seemed newly turned, had a slight flaw, or projection, on the
barrel end, and was splashed with an ugly Bluebeard red. Had Annie,
after all, been quite the impeccable person Mrs. Bingley supposed? I
wondered. I thought of the manner of her engagement, of her
untraceable connexions, and I wondered. I wondered still at the
Inquest, when, as it seemed, those same relations were still
hopelessly to seek. I wondered no longer when, on the day following
the inquiry, I came upon the Sergeant intently examining the ground
about the scene of the crime. I came upon him unexpectedly, and
surprised him. What was he looking for? He had already overhauled
every detail of the girl’s belongings. Had he missed something which
he had expected to find among them? A skeleton key possibly. But how
could he have known she possessed such a thing? Obviously, there was
only one answer--because he himself had provided her with it. For
what reason--he, John Ridgway? Naturally, my mind flew off at a
tangent to the other John Ridgway, my Parisian Jean, and his
extraordinary story. A reputedly sham marriage which nevertheless had
turned out genuine; documents in proof, and their possessor my host?
Was it conceivable that _this_ John Ridgway was interested in the
recovery of those documents, and had employed a female confederate to
steal them for him?
“It was quite conceivable, and quite true, for that, as appeared by
degrees, was actually the case. But why was this John Ridgway
interested in the recovery of those papers? We shall see.
“In the meanwhile, to what conviction had my reflections led me? That
the detective and the girl were in collusion for a certain purpose.
But much was to be deduced from that conviction--that the girl was an
imposter, that she had secured her situation very possibly by means of
a false character written by herself or her confederate, that, quite
certainly, her name was not Annie Evans at all. Hence the calculated
impossibility of tracing out her connexions.
“So far, then, so good. We come now to the frustrated business of the
theft, and the crime which was its terrible consequence. It had
inevitably occurred to me that the safe in Sir Calvin’s study must be
the repository, and known by the confederates to be the repository, of
the papers in question; else, if of easier access, they had long ago
been abstracted and used to serve their purpose. Probably, as it
appeared to me, the girl’s first business had been to secure an
impression of the keyhole in wax, which she had despatched to Ridgway,
receiving back from him in exchange the master-key. I seized an
opportunity to examine the safe, and detected about the spot in
question certain faint marks or scratches in the paint, which I had
once before taken some curious stock of, and which I now perceived
might well correspond with that little sharp projection I spoke of at
the end of the key. I even once tried the key in the lock myself (that
was on the night, Mr. Bickerdike, when you stalked me”--poor Vivian
looked unutterably foolish--“but without detecting me in my second
descent, which occurred after you had returned to your room) and found
it easy to manipulate. Then the girl had already been secretly at work
there, fumbling her job maybe? But why, in that case, had she not
secured the plunder, given notice to leave, and at once cleared out?
_Because_--as it was perfectly legitimate to infer from the evidence
at the inquest--_she had, in the meantime, fallen desperately in love
with our young friend, and had refused to take any further part in a
transaction designed to dispossess him of his name and inheritance_.
“Now, that is to anticipate matters a little, perhaps; but grant my
deduction sound--as, indeed, it proved to be--and what followed?
Necessarily, a breach between the two confederates of a very violent
nature. To the detective it meant betrayal and the ruin of his plans.
Would that consideration be enough in itself to goad him on to murder?
With a man of Ridgway’s character and trained cautiousness of
disposition I did not think it probable. Assuming, then, that the
murder were his act, what more overmastering motive could have driven
him to it? What but jealousy, the one passion uncontrollable by even
the most self-disciplining nature. He was himself passionately
enamoured of his own beautiful decoy, and she had betrayed not only
his interests but his love. The crime had been, in the expressive
French phrase, and in the fullest sense, a _crime passionel_. I had
it.
