VAN DUREN IN WALES.
In the dusk of a sweet May evening a man slipped quietly out of the
back door of the "Ring of Bells" tavern--a low public-house,
frequented chiefly by fishermen and labourers, in the village of
Marhyddoc, and shunning the more frequented neighbourhoods, found
himself presently in a pretty winding lane that seemed to lead to
nowhere in particular, and was quite given over to solitude. Here the
man sat down for a while on the trunk of a fallen tree. The house had
become intolerable to him: he could stay in it no longer; so he had
strolled out to this quiet nook, there to wait till dusk had deepened
into dark. Not without difficulty would even Jonas Pringle have
recognized in this man Max Van Duren. Hands and face had been stained
till they were the colour of a gipsy's, and his hair had been dyed jet
black. He had only been twelve hours in Marhyddoc, but he had already
found out a great deal that it behoved him to know. Fortunately for
Van Duren, the landlord of the "Ring of Bells" spoke English fluently,
and was very fond of airing his accomplishment, besides being
naturally of a garrulous turn of mind. As a consequence, Van Duren had
very soon extracted from him all that he had to tell--more than enough
to confirm his worst fears.
In the portraits which the landlord drew of two of the strangers who
were staying at the big hotel on the cliff, he had no difficulty in
recognizing Byrne and Miriam. He could no longer doubt that he had
been duped by these two; that they had only hired his rooms, and
wormed themselves into his confidence, in order to extract from him a
secret which, up to that time, he could have sworn would never be
whispered by him in mortal ears. And they had succeeded but too well.
What a weak fool he had been! How easily that girl had twined him
round her finger! How well he could see the sneer that would curve her
beautiful lips when she spoke of him to her father! He hated her now
with as much intensity as he had loved her before. Had Miriam Byrne
come walking down that lane in the May twilight--had she and Max Van
Duren met face to face with no third person by, the chances that her
father would ever have seen his daughter alive again would have been
very problematical indeed.
But with Byrne and his daughter at the hotel was another individual,
according to the landlord's account--an elderly gentleman, whom Van
Duren altogether failed to recognize. Not that he was greatly troubled
thereby: he had far more important matters to occupy his thoughts.
For the landlord had other news--news that he was in no wise loth to
impart, that for Van Duren was full of intense significance. He knew
all about the divers and their strange apparatus and dresses. He told
his hearer how, in the first place, someone had come down to
Marhyddoc, and, after some difficulty, had found out the exact spot
where the schooner _Albatross_ had foundered twenty years before. The
place was then marked with a buoy, and soon after that the divers had
come. Everybody in the village had asked themselves what there was in
the cargo of the _Albatross_ that could be worth the trouble and expense
of recovery after having been for twenty years at the bottom of the
sea: and for a long time the question asked by everybody had remained
unanswered. But at last it had oozed out, nobody seemed to know
exactly how, that the particular object for which the divers were
instructed to search was a small oaken box, clamped with silver. The
box was said by some to contain certain documents and title-deeds of
immense value, for lack of which the rightful heir to a great property
had been kept out of his own for years. Others knew for a fact that
the box was full of sovereigns which were being sent out to America
to buy slaves with. Others there were who averred that inside the
silver-clamped box would be found the evidence of a terrible murder
that had remained undetected all this long time.
"But of course they have not succeeded in finding the box?" Van Duren
had said to the landlord, burning with a terrible anxiety to know the
worst.
"But they have. Yes, indeed," said the man with a chuckle. Van Duren,
on hearing this, got up abruptly and went to the window. His face was
ghastly; his mouth twitched nervously in a way that he could not
control; his staring eyes saw nothing that was before them. "The
divers had been down three times without success," continued the man.
"They went down again very early this morning, and in less than an
hour they found the box. I saw it with my own eyes when they came
ashore:--a small oak box, clamped at the corners, and with two letters
on the lid."
Van Duren tried to speak, but he was like a man under the influence of
a nightmare. The words died away in his parched-up throat. Happily the
landlord took his listener's silence as a sign that his narrative was
interesting, and went on without noticing him.
"When the box was brought ashore it was given into the custody of John
Williams, the policeman. Yes, indeed. John took it up to the hotel on
the cliff where the gentlemen are staying, and there he waited with
the box on his knees till Mr. Davies of St. Owens, who is a
magistrate, came, three hours later, and then they all went into a
room together, the divers and the gentlemen, and the door was locked,
and there the box was opened."
Van Duren would have liked to say, "And what did they find in the box
when they opened it?" but not for the life of him could he have put
the question. He knew quite well--no one better--what would be found
in the box; but none the less did he hunger to hear every detail from
the landlord's lips. However, he had only to wait and say nothing; his
host's natural garrulity would do the rest.
"Whether they found title-deeds in the box, or whether they found
sovereigns, or whether they found anything at all is more than I can
exactly say. John Williams, the policeman, for all he's my own
cousin's nephew, and I treated him to three glasses of brandy after he
came down from the hotel, only shook his head and wouldn't say a word,
though he knew very well that I wouldn't have whispered it to a soul.
No, indeed. But John Williams will have no more of my brandy without
paying for it like any other man."
Such was the story told Max Van Duren in the little Welsh inn. His
worst fears were realized. The sea had given up its secret. Everything
was known. He was stunned by the blow, and seemed for the time being
to have lost all power of cool thought, all possibility of looking his
position steadily in the face and of deciding as to what steps it
behoved him to take next.
But even through the midst of the vague, unreasoning terror that now
possessed him, through the ghastly dread that now held him as with a
hand of iron, he could not help wondering by what means, through what
special agencies, this unlooked for and terrible result had been
brought about. Who forged the first link of evidence tending to
implicate him in a crime committed so long ago that at times it almost
seemed as if no such deed had ever really been done--as if it were
nothing more than a distempered dream of his own imagining? What first
induced Byrne and Miriam to come to his house and worm themselves into
his confidence on purpose to elicit from him the particulars of the
shipwreck of the _Albatross?_ How did Byrne first come to connect him,
Max Van Duren, with the murder of Paul Stilling? And, which was more
mysterious still, whence and how did he derive the knowledge which
enabled him to connect the story of the shipwreck with that crime?
Never once during all the intervening years had Van Duren troubled
himself to make any inquiry after Ambrose Murray. He had never cared
to ascertain whether the man he had so foully wronged were alive or
dead, whether he had been pardoned and set at liberty, or whether he
was still shut up in his living tomb. But now, to-day, it did occur to
him to ask himself whether it was in anyway possible that it was the
hand of Ambrose Murray which had linked together the fatal chain of
evidence--a chain that would prove strong enough to hang him unless he
took particular care what he was about. But he scouted the idea almost
as soon as it came to him. If Ambrose Murray were still alive, it was
merely as a harmless lunatic--as a melancholy madman whom one might
perhaps afford to pity, but could certainly have no cause to fear.
But it was certainly not the hand of a harmless lunatic that was at
the bottom of this plot to bring his long-hidden guilt home to him. It
was the hand, rather, of a man as strong, cunning, and unscrupulous as
himself--a hand that, so far, had won every point of the game against
him--a hand that would succeed in tying a halter firmly round his
neck, unless--unless what? he asked himself, with a mixture of terror
and despair. He did not know who his enemy was, where to look for him,
or how best to confront him. He had got a sort of vague notion in his
mind that Byrne was merely the puppet of a firmer will and a stronger
hand; that his real enemy was lurking out of sight in the background,
weaving round him, thread by thread, the meshes of a net from which in
the end he would find it impossible to escape.
