servant in the Palace, called Harris”.
“Aye, I think I saw his face. Does anyone know of the matter?”
“Very few persons so far....The police are after Harris”.
Now the Regent started, understanding that the condemnation of Harris
would mean a revelation of the Colmoor-horror secret; and he said after
a minute, “John, is that you? Will you go and have the whole thing
quashed?....And now, doctor, the wound.”
“The wound is not what we call 'dangerous', my Lord King: ah, but
believe me, it was a narrow shave”.
“I dare say, Sir Martin: the outcomes of this particular world do arrive
by narrow shaves; but they arrive, and life is an escape. At any rate,
doctor, I shall be able to go, as arranged, to the Lords--”
The doctor smiled. “No, never that”.
“I shall go”.
And at once he leapt from bed, staggering headlong in the effort, to
strike his head against a window corner, while all ran, crying out, to
catch him, the doctor thinking: “Those whom the gods destroy they first
drive mad”.
So far not a whisper of the stab had reached even the Prime Minister or
the Prince; but since the news of moving troops, and the reluctance of
the Lords to pass the Bill, agitated all, London came out to watch his
descent upon the Lords.
He went in precisely the spirit of a professor who steps to the chair,
smiles, and takes the class; but as he drove down Whitehall, this
thought pierced him with a keener point than the steel of Harris: “_The
Sea...!_”
He did not know that at last a thousand transmitters, from Tarifa, from
Frederikshavn, from many a ship, were thrilling the ether with messages
as to the Sea.
Nor did he know that that day Frankl had whispered to some dozen people,
with proofs and old newspapers, that convict past of the Regent.
And from his very first entering, when the Lord Chancellor rose, and
the Regent made the bow, he was shocked by the scene of open insolence
spread before him.
Everywhere the boldest eyes regarded him; he saw smiles of scorn,
snarling visages, as, with reclining head and lowered lids, his
eyes rested on the House: a hard gaze. Unfortunately, his pallor was
perfectly obvious, and its significance, the stab being unknown, was
misunderstood.
And up rose a young lord, who stammered unprofundities just below the
region of lawn-sleeves to the right; and another with slow step, as if
to music, came up the gangway, and spoke at the table; and another after
him: and it needed sustained effort to understand what they said; the
brain, as it were, would not close upon statement after statement so
insignificant. But Hogarth would have endured till midnight, or
longer, but for a growing doubt within him: “Am I bleeding? Shall I not
certainly faint?”
And there was this other question: “To what greater daring of insolence
will these impossible speeches rise?”
Suddenly, at five minutes to ten, in the very midst of a duke's speech,
the Regent, with dizzy brain, was on his feet: there was a few moments'
gasp and breathlessness; and then--all at once--it was as though a wind
from hell swept through that House, whirling in its vehemence Regent,
lords, Gallery, Black Rod, Clerk, Usher, and all; and every face was
marble, and every eye a blaze.
The Regent cried: “Your lordships' eloquence--”
And as he said “eloquence”, a voice that was a scream, a
forward-straining form, a pointing finger: “Why, my lords, that man is
only a common convict!--reprieved for murder--escaped from Colmoor. And
all his forts are sunk!”
It happened that in the midst of this outcry, the Regent fell back
afaint, the moles black, the face white.
Now, here seemed simple panic: and like a pack of dogs which rush to
mangle a mongrel, they were at him pell-mell.
See now a shocking scrimmage, a rush and crush for precedence, surge
upon surge of men jostling each other in a struggle to get near him,
sticks reaching awkwardly over heads to inflict far forceless blows, and
on his face the fists; a hundred roaring “Order!”, fighting against the
tide; three hundred shrieking, “Kill him!” “Have him done with!” “Dash
out his brains!”, and pressing to that job. Sergeant-at-Arms, meanwhile,
Clerk-attending-the-Table, and the physician, had run to give the alarm;
but it was by one of those miracles of wild minutes, when
turbulent sprites appear to mix themselves in the business of men,
worse--embroiling the embroiled, that through the throng in the street
rushed the word that the Regent was being killed: and quick, before
any fatal blow had been struck, the rabble were there in that chamber,
having brushed away every barrier.
They imagined themselves come to save: in reality they came to
kill--were, in fact, too many for the area of the room, so that men
succumbed fast as by plague-stroke under trampling feet, and even after
twenty minutes when sixty-seven lay mangled the scene of horror could
not be said to be ended.