“To figure the course of events, even, was now no difficult task for
the imagination. We will begin with Mrs. Bingley’s timely
advertisement for a housemaid, upon which the confederates happened,
and which gave them--perhaps suggested to them--the very opportunity
they desired. Once the girl was established in the house, the two
corresponded. We know that she received letters, though none could be
found after her death. Of course not. She would have taken scrupulous
care to destroy all such incriminating evidence, including the
fraudulent ‘character.’ But they corresponded, and probably, on her
part, very early in a tone which gave her accomplice to suspect, with
growing uneasiness, that all was not right with her. Accident--it
could have been nothing else--brought him down professionally and
opportunely into this part of the country. He took the occasion to
write and arrange for a secret personal interview with her--we had it
from the housekeeper that a letter was received by Annie quite shortly
before her death--and she answered appointing the Bishop’s Walk for
their place of meeting. Of that I have no doubt. She was there to keep
her engagement with Ridgway, and not to waylay the other. _His_
appearance on the scene was quite fortuitous, and, as it turned out,
the most fateful _contretemps_ that could have happened. He came, and
we know from his own confession what passed between them, with what
she upbraided him, and with what threatened. Ridgway had overheard it
all. He had arrived at the place duly to his appointment, and, on his
first entering the copse, had probably heard, or perhaps caught
distant sight of, the other male figure coming his way, and had
slipped into the thick undergrowth for concealment. His propinquity
unsuspected by the girl, she had delivered herself in his hearing of
her deadly secret, and he knew at last of her double treachery to him.
The lover gone, he came out of his ambush, and damned her with the
truth. Likely, even then, it was the presence of the gun, so adversely
left to his hand, which compelled him to the deed. It was the act of a
demented moment, unthinking and unpremeditated. It was not until
reason had returned to him that the idea of the diabolical vengeance
it might be in his power to wreak on the seducer began to form in his
mind. To bring the murder home to _him_! What a frenzy of triumph in
the very thought! It possessed him devilishly, and verily from that
moment it was as if the man had bargained away his soul to the evil
one. Everything appeared to favour him--the mood, the motive, the
conduct of his hated rival; most of all the fact that to his own
hands, by some extraordinary freak of opportunism, had been committed
the control of the case. How near he came to success in his inhuman
design needs no retelling.
“But, meanwhile, there was the murder committed in that instant of
madness. Probably he had not much hope at the time of escaping its
consequences; probably, in his desperate state, with all his schemes
gone to wreck, he did not much care. He had had his bloody revenge for
an intolerable wrong, and the rest was indifference to him. He
replaced the gun where it had stood, and left the spot. Possibly, as
sanity returned to him, some instinct of self-preservation may have
induced in him a certain mood of precaution. There is evidence to
show, I think, that he lurked for a time in the woods before leaving
them for the open hillside. But that he did leave them eventually to
make his way up the hill, we have Henstridge’s evidence to testify.
“Now, from the first I had never succeeded in convincing myself that
that hypothetical figure on the hill was as wholly a figment of the
imagination as most people seemed to consider it. The cap pulled over
the eyes and the turned-up collar--what butler ever turned up his coat
collar?--were strong presumptions in my mind that Mr. Cleghorn had not
been their wearer. Then the figure had been described as advancing
hurriedly; yet it had taken twenty minutes or so to cover a distance
of two hundred yards. You may object, possibly, that, in all your
experience of Sergeant Ridgway, you have never seen him wear on his
head other than a black plush Homburg hat. I answer that on the day of
the murder he was wearing a cloth cap, easily, in the distance, to be
mistaken for the cap worn by Mr. Cleghorn. I know this, because, in
the course of one of my drives about the country in the company of a
very charming young lady, I had made a point of calling at the
Sergeant’s one-time lodgings at Antonferry--I had procured the address
from Sir Calvin--where, at the cost of a little insinuative word-play,
I was able to ascertain that the Sergeant had gone out, _wearing a
cloth cap_, fairly early on the day of the murder, and that he had
returned late, and seemingly in an exhausted condition, from a long
walk. He had, and that hypothetical figure hurrying over the hill--at
the moment with little concern for its safety--had been the figure of
Sergeant Ridgway, tramping back to his lodgings in Antonferry after
the murder. He had passed by the inn, making north by west, and had
long turned the bend of the lonely road before Mr. Cleghorn, mistaken
by Henstridge for the same figure, had arrived at the Red Deer and
turned in at the tap.”
The Baron paused for refreshment, while Sir Francis applauded softly,
his whole face beaming delight and approval.
