"I think, gentlemen," he went on to say, addressing the board, "that
we should be wasting time to push this inquiry further. Mr.
Langford's evidence would seem to be of an equal value throughout.
The testimony of Benjamin Somers disproves his first statement, and
the testimony of the last witness disproves his second. I think we
may conclude that Mr. Langford fell asleep in the train on the
occasion of his journey to Clayborough, and dreamed an unusually
vivid and circumstantial dream, of which, however, we have now heard
quite enough."
There are few things more annoying than to find one's positive
convictions met with incredulity. I could not help feeling
impatience at the turn that affairs had taken. I was not proof
against the civil sarcasm of the chairman's manner. Most intolerable
of all, however, was the quiet smile lurking about the corners of
Benjamin Somers's mouth, and the half-triumphant, half-malicious
gleam in the eyes of the under-secretary. The man was evidently
puzzled and somewhat alarmed. His looks seemed furtively to
interrogate me. Who was I? What did I want? Why had I come there
to do him an ill turn with his employers? What was it to me whether
or no he was absent without leave?
Seeing all this, and perhaps more irritated by it than the thing
deserved, I begged leave to detain the attention of the board for a
moment longer. Jelf plucked me impatiently by the sleeve.
"Better let the thing drop," he whispered. "The chairman's right
enough; you dreamed it, and the less said now the better."
I was not to be silenced, however, in this fashion. I had yet
something to say, and I would say it. It was to this effect: that
dreams were not usually productive of tangible results, and that I
requested to know in what way the chairman conceived I had evolved
from my dream so substantial and well-made a delusion as the
cigar-case which I had had the honor to place before him at the
commencement of our interview.
"The cigar-case, I admit, Mr. Langford," the chairman replied, "is a
very strong point in your evidence. It is your only strong point,
however, and there is just a possibility that we may all be misled by
a mere accidental resemblance. Will you permit me to see the case
again?"
"It is unlikely," I said, as I handed it to him, "that any other
should bear precisely this monogram, and yet be in all other
particulars exactly similar."
The chairman examined it for a moment in silence, and then passed it
to Mr. Hunter. Mr. Hunter turned it over and over, and shook his
head.
"This is no mere resemblance," he said. "It is John Dwerrihouse's
cigar-case to a certainty. I remember it perfectly; I have seen it a
hundred times."
"I believe I may say the same," added the chairman; "yet how account
for the way in which Mr. Langford asserts that it came into his
possession?"
"I can only repeat," I replied, "that I found it on the floor of the
carriage after Mr. Dwerrihouse had alighted. It was in leaning out
to look after him that I trod upon it, and it was in running after
him for the purpose of restoring it that I saw, or believed I saw,
Mr. Raikes standing aside with him in earnest conversation."
Again I felt Jonathan Jelf plucking at my sleeve.
"Look at Raikes," he whispered; "look at Raikes!"
I turned to where the under-secretary had been standing a moment
before, and saw him, white as death, with lips trembling and livid,
stealing toward the door.
To conceive a sudden, strange, and indefinite suspicion, to fling
myself in his way, to take him by the shoulders as if he were a
child, and turn his craven face, perforce, toward the board, were
with me the work of an instant.
"Look at him!" I exclaimed. "Look at his face! I ask no better
witness to the truth of my words."
The chairman's brow darkened.
"Mr. Raikes," he said, sternly, "if you know anything you had better
speak."
Vainly trying to wrench himself from my grasp, the under-secretary
stammered out an incoherent denial.
"Let me go," he said. "I know nothing--you have no right to detain
me--let me go!"
"Did you, or did you not, meet Mr. John Dwerrihouse at Blackwater
station? The charge brought against you is either true or false. If
true, you will do well to throw yourself upon the mercy of the board
and make full confession of all that you know."
The under-secretary wrung his hands in an agony of helpless terror.
"I was away!" he cried. "I was two hundred miles away at the time!
I know nothing about it--I have nothing to confess--I am innocent--I
call God to witness I am innocent!"
"Two hundred miles away!" echoed the chairman. "What do you mean?"
"I was in Devonshire. I had three weeks' leave of absence--I appeal
to Mr. Hunter--Mr. Hunter knows I had three weeks' leave of absence!
I was in Devonshire all the time; I can prove I was in Devonshire!"
Seeing him so abject, so incoherent, so wild with apprehension, the
directors began to whisper gravely among themselves, while one got
quietly up and called the porter to guard the door.
"What has your being in Devonshire to do with the matter?" said the
chairman. "When were you in Devonshire?"
"Mr. Raikes took his leave in September," said the secretary, "about
the time when Mr. Dwerrihouse disappeared."
"I never even heard that he had disappeared till I came back!"