Not till dusk had fairly set in did Van Duren venture outside the inn
door. He seemed to have lost his appetite entirely; but he kept up his
strength, and in some small way his courage also, by repeated doses of
the inn's fiery spirits. When, at last, he did leave the house, he had
no settled intention in doing so. The place for hours had been full of
noisy, half-drunken company, all of whom, as he could not help hearing
through the thin lath-and-plaster wall that divided his room from the
tap-room, were loudly discussing some important topic in their native
Welsh. That topic, as the landlord took care to inform him more than
once, was neither more nor less than the finding of the long-sought-for
box by the divers. At last he felt that he must either leave the house
or go mad. So he wandered out into a quiet lane at the back of the
village, and there sat down on the trunk of a felled tree.
What should he do? What ought his next step to be? His mind was all in
amaze of doubt and terror and perplexity. Should he hurry off to
London by the first train, secure all his available property, shut up
his house in Spur Alley, and drop quietly out of sight where no
possible search for him could be made? Or should he stay and brave out
everything?
Presently he began to feel very lonely among the dim shadows of the
silent lane. He fancied that he heard voices whispering, and the faint
rustle of garments, as if someone were watching him stealthily through
the foliage at his back. He looked round with a shudder, and then he
rose and walked swiftly forward. In a little while the lane took him
to a rising ground that overlooked the village and the sea. On his
right, and no great distance away, rose the cliff on the summit of
which was built the hotel where Byrne and Miriam were staying. Several
of the windows were lighted up. Which were the windows of Miriam's
room, he wondered? In the midst of all his doubts and fears for his
own safety, he could not help thinking about the girl who had played
such a short but important part in the strange drama of his life. He
had no bitterer thought, even at this bitter hour, than the knowledge
that this girl, whom he had learnt to love so passionately, had not
only never cared for him, but had duped him from the very first; that
all her smiles and looks and words had been utterly false; that it was
her hand, and hers alone, that had struck him down; that but for
her no harm could have happened to him; that but for her, the
silver-clamped box, with its damning evidence, would have rested till
doomsday at the bottom of the sea.
Without knowing or caring whither it might lead him, he had
unconsciously taken a footpath which brought him presently to a little
side wicket that opened into the grounds of the hotel. From the wicket
a winding path led upward through thick clumps of evergreens and
brushwood to the house. There was for him, in his present mood, a sort
of fascination, a grim satisfaction, in the thought of being so near
these cunning enemies of his, who seemed so thoroughly bent on hunting
him down, while all the time they believed him to be hundreds of miles
away. He had little or no sense of present fear upon him. His dread
lay in the unknown future. The next blow that would be struck at him
would not be struck here, but in London. So long as these people
stayed in Wales, he was safe. They had done their worst for a little
time to come.
He passed through the wicket, but as soon as he found himself in the
grounds of the hotel, he diverged from the pathway on to the grass,
where his footsteps were inaudible, and where the evergreens would
shelter him from the view of any passer-by. But perfect quiet reigned
around; not a sign of life was anywhere visible. No portion of the
hotel could be seen from where he was now, but he knew in which
direction it lay; and without knowing or caring to think why he did
so, he kept pressing slowly forward and upward, till at length he
emerged from the shrubbery into a more open part of the grounds, and
therein the starlight he could see the big white building straight
before him.
On one side, the hotel was built close up to the edge of the cliff,
which here sloped down to the beach, and the base of which was washed
by every tide. Huge boulders and jagged pieces of rock protruded here
and there from the face of the cliff; but these rugged features were
softened and harmonized by the numerous tufts of broom and dwarf
brushwood that grew among and around them, and by the soft, green
mosses and many-coloured lichens that nestled between them, and crept
lovingly over them, and made them beautiful with a beauty that was
other than their own. Up the face of this cliff a goat or a chamois
might probably have climbed by leaping from rock to rock, or from one
clump of brushwood to another; but no human foot had ever been known
to venture up or down it.
It was now dark, and these more minute features of the scene were
invisible to Max Van Duren. All that he could discern was, that the
hotel was built close to the edge of the cliff, at the bottom of which
cliff the tide was now washing heavily in with the noise of low
thunder.
Having satisfied himself that there was no one about, Van Duren left
the shelter of the shrubbery through which he had hitherto crept, and
swiftly crossing the intervening open space, he sought the shelter of
another fringe of shrubbery which grew between the gradually rising
edge of the cliff and the carriage-drive that led up to the main
entrance of the hotel. Keeping well within the shade of the
evergreens, and climbing higher step by step, a few minutes more
brought him close up to one corner of the house. It was now requisite
to move with extreme caution. Suddenly he heard the sound of voices,
and two or three loud goodnights. Some one was evidently leaving the
hotel, and would pass close by him in a few moments. It would never do
to be found there; so he plunged deeper into the shrubbery, and
presently found himself close to one of the lighted windows that he
had seen from the valley below. He hardly knew whether to advance or
retire. The question was. Who were the occupants of the room? If
strangers only, he would go quietly back by the way he had come; but
if there was a chance of seeing Miriam--well, to see her again, he was
prepared to risk much. He hated her, or fancied that he did, and yet
there was still a strange fascination for him in the thought that he
was close to her, that he was only separated from her by the thickness
of a wall. Had he met her there alone in the shrubbery, he would have
strangled her, but after that he would have kissed her and wept over
her, and would probably have ended all by jumping over the cliff.
He crept close up to the window and peered through the Venetians.
Fortunately for his purpose, they were not very closely drawn, and he
could see into the room without difficulty. It was a large room, and
was lighted by another window opposite to that through which Van Duren
was now looking. This second window--a French one, by the way--was
wide open, for the evening was somewhat sultry. Beyond it was
small balcony, and then the cliff, and, a hundred feet below, the
white-lipped waves. Round a table in the middle of the room, four
gentlemen were seated in earnest conversation. Three of them Van Duren
had never seen before, but in the fourth he had no difficulty in
recognizing his quondam lodger, Mr. Peter Byrne. It is true that the
white locks, the hump, and the general air of feebleness and
decrepitude had all disappeared; but Byrne's strongly-marked features
could not be mistaken for those of any other man. But hardly had Van
Duren time to notice all this, before his eyes were drawn to and
concentrated on an object that was standing in the middle of the table.
He shuddered from head to foot, and turned suddenly sick as he looked.
He had recognized the object in a moment. It was the silver-clamped box
which the divers had brought up from the bottom of the sea: it was the
box for the sake of which Paul Stilling had been stabbed in his sleep.
Was the box full or empty? The lid was open, but Van Duren could not
see inside. Anyhow, there was the box. What a host of terrible
memories the sight of it called up in his mind! Trifling
circumstances, all but forgotten, and that he had thrust persistently
from his memory years ago, came back now with the vivid clearness of a
photograph. Stilling's drunken laugh, the peculiar nervous twitching
of his left eye, the broken nail on one of his fingers, the very patch
on one of his boots, quizzically commented on by him as he was pulling
on his slippers in front of the fire--how they all came back to Van
Duren! As he stood there, it seemed to him but a few yesterdays,
instead of twenty long years, since----
He drew out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead, and shut out the
sight for a moment. When he looked again, Miriam was there. She was
bending over the back of her father's chair and saying something in
his ear. She had never looked sweeter, in Van Duren's eyes, than she
looked to-night, with her soft flowing grenadine dress, and her bows
of ribbon here and there, and a tea-rose in her hair.
He would have given all he had in the world, everything save life
itself, to have called this girl his own and have won one smile of
real love from her beautiful lips. Presently she lifted up a face that
was radiant with smiles, then she pinched her father's ear playfully,
and turned and left the room. And that was the last time that Max Van
Duren ever set eyes on Miriam Byrne.