Early upon the irruption the physician, three policemen, a Reading
Clerk, and the Bishop of Durham, had managed to extricate and drag the
Regent out; and through the shouting of the outside crowd he was driven
home unconscious.
L
THE DECISION
Somewhat before this hour Admiral O'Hara had arrived at Croydon, a
lust, a morbid curiosity, now working in this man--having committed the
ineffable sin, to enjoy its fruit by hearing what Richard Hogarth now
said, in what precise way he groaned, or raved, smiled, or wept, or
stormed; for he was cruelly in love with Hogarth.
All the way had come with him the _Mahomet's_ treasurer, with his bag of
wealth--and two pistols.
So at Dieppe O'Harra had wired to Harris:
“Meet me at Croydon to-night, the 9.45 from Newhaven, as you love life.
Most important. Shall expect wire from you at the London and Paris
Hotel, Newhaven, not later than six, saying yes”.
But at Newhaven he had found no answer--Harris, in fact, not having
received the telegram, having already inflicted his stab, and fled the
Palace.
Whereupon O'Hara, in an agony of doubt, had telegraphed Frankl from
Newhaven:
“For God's sake find Harris. Make him meet me at Croydon to-night in the
9.45 from Newhaven. Do not fail”.
Now, Frankl knew exactly where Harris was--hiding in the Market Street
house. And he said to himself: “All right: it's got something to do
with money, and a lot of it, too, with all this 'God's sake'. Suppose we
_both_ go to Croydon?”
Hence Frankl missed the joy of seeing the Regent mobbed: for at 9.30 he
was waiting with Harris on the Croydon up-platform.
And as the train stopped, they two hurried into the compartment where
O'Hara sat alone.
“You, my friend?” said O'Hara to Frankl.
“Large as life”, replied Frankl: “I and the boy have already made it
up between us for a third each: you a third, I a third, Alfie a third:
that's fair; I keep the police off the backs of the pair of you, and you
pay me a third. What's the figure?”
In one moment of silence O'Hara plotted; then his tongue yielded to the
temptation of the great words: “Eight-hundred-and-fifty thousand, sir”.
So after three minutes' talk Harris got out, and, as the train started,
sprang into a first-class compartment in which was one other occupant.
Now, it was natural that the treasurer, carrying such a sum, should
scrutinize any stranger, but Harris disarmed suspicion: his right arm,
twisted by Hogarth, was in a sling, and he threw himself aside, and
seemed to sleep, between the peak of his cap and his muffler hardly an
inch of interval: so the treasurer, too, worn with travel, settled into
a half-drowse.
Harris, however, like many of his type, was perfectly ambidextrous,
often using the left hand by preference; and as the train passed
Bromley, he darted, plunged his knife, streaked with the Regent's blood,
into the treasurer's heart, and huddled the body under the seat.
No stoppage till London Bridge, where, with the bag, Harris left the
train, Frankl and O'Hara trotting after his burdened haste; and, after
two changes of cabs, the three arrived at the Market Street house.
There Harris laid the bag on the floor of an empty back room, where
through a broken window came a little light, and the three stood looking
down upon the bag, solemnly as upon a body.
Then suddenly Harris: “Come, gentlemen of the jury, let's have my share
of the dead meat: and 'ere's off out of it for this child--only this
blooming arm of mine! it's going to get me nabbed as sure as sticks.
Never mind--trot it out, Captain! and don't cheat an innocent orphan,
lest the ravens of the valley pick out the yellow galls of some o' you”.
Neither of the other two, however, seemed anxious for the division; and
after a minute's silence Frankl said: “The third of 850, I _believe_, is
2, 8, 3; how are we going to carry away 283 thousand without something
to put it in? I vote, Pat, that we leave the bag here, and come and
divide at midnight sharp. How would that do?”
“Yes”, said Harris, “I think I see old Pat leaving the lot with me--what
O! You know 'ow I'd fondle it for you, and keep it out of the cold, cold
world, till you came back, don't you, you bald-headed priest?”
“Shut your mouth, boy. We can't take it away without something, as Mr.
Frankl very justly observes. Aren't there some safes, Frankl, in Adair
Street?”
“Right you are: and one, as I happen to know, empty. Who'll keep the
key?”
“You, if you like, my friend. I'll keep the keys of the room-doors. And
Harris will stand guard”.
“The very thing”, remarked Frankl.
So it was agreed. Harris took the bag; they descended to the cellar;
then, striking matches, down three marl steps to the subterranean way
made for Hogarth; and along it, forty feet, they stumbled bent, Harris
gripped by each sleeve.
Then in the Adair Street Board Room they lit a candle, and in the room
next it found the safes, the largest of which admitting the bag, Frankl
locked its door, took the key; O'Hara then locked the room door, took
the key; and at the stair-bottom locked another door, took the key; so
that Frankl could not now get at the bag without him, nor he without
Frankl, nor Harris without both.
Two then went away, while Harris, sprawling cynically on a solitary
chair down in the parlour with straight open legs, awaited the
_rendezvous_ at twelve.
He had not, however, sat very long, when the taper at his feet glared
on a face of terror at a sound of ghosts in the tomb that the house was,
and he started to his feet, prone, snatching his knife--thinking, as
always, of the Only Reality, the police. But he had not prowled three
ecstatic steps when O'Hara stood before him.
“Oh, damned fool!” he went with infinite contempt and reproach, “to
frighten anybody like that! What's it you are after now? Frighten
anybody like that....”
“_Alfie_!”--O'Hara whispered it breathfully as the hoarse sirocco,
stepping daintily like the peacock. Tell it not in Gath! If Alfie rammed
the knife into the marrow of Frankl's back at the moment when the safe
was opened, then Alfie would have, not a third, but a half; and the
thing was desirable for this reason: that a half is greater than a
third...
Harris saw that: but he seemed reluctant, meditating upon the ground;
then walking, hands in pockets.
“Why, boy, he is only an interloper”, said O'Hara: “I meant the money to
be divided fairly between you and me. Why should this Jew come in?”
“All right”, said Harris: “I don't mind”.
“And I know a little castle in Granada, Alfie, which we'll buy--”
“All right: you go away. It's agreed”.
And O'Hara hurried away, took a cab, drove for the Palace; while Harris,
left alone, sat serious, with sprawling straight legs, and presently
muttered: “Blind me, I must be going dotty or something! p'raps it's
this arm....”
He had not thought of killing Frankl, until it had been suggested!--some
class-habit, or instinct, of honour among thieves (which, however, his
reason despised)...But five minutes after O'Hara had gone he started
alert, staring, with tight fist, and, “All right, you two”, said he,
“blood it is!”
He sat again: and again, after twenty minutes, the house gave a
sound--Frankl, who had let himself in by the front door, each member
possessing a key to that.
“Well, Alf”, said he, “all alone? Then, we two can have a little chat
between us little two”.
And he stood and talked, while Harris sprawled and listened, Frankl's
road to his end being more circuitous than O'Hara's, more hedged, too,
with reasons, scruples, sanctions: but he reached it, pointing out that
a half is greater than a third; also that O'Hara would be a continual
witness against Harris' past, whereas he, Frankl, left England for Asia
the next morning.
Alfie pretended aversion to bloodshed, but finally consented; upon which
Frankl went away, and took cab for Scotland Yard: his idea being to have
Harris arrested red-handed in the murder of O'Hara.
The streets through which he drove wore a singular aspect--of commotion,
hurry, unrest, two dragoon-orderlies galloping past him at the Marble
Arch, in Whitehall the tramp of some line-regiment battalion, and
he said to himself: “He is going to fight it out with them, I
suppose--Satan take the lot!”
At Scotland Yard he said to the Inspector in Charge, having given his
card, that if two officers were placed at his disposition, he might
be able to lead them to the arrest of a man long “wanted”, who now
premeditated another murder.
Meantime, O'Hara was in conversation with Loveday in the Regent's
library, nearer the centre of which stood a group of four with their
heads together--Prime Minister, First Lord, War Office Secretary, a
Naval Lord; further still, a spurred General, cloaked over his out-stuck
sword, writing, with a wet white brow; and, “I suppose he will want to
see you”, said Loveday, “if you have anything to say. But the doctors
have first to be reckoned with: I suppose you know that he has been
stabbed and beaten”.
“Stabbed! by whom?”
“By Harris”.
“No! When?”
“This afternoon”.
“Ah! I did not know”.
“It was by your recommendation, it appears, that Harris became Captain
Macnaghten's servant”, said Loveday with his smile, looking very gaunt
and bent-down.
“Tut, sir!”--from O'Hara--“you are not my judge: I am here to see the
Lord of the Sea, my King”.
“Ah!--you still give him the title”.
And now O'Hara, drawing his chair nearer to ask: “_How did he take it?_”
stretching back the waiting mouth to hear that thing.
“The Lord Regent? Well, at eight-thirty he went to the House of Lords,
where they beat him nearly to death on the throne, the gentle hearts,
and the doctors forbade me to speak to him of the Sea; but his eyes
seemed to question me, so I leant over, and told him”.
“Yes--and whatever did he say?”
He said: “'What, old Pat?'”
O'Hara rose to stand by a hearth, black-robed to the heels and tonsured,
and at the angle of his jaw some sinews ribbed and moved: not a syllable
now from him.
“I am going in now to him”, said Loveday: “if you care to wait here, I
will see”--and passing through a palace pretty busy that night with
feet and a thousand working purposes, went to sit at the sick bed, the
doctors retiring.
“How is the pain?”
“The pain”, said the Regent very weakly, “is nonsense: I am not going to
be bullied by doctors, but shall do exactly as I like”.
“And what is that, Richard?”
“There is a Normandy village, John, called Valée-les-Noisettes--white
houses with an extraordinary sound of forest about, one of Poussin's
landscapes, with a smithy under a chestnut precisely as in the poem; and
the blacksmith is a charming man. I dare say someone will find me money
enough to purchase a share of his smithy: and with him I shall work,
starting for him before sunrise, with my sister”.
Loveday, wondering if he was delirious, said irrelevantly: “I have to
tell you that by five A.M. there will be 15,000 additional infantry in
London, with--”
“Ah, I wish they'd lend them me to send out to those poor Jews, John.
But, for myself--I was mad when I gave that order. It won't do! the
world is addicted to its orbit, and relapses. I don't say that it
will be always so, but it is now. As against the Empire of the Sea
arises--Pat O'Hara; as against the brushing aside of these rebels
arise--Germany, Russia, the hostile world. Consider the rancour of the
nations at Britain's late advantages in sea-rent, try to conceive the
scream of jubilation that rings to the sky to-night against her, and
against me. Do you think I could _now_ start a civil war in England? for
the satisfaction of my own pride? I call God to witness that never for
my own pride have I done aught, but that the Kingdom of God might
come. I know that bitter tears will flow at the fall of the righteous
man--many calling me 'traitor' for abandoning those ready to die for me.
Yet it shall be. I never thought to fail, to fly, John Loveday, chased
by such little fellows: but God has done it. Well, then, the smithy. You
and all, therefore, will find enough to do to-night”.
Loveday lifted a face streaming with tears to say: “The man, O'Hara,
waits to see you”.
“Really? Well, come, we will see him....” and in some minutes O'Hara was
there by the bedside, the eyes of the two fixed together, over Hogarth's
face five oblongs of sticking-plaster, his head bandaged, and at a
corner of O'Hara's mouth a twitching.
“Pat, did you betray me?” asked Hogarth.
O'Hara nodded: “Yes”.
“Well, you may sit and tell me, and ease your poor heart”.
And a long time O'Hara sat, going into the mighty crime, torturing
details, revelling in the vastness of the horror, the sickness of the
self-inflicted filth, and pangs of the self-inflicted scalpel.
“And why did you do it, my friend?”
“Because I worship you....”
“Well, perhaps I understand you, crooked soul. But what will you do
now?”
“We shall see. What will you?”
“I am going to France to live as a private person”.
“Tut, you remain as simple as a child: the earth's not large enough to
contain you, you couldn't now remain a private person for three weeks.
Come, I have discrowned you: I will give you another crown, though I
shall never see you wear it. Why not go to your own people?”
“Which people?”
“The Jews”.
“Don't talk that same madness”.
“My time with you is short, Raphael Spinoza”--O'Hara glanced at his
watch--“in five minutes we part, never, I do assure you, to meet
again. Listen, then, to me: you are a Jew. I knew your mother--the most
intellectual woman, I suppose, who ever drew breath, the only one whom I
have loved; and I should have known you merely from your resemblance
to her at my first glance at you in Colmoor, though I had more precise
data: the three moles, the bloodshot eye, for didn't I baptize you?
haven't I rocked you in my arms? You know St. Hilda on the hill over
Westring, which you found me examining that morning after our escape
from the prison? I was priest there, three years, and twice I have
confessed her--ah! and remember it! for when your foster-father wanted
her to turn Methodist, she wouldn't stand that, and since she must needs
be a _meshumad_ (apostate), became a Catholic. Well, now, I once saw at
Thring, and once in the _Boodah_, an old goat-hair trunk of yours: what
is become of it?”
“I have it--” Hogarth was shivering, his eyes wide, and in his memory a
strange singsong crooning of _t'hillim_, heard ages before in some other
world over a cradle.