“Have I convinced you so far,” continued the narrator, “of the
efficiency of the toils in which I was manœuvring to entangle my
‘suspect’? Very well: here was another little _pièce de conviction_. In
spying about the scene of the crime I had picked up, in addition to
the skeleton key--a button. It was a common horn coat-button, and was
lying on the spot whence the gun had been fired--jerked off, probably,
by the recoil. Now the Sergeant’s overcoat was one of those light
covert coats which button under an overlapping hem. I took occasion to
examine it one day, when, occupied with Sir Calvin, he had left it in
the hall. It had been fitted, I observed, with a set of brand-new
buttons, which nevertheless did not correspond with the little buttons
on the cuffs. Those exactly matched the button I had found, while the
others were of a distinctly different pattern. Obviously he had
discovered his loss, had failed again to make it good, and so, for
precaution’s sake, had renewed the entire set. It was an unpardonable
oversight in such a man to have forgotten the sleeves. I made the
button over to him--or could it be an exact duplicate of it which I
had procured?--telling him in all innocence where I had found it. He
took the little blow very well, without a wince, but I could see how
it disturbed him. He never suspected me, I think, of more than an
amiable curiosity. I have often wondered why.”
“Because he wasn’t a fool,” interposed Mr. Bickerdike, with a slight
groan. Le Sage laughed.
“Or because I am more of a knave than I appear,” said he. “So let
bygones be bygones.” He helped himself to a weighty pinch of rappee,
and put down the box with a grave expression. “I come now,” he said,
“to the supreme crux of all--the apparently damning evidence as to
when the fatal shot was fired. If it were fired somewhere about three
o’clock, at the time stated by two witnesses, then Hugo Kennett, and
none but Hugo Kennett, must be, despite all specious arguments to the
contrary, the actual murderer. But it was not fired at three o’clock,
as I believe I shall find reason to convince you: it was fired a good
twenty or twenty-five minutes later; and this is my justification for
saying so. You will remember that, at the magisterial inquiry, the
witness Daniel Groome, revising his former evidence, stated that he
had heard the clock in his master’s study strike the quarter past
three--he, by then, having gone round to the back of the
house--thereby proving that the report of the gun, which had reached
him while he was still at the front, must have occurred during the
first quarter of the hour. Now I have taken the pains, since my
return, to question Daniel Groome very closely on this matter, and
with what result? You will be surprised to hear. The stable clock, to
which Daniel is accustomed to listen, strikes the quarters--one for
the first, two for the second, and so on. The study clock, to which
Daniel is not accustomed to listen, strikes the half-hour only--a
single stroke. But the single stroke represented to Daniel the
quarter past, and therefore he concluded, when he heard that single
stroke sound from his master’s study, that it was recording the first
quarter, instead of, as it actually was, the second. And on this
ingenuous evidence--not realizing in the least what he was doing--was
that simple man prepared to tighten the noose about his young master’s
neck.
“But, if Daniel Groome was wrong, it followed of necessity that
Henstridge must be wrong also--as of course he was. He had been simply
got at by the detective, and officially bullied and threatened into
stating what was wanted of him. As a matter of fact, he had had no
idea of what the time was at all, but had taken any suggestion offered
him. The fellow is a blackguard and a coward, and would swear any
man’s life away for thirty pieces of silver. I did a little persuasion
with him on my own account--again during one of those refreshing
drives, Sir Francis--and, taking a leaf out of Ridgway’s book, had
little difficulty in bringing him to his knees. He was abject when I
had finished with him. (Parenthetically, I may suggest here--what I am
convinced was the case--that our murdering friend had also ‘got at’ Mr.
Fyler, but in another sense. He had persuaded, I mean, that astute
lawyer into believing that there really _was_ nothing worth
considering in that hypothetical figure, which we may name the fourth
dimension; and that was why, I take it, the point was not taken up
again by Counsel before the magistrates.)
“Very well, now: we have got so far as to convict Sergeant Ridgway of
murder, following on a plot to disinherit, with the help of a
confederate, the very man whom he schemed to charge with the crime. So
we arrive necessarily at the question, who was this Annie Evans, whom
he had chosen for his accomplice in the business, and whom he had
ended by so foully doing to death? To get at the whole truth of the
story, it was essential that the mystery of their connexion should be
traced to its source.
“To any one, not possessed of the clues which Fortune had placed in my
hands, it must have appeared nothing less than astonishing that, with
all the wide publicity given to the case, the victim should have
remained virtually unidentified and unclaimed. She was beautiful, she
was in domestic service--two facts, one might have thought, favourable
to an easy solution of the riddle. Still her origin remained a
mystery, and so remains, to all but the few instructed, to this day.
“But that very mystery which, to those wanting the master-key,
appeared so insolvable, was to me who possessed the key, illuminating.
That the girl was in domestic service at the time of her death was no
proof that she had ever been in domestic service before. It would be
much more in accord with my conception of the astute and far-seeing
detective to suppose that he had anticipated that danger of
recognition by assigning to his confederate a part through which it
would be impracticable, should difficulties arise, to trace her. She
had not been in service before, in fact. The business of the
photograph confirmed me in that view. You will remember that travesty
of Annie’s likeness which appeared, enlarged and reproduced from a
snap-shot, in the official prints? It was completely unrecognizable,
and was intended by Ridgway to be unrecognizable. He knew that no
other recent photograph of her existed at all, and for the very good
reason that she had not for some time been in a position to be
photographed. You will understand why in a moment. It was of paramount
importance to him, both first and last, that his accomplice should be
and remain unidentifiable. Essential to that condition were her
innocence of former service, the absence of any photographic record,
and the employment of a false name.
“It was of no use, consequently, my thinking of running Annie Evans,
so called, to earth: I must look for her under another title. How was
I to ascertain that title?
“It was here again that chance, or Providence, came--I will not say in
a totally unforeseen way, but at least in a most obliging way--to my
assistance. It occurred to me that at this stage of the proceedings
it would be well for me to pay a visit to my Parisian John Ridgway,
and endeavour to extract from him, if he could be persuaded to part
with them, the fullest details possible of the story with whose
outline he had already acquainted me. Something, it might be much, I
felt, had remained untold which, if revealed, would possibly throw
such a light upon the obscure places of my quest as would enable me
from that moment to present my case without a flaw. I went--to Paris,
Mr. Bickerdike; not to London, as you supposed--only to learn from
Jean’s bosom friend--that Caliste Ribault, of whom I have already
spoken--that his loved comrade had departed this life in June of this
year. That was a blow, I confess: my hopes seemed baffled, my journey
in vain. Yet it was so far from being the case that not the artist’s
living lips could have more shouted the truth into my soul than did
the evidence of his dead hand. I will tell you how:--
“One day, shortly before Jean’s death, Caliste informed me, there had
come to visit him a stepbrother, an Englishman, of whom he, Caliste,
had never before heard nor Jean spoken. _This stepbrother bore the
same Christian and surname as Jean_, and he had come accompanied by a
girl of such beauty that the dying man could not dismiss the thought
of her face from his mind until he had made from memory a coloured
drawing of it on the white-washed wall, writing her name beneath. Now,
his step-brother being dead, John Ridgway had come once more to
arrange about the funeral and the disposition of the deceased’s
effects, and, perceiving the face on the wall, had been very angry--so
angry, that he had immediately seized a cloth and completely effaced
the drawing, so that not a vestige of it remained. Why, you ask? You
will understand later.
“Thus again Fortune seemed to laugh at me; but it was laughter like
that of a mother who dangles over the mouth of her child a cherry--to
be his in a moment. And sure enough in such a moment Caliste informed
me that, though the picture was destroyed, a copy of it remained in
the shape of a photograph which he himself had taken of the original.
He showed me the photograph; _and the face I saw was the face of Annie
Evans, but Ivy Mellor was the name written underneath_.
“I had found out what I wanted--and more. I had discovered that the
two John Ridgways were step-brothers, and light and still light
broadened on the path before me. I got Ribault to part with the
photograph to me, cautioning him to say nothing about his possessing
the negative to any one, and with my prize I came on the following day
to London. Thereafter my task was an easy one. Possessing that face
and that name, and associating both with the name of a famous Scotland
Yard detective, I had only to place the matter in the hands of a very
clever and trustworthy private inquiry agent of my acquaintance to
find out all that I needed. His investigations--with the details of
which I need not trouble you--yielded the following information:--
“Ivy Mellor had been not many months discharged from a reformatory, to
which she had been committed for three years for procuring a situation
as nursery governess with a forged character, and obtaining goods by
false pretences. She was the illegitimate daughter of an actress now
dead, and was possessed herself of some decided histrionic ability.
Upon her discharge, Ridgway had somehow got hold of her, or had been
got hold of by her, with the result that he had fallen a complete
slave to her attractions. It was probably she who had been his evil
genius from the first; probably she who had planned and perpetrated
the ‘written character’ which had procured her an _entrée_ to Wildshott.
He promised her great things in the event of success, and, in view of
those great things, she held him at arm’s length; there were to be no
questionable relations between them. The man was hopelessly
infatuated; he used to visit her under an assumed name; probably ‘kept
her,’ in the unequivocal sense. I am giving here not only the agent’s
report, but some of my own conclusions drawn therefrom. Summarized,
they showed my case complete, so far as _effect_ was concerned. I had
only now to penetrate to the _cause_. It could be fathomed, I
believed, but fathomed in one direction alone. I determined to go
boldly to the fountain-head, and challenge there a decision. In Sir
Calvin’s hands lay the final verdict. I could hardly doubt what it
would be, or that for the sake of the whole truth he would yield at
last to daylight the guarded secret of a long-past episode. I judged
him rightly, and I need say no more. He told me the story, produced
for my examination the written evidence, and left me to deal with the
matter as I would.
“But one remark more I have to make before running, as briefly as I
can, through the main points of the narrative unfolded to me. While in
Paris I had procured from my very good friend, M. Despard, the head of
the secret police, an introduction to our own First Commissioner. I
saw the latter, confided to his interested, and rather horrified, ears
the whole truth of the case, so far as I had then conceived and
mastered it, and arranged with him the little trap which was to entice
John Ridgway into our midst again--conditional always on my procuring
that supplementary evidence which was to prove his guilt beyond any
possibility of doubt. The rest you know.
“We come now to the final chapter, which, like the postscript to a
lady’s letter, contains, in Hazlitt’s phrase, the pith of the whole.
In relating it I choose my own words, and must not be understood to
aim at reproducing the actual terms in which it was revealed to me by
Sir Calvin. I wish to give a mere brief or abstract of a painful
story, and I wish, moreover, to warn you once more that certain
reflections and conclusions of mine, not affecting the main body of
the narrative, were and are conjectural, and must so remain unless and
until the accused himself shall confirm their accuracy; and that, in
my soul I anticipate, will be the case. Here, then, is the story:--
“In the early part of the year 1882, Sir Calvin Kennett, then a young
cavalry officer of twenty-six, unmarried, and only latterly succeeded
to his inheritance, was living in Cairo, attached as military
representative to the British legation there. While in that situation
he made the acquaintance of a very beautiful young Frenchwoman,
Mademoiselle Desilles, the daughter of a tobacconist in a modest way
of business, between whom and himself a mutual attachment sprang up,
pure and sincere on her part, passionate and unscrupulous on his.
Madly enamoured, yet hopeless of prevailing against the virtue of the
lady, young Kennett had recourse to the vile and dishonourable
stratagem of a sham marriage, which he effected through the
instrumentality of a worthless acquaintance, one Barry Skelton, who
had come abroad in connexion with some Oxford Missionary Society, and
who, though not yet in Holy Orders, was supposed to be qualifying
himself for the priesthood. With the aid of this scamp the cruel fraud
was perpetrated, and Mademoiselle Desilles became the wife, as she
supposed, of Sir Calvin. The union, for reasons seeming sufficient as
urged by the pseudo-husband, was kept a present secret--even from the
girl’s father, whose death about this time greatly facilitated the
success of the imposture. In July of that year occurred the definite
revolt of Arabi Pasha, and the landing at Alexandria of a considerable
British force; and Sir Calvin was called upon to rejoin his regiment
in view of the operations pending. He went, leaving his wife, as I
will call her, in the distant way to become a mother. In a skirmish
near Mahmoudieh he lost the first finger of his right hand--a casualty
not without its bearing on subsequent events. He was present at
Tel-el-Kebir in mid-September, and again, two days later, at the entry
of the British troops into Cairo, when he took the occasion--his
passion in the interval having burned itself out, as such mere animal
transports will--to break the truth to Mademoiselle Desilles of the
fraud he had practised on her. I make it no part of my business to
comment on his behaviour, then or previously, or to imagine the spirit
in which his revelation was received by his unfortunate victim. No
doubt each of you can supply the probable text for himself, as his
sympathy or his indignation may dictate. It is enough to state the
compromise by way of which the deceiver could find the heart to
propose to condone his offence. This was no other than that, in order
to save her credit and that of her unborn infant, a marriage should be
instantly contrived between his unhappy dupe and a certain
Quartermaster-Sergeant George Ridgway--a widower with a single young
child, a boy--who had been in the secret, yet who, strangely enough,
had no more inherent vice in him than was consistent with good nature,
a weakness for beauty in distress, and a conscience of the easiest
capacity in the matter of hush-money. This man was no doubt a
personable fellow; the woman’s situation very certainly desperate and
deplorable. Anyhow, following whatever distressful scenes, she was
brought to consent, the two were married, and shortly afterwards the
child was born in London, whither the couple had removed in the
interval.
“I am quite prepared to believe that George Ridgway made his wife a
good husband during the few years which remained to them in company,
for he did not very long survive his marriage. Moreover, Sir Calvin’s
liberality had placed the two in such comfortable circumstances that
no excuse for discontent existed. The Quartermaster-Sergeant adhered
honourably to his part of the bargain, and it was not until long after
his death that the question arose in the widow’s mind as to whether or
not she was justified in continuing to mislead her son in the matter
of his origin. Of that in a moment.
“In the meantime the two children, step-brothers in fact, were brought
up together, and considered themselves as half brothers. They were
both christened John--the younger through some unconquerable
perversity of the mother in insisting on calling him after her
seducer’s second name--an anomaly which, however open to curious
comment at first, was soon no doubt lost sight of in the inevitable
nicknames which affection would come to bestow on the pair. Still, for
the purposes of distinction, I will continue to call the one John and
the other Jean. Jean was popularly regarded as the Ridgways’ child,
though in truth no child was born of their union.
“John, though the elder by some three years, was frequently, as time
went on, mistaken, by those who did not know, for the younger of the
two boys--an error also not without its bearing on subsequent events.
Jean from the outset betrayed, if it could have been guessed, an
unmistakable sign of his origin in the use of his second for his digit
finger--an inherited trick due to the shock caused to his mother by
the sight of Sir Calvin’s mutilation, associated as it had been with
all the agony and despair of that time. He was a dreamy boy, and early
developed artistic proclivities. I have no means or intention of
tracing the career of either of the children up to and beyond manhood.
At some period, as we know, Jean went to Paris; at some period John
joined the Metropolitan Police force, with subsequent promotion to a
valued position in the Criminal Investigation Department. I pass from
these ascertained facts to an estimate of the circumstances which
first engendered in the latter’s mind a thought of the daring project
which has ended by bringing him to his present situation.
“Now I have already told you how Jean, on the occasion of a visit to
England, had been at last made acquainted by his mother with the true
story of his paternity. She told it him, being herself under the fear
of death at the time; and there is no doubt that the poor woman still
believed perfectly honestly in the legality of her first marriage, not
only before heaven, but on the practical testimony of the little
Catholic _vade-mecum_ in which the names of the contracting parties,
with their clerical witness, had been inscribed. She believed,
moreover, on the strength of some muddled innuendo gathered from the
Quartermaster-Sergeant, that the creature Barry Skelton had deceived,
as much as she herself had been deceived by, Sir Calvin, and that he
had actually been an ordained priest at the time of the marriage. It
was not true, I think, the ordination having occurred subsequently, as
the General took pains to make known to her; for she wrote to him on
the subject of the _vade-mecum_, begging him to return it to her
hands, whence he had appropriated it when he deserted her. Why, you
may ask, had he, after securing possession of, persisted in retaining
through all these years that damning witness to his guilt? For the
very same reason of the evidence it contained, which to her stood for
proof, to him for disproof, of the legality of the marriage. Wherefore
he could not make up his mind to destroy it. But he thought it well
to pay a visit to his correspondent, to assure her that she was
completely mistaken in her surmise, and that the continuance of his
support depended upon the utter future abandonment by her of any such
attempts on his forbearance.
“Still thinking for her boy, the fond soul was not convinced. So
little was she convinced that, when her death came actually to be
imminent, she called John to her side and confided to him the whole
story, begging him to look after his step-brother’s interests, and to
vindicate, if possible, his true claim to the name and estates of
Kennett, something about which, she told him, Jean already knew. And
John promised--she was not his mother, remember; he may have been, for
all we are aware to the contrary, a cold and undutiful stepson. But he
promised, we know; for he went after her death to Paris, to visit the
other, to acquaint him of his mother’s end, and to discuss with him
the strange story she had committed to his keeping: he went
accompanied by a beautiful young creature of his acquaintance--whom he
had brought with him probably for no other reason than her pleasure
and his own infatuation--only to find Jean himself at the point of
death.
“Was it then for the first time that a daring idea began to germinate
in his mind? I think so. Whether spontaneously, or at his companion’s
instance, I believe the conception of the plot dated from that moment.
Jean dead, what was to prevent him, John, from personating his
step-brother, from claiming himself to be Sir Calvin’s son, from
profiting by the evidence which was said to prove that son’s
legitimacy? As to that he had only Mrs. Ridgway’s word, but it had
been uttered with such solemnity and conviction, by a dying woman, as
to leave little doubt of its truth. At worst the thing would be a
gamble; but there was that in the very romantic hazard of it to appeal
to his imagination: at best it would be prosperity beyond his dreams.
And what were the odds? To consider them was to find them already
curiously in his favour. The similarity of their names; the fact that
he himself had always been regarded as the younger; the early death of
the Quartermaster-Sergeant, and the consequent long removal of the one
most damaging witness to the truth; Jean’s prolonged absence from home
in a foreign city; his own more apparent devotion to the woman to be
claimed as his mother--he could find nothing in it all inimical to the
success of the plot. Only the first essential would be to obtain
possession of the _vade-mecum_. There was full reason to believe, from
what Sir Calvin had told Mrs. Ridgway, that the book to this day was
jealously retained by him, for the reason stated, in his secure
keeping. How to recover it?
“So the conspiracy was hatched. Ivy Mellor was to be the means, the
condition of her success the bestowal of her spotless hand upon the
rightful heir of Wildshott--a splendid dream, a transpontine
melodrama. But John saw at once that a first condition of its success
lay in a scrupulous obliteration of all clues pointing to the identity
of his confederate: hence his anger on discovering the portrait, and
the immediate measures taken by him to wipe it out of existence.
“Well, we know the rest--how the beautiful accomplice betrayed her
trust; how she developed a passion for the very man whom she was
scheming to disinherit; how, to be sure, she came to recognize that
she could much more fully and satisfactorily realize her own ambitions
by baulking than by furthering the designs of her fellow-plotter. To
be the wife of the problematic heir of Wildshott might be a good
thing; to be the wife of the heir of Wildshott _in esse_, a gentleman,
a soldier and an Antinous, was certainly a better. So, having
surrendered to love, she played for the greater stake--and she lost.
We can pity her: she was frankly an adventuress. We could pity him,
were it not for the thought of that inhuman revenge. Yet he had
provocation perhaps beyond a gambler’s endurance. To find the very
woman, for worship of whom he had been scheming away his position, his
reputation, his soul of truth and honour, not only turned traitor to
his best interests, but faithless in the worse sense, and for his
rival’s sake, to her pledge to him--well, one must pause before
utterly condemning. And after all it was only a moment’s madness
served by opportunity. Yes, I can pity him. I have a notion, too,
that she told him what was not the truth--that she had already
destroyed for her love’s sake the evidence of the prayer-book. If she
had--it was the last touch. Yes, I can pity him.
“Gentlemen, that is the story.”
M. le Baron ceased speaking, and for a time a silence held among them
all. Then presently Mr. Bickerdike asked:--
“There is only one thing, Baron, which remains to puzzle me a little.
Was not Ridgway’s employment in the case originally agreed to by Sir
Calvin in response to a suggestion of yours?”
“That is quite true.”
“Was Sir Calvin himself, then, never moved to any sort of emotion or
curiosity over the association which the detective’s name would
naturally awaken in his mind?”
“Emotion?--I think not. It would hardly describe a psychology so
little superstitious as that of the General. The similarity of the
names would have struck him as no more than an inconsiderable
coincidence. With all his practical qualities, imagination is the last
thing he would care to be accused of. But curiosity?--well, perhaps to
a certain extent--though neither deep-seated nor lasting. You have to
remember that from first to last, I suppose, he never knew, or
troubled to know, what the Sergeant’s _Christian_ name was; and even
had he learned it, it would have conveyed nothing to him, as he knew
no better; nor again, probably, had ever troubled to know, by what
name his own disowned son was called. And very certainly he had never
condescended to note the name of the Quartermaster-Sergeant’s
individual offspring.”
“I see. And had you yourself, in suggesting the Sergeant for the case,
any _arrière pensée_ at that time, connecting----?”
“I had merely a curiosity, my friend, to observe the owner of a
name--really _ipsissima verba_ to me--so oddly associated in my mind
with the teller of a certain fantastic story in Paris.”
“Then you did not know--but of course you didn’t.” He turned to the
Baronet: “I congratulate you with all my heart, Orsden.”
“Thanks, old fellow,” said Sir Francis. “It’s all due to him there.
I’ll give his health, in B-Bob Cratchit’s words. Here’s to M. le
Baron, ‘the Founder of the Feast’!”