A few minutes later the four gentlemen rose and left the room. They
left the box behind them, still standing wide open in the middle of
the table. From this Van Duren at once concluded that it must have
been emptied of its contents. Had it not, they would hardly have left
it there unguarded. Then all at once the thought struck Van Duren that
if he could only obtain possession of the box, if he could only steal
it away unknown to anyone, then would his enemies be deprived of the
strongest link in their evidence against him--perhaps the only link of
any value in a court of justice. The box could undoubtedly be sworn to
as being that which had at one time belonged to Paul Stilling; but
could the contents of the box, after twenty years' immersion in the
sea, be sworn to with equal certainty? To him that seemed very
doubtful indeed. In any case the chain of evidence against him would
certainly be weakened in a material degree should the box not be
producible by the prosecution. It would be worth risking much to
obtain it. There it was within a few yards of him, in an empty room;
why should he not take possession of it again, as he had done once
before, long years ago? Not a sound could anywhere be heard save the
low thunder of the incoming tide. But how was it possible for him to
get into the room, unseen and unheard? He tried the sash of the window
against which he was standing. Fortunately for his purpose, it proved
to be unfastened. All that he had to do was to push up the sash
sufficiently high, climb over the low windowsill, thrust aside the
Venetians, and the box would be within reach of his hand. Five minutes
would suffice for everything. If only he could make sure that no one
would enter the room for five short minutes! But of that he could by
no means make sure; he must run the risk of it. But even while these
thoughts were in his mind, his hands had been busy with the window,
and almost before he knew what had happened, he found that he had
pushed up the sash high enough to admit of his ingress to the room.
A minute later, and his hand was on the box. Even at such a moment as
that it thrilled him strangely to touch it. He glanced into it: it was
empty, as he had felt sure that it would be. Then he shut down the
lid, and taking up the box, he placed it under his arm and turned to
go. But at this instant the door was quickly opened, and some one came
into the room. Van Duren turned instinctively, and as his eyes met
those of the man who had entered, he gave utterance to a low cry of
terror and surprise.
There before him stood the man whom he had so terribly wronged--whom
he had consigned without remorse to a living tomb--who would have
become the hangman's prey had not his brain been too weak to bear the
burden of his doom. This man, then, it was--who he had fondly believed
in his heart must have died long ago--this man it was, who, like a
sleuth hound, was now on his track, determined to hunt him down
without mercy and without ruth. Ambrose Murray was but a wreck of his
former self, but Max Van Duren knew him again the moment his eyes fell
on him.
Murray, in his turn, did not fail to recognise Van Duren. "Wretch!
what do you here?" he exclaimed, as he advanced into the room. His
right hand was buried in the breast of his frock-coat--an habitual
action with him; but Van Duren took it at once that his fingers were
grasping some hidden weapon, and as Murray advanced he fell back step
by step.
He did not answer Murray's question. He seemed, indeed, as though he
had not heard it. His face worked with emotion. Surprise, and terror,
and anger seemed to glare out of his eyes in turn; but still he did
not speak.
On first entering the room Murray had not missed the box; but now his
eyes travelled from Van Duren to the table, and then back again, and
he understood everything.
"Villain! bloodthirsty villain!" he cried. "Would you steal that box a
second time?" and with that he took two or three rapid strides towards
Van Duren.
But the other, still without answering, and still facing his enemy,
fell quickly back. Murray was now between him and the window by which
he had entered; but he seemed to remember that there was another
window behind him, and it was towards this that he was now making his
way. He still evidently suspected that Murray's hand held a pistol,
and that he might be fired at any moment.
The latter continued to advance. "Max Jacoby, I have you at last, and
this time you shall not escape me!" he exclaimed, and therewith he
strode swiftly to the bell-rope and pulled it violently.
But at the first sound of the bell, Van Duren turned quickly and made
for the open French window. Before Murray had time to utter a single
word of warning, he was on the balcony. Next moment his hand grasped
the railing, and with a loud, mocking laugh he vaulted over and
disappeared in the darkness below. He had either not known, or had
forgotten, that the balcony was built immediately over the edge of the
cliff.
A few moments later Peter Byrne and two or three others hurried into
the room in response to the bell's imperative summons. Ambrose Murray
was lying senseless on the floor, and the silver-clamped box was no
longer there.