“Did you know that that trunk has a false bottom?” asked O'Hara.
“Yes”.
“Oh, you knew...And have you never seen a bundle of papers under it?”
“Yes--I assumed them to be old farm-accounts....”
“They are all the proofs you need concerning your birth; it is _my_
trunk by the way--Ah, I must go!”
At the door he fastened upon Hogarth a last reluctant gaze to say
good-bye, but Hogarth, staring wildly afar, did not turn his eyes, and
O'Hara, with a sigh, was gone.
He drove to Adair Street, and, as he passed by a mews, Frankl, waiting
there with two detectives, saw him by a street-light, but made no
remark.
When O'Hara entered the house, he looked about for Harris, but Harris
had gone to the lodging of a woman in James Street near, to arrange a
hiding-place for the bag, passing out through the Market Street house;
and O'Hara, opening the two locked doors, entered the safe-room, where
he stood waiting, his forehead low, resting on the steel top; and now a
sob throbbed through his frame, and his lips let out “..._so lovely...so
great_....”
Count a minute's stillness: and now the man's soul and being foundered
in a storm of sorrow, and half-words borne on shivering puffs of breath,
and choking groans, broke the stillness: “My Liege! Richard! my King!”
This died to silence; and now he roamed the room with furious steps,
and lowering brow, and an out-pushed under-lip, until, deciding, he
drew from his pocket a penknife, opened it, leant now one elbow on the
safe-top, blade in hand, considered, considered, hesitating, then with
lifted chin and the thinnest whimpering like a puppy, pretty pitiful,
cut from under his left ear to the chin.
Certainly a hurt so shallow could never have killed, for the hand had
been cherishingly restrained, and the thing was no sooner done than
the priest, seeing that he did not die, ran horror-eyed, streaming with
blood, shouting a hoarse whisper: “Help! help! help!”
But at that cry he sighed, fell back, and effectually died, his heart
pierced by the knife of Harris.
And some moments later the face of Frankl, who bore a candle, looked in
at the door.
“Is that all right, Alfie?”--in the weakest whisper.
“Come on in, and don't ask any questions”, said Harris.
Frankl entered, peered upon the dead visage of the priest; then, the
detectives being now behind the parlour-door below, with handcuffs, rose
to run to summon them: but, to his horror, Harris was now before the
door; he saw in the candlelight those eyes of Alfie fixed upon him: and
he knew: before the least threat or movement by Harris, the Jew sent to
Heaven a piercing shriek, his hour come....
“...dirty-livered Jew...” striking in the breast, and, as Frankl fell,
he gave him one other in the temple, with “Down, down to hell, and
sye _I_ sent thee thither”; and to dead O'Hara near he gave one in the
cheek, with “Go up, thou bald-head, it _is_”: all in two seconds' space;
and he was now about to turn anew to hack at Frankl, when his keen ear
heard a creak; and he sprang up a spinning motionlessness--the Reality
before him.
And instantly on the realization of that fact, he was submissive,
reverent, as before the very Helmet of Pallas, goddess of Blue; and said
he with sullen dejection, reverent of the Helmet, but easy with the man:
“All right: you've beat me...I suppose it's that Regent-stabbing affair
brought you: it was I did it all right”.
When they went down, almost from the door a crowd gathered, pressing
close, Harris' hands and front all red from O'Hara's throat; and when
one policeman, big with the fact, whispered a gentleman: “You may have
heard, sir, that the Regent was stabbed to-day--it's been kept precious
dark, but the fact's so: this is the beauty as done it”, like loosened
effluvia that news flew--but distorted, largened--the stains were
Regent's blood!--and beyond measure had the crowd spread ere it reached
the Edgware Road.
There at the corner, as the officers looked about for a cab, and one
blew a whistle, a man reached out and fiercely struck Harris on the
face, while another shouted: “Lynch the beggar!”; and now arose a
hustling, huddled impulses, and now in full vogue that grave noising of
congregations when the voice of God jogs them; while Harris, excessively
pallid, handcuffed, began to whistle; a number of other police now
seeking the crowd's centre, but with difficulty; a cab, too, slowly
making a way which closed like water round it: and when this had nearly
reached him, Harris, in his eagerness to get in, sprang far toward
it--and slipped. He never rose again: the crowd rolled over his last
howl, and in the midst of a great row as of hounds, trampled him to a
paste.
About that very time that better man whom he had stabbed, in tying up
in bed a bundle of old papers, was saying: “Yes, I will go to my
people”....