"That must remain to be proved," said the chairman. "I shall at once
put this matter in the hands of the police. In the meanwhile, Mr.
Raikes, being myself a magistrate and used to deal with these cases,
I advise you to offer no resistance, but to confess while confession
may yet do you service. As for your accomplice--"
The frightened wretch fell upon his knees.
"I had no accomplice!" he cried. "Only have mercy upon me--only
spare my life, and I will confess all! I didn't mean to harm him! I
didn't mean to hurt a hair of his head! Only have mercy upon me, and
let me go!"
The chairman rose in his place, pale and agitated. "Good heavens!"
he exclaimed, "what horrible mystery is this? What does it mean?"
"As sure as there is a God in heaven," said Jonathan Jelf, "it means
that murder has been done."
"No! no! no!" shrieked Raikes, still upon his knees, and cowering
like a beaten hound. "Not murder! No jury that ever sat could bring
it in murder. I thought I had only stunned him--I never meant to do
more than stun him! Manslaughter--manslaughter--not murder!"
Overcome by the horror of this unexpected revelation, the chairman
covered his face with his hand and for a moment or two remained
silent.
"Miserable man," he said at length, "you have betrayed yourself."
"You bade me confess! You urged me to throw myself upon the mercy of
the board!"
"You have confessed to a crime which no one suspected you of having
committed," replied the chairman, "and which this board has no power
either to punish or forgive. All that I can do for you is to advise
you to submit to the law, to plead guilty, and to conceal nothing.
When did you do this deed?"
The guilty man rose to his feet, and leaned heavily against the
table. His answer came reluctantly, like the speech of one dreaming.
"On the 22d of September."
On the 22d of September! I looked in Jonathan Jelf's face, and he in
mine. I felt my own paling with a strange sense of wonder and dread.
I saw his blanch suddenly, even to the lips.
"Merciful heaven!" he whispered. "_What was it, then, that you saw
in the train?_"
What was it that I saw in the train? That question remains
unanswered to this day. I have never been able to reply to it. I
only know that it bore the living likeness of the murdered man, whose
body had then been lying some ten weeks under a rough pile of
branches and brambles and rotting leaves, at the bottom of a deserted
chalk-pit about half-way between Blackwater and Mallingford. I know
that it spoke and moved and looked as that man spoke and moved and
looked in life; that I heard, or seemed to hear, things related which
I could never otherwise have learned; that I was guided, as it were,
by that vision on the platform to the identification of the murderer;
and that, a passive instrument myself, I was destined, by means of
these mysterious teachings, to bring about the ends of justice. For
these things I have never been able to account.
As for that matter of the cigar-case, it proved, on inquiry, that the
carriage in which I traveled down that afternoon to Clayborough had
not been in use for several weeks, and was, in point of fact, the
same in which poor John Dwerrihouse had performed his last journey.
The case had doubtless been dropped by him, and had lain unnoticed
till I found it.
Upon the details of the murder I have no need to dwell. Those who
desire more ample particulars may find them, and the written
confession of Augustus Raikes, in the files of the "Times" for 1856.
Enough that the under-secretary, knowing the history of the new line,
and following the negotiation step by step through all its stages,
determined to waylay Mr. Dwerrihouse, rob him of the seventy-five
thousand pounds, and escape to America with his booty.
In order to effect these ends he obtained leave of absence a few days
before the time appointed for the payment of the money, secured his
passage across the Atlantic in a steamer advertised to start on the
23d, provided himself with a heavily loaded "life-preserver," and
went down to Blackwater to await the arrival of his victim. How he
met him on the platform with a pretended message from the board, how
he offered to conduct him by a short cut across the fields to
Mallingford, how, having brought him to a lonely place, he struck him
down with the life-preserver, and so killed him, and how, finding
what he had done, he dragged the body to the verge of an
out-of-the-way chalk-pit, and there flung it in and piled it over
with branches and brambles, are facts still fresh in the memories of
those who, like the connoisseurs in De Quincey's famous essay, regard
murder as a fine art. Strangely enough, the murderer, having done
his work, was afraid to leave the country. He declared that he had
not intended to take the director's life, but only to stun and rob
him; and that, finding the blow had killed, he dared not fly for fear
of drawing down suspicion upon his own head. As a mere robber he
would have been safe in the States, but as a murderer he would
inevitably have been pursued and given up to justice. So he
forfeited his passage, returned to the office as usual at the end of
his leave, and locked up his ill-gotten thousands till a more
convenient opportunity. In the meanwhile he had the satisfaction of
finding that Mr. Dwerrihouse was universally believed to have
absconded with the money, no one knew how or whither.
Whether he meant murder or not, however, Mr. Augustus Raikes paid the
full penalty of his crime, and was hanged at the Old Bailey in the
second week in January, 1857. Those who desire to make his further
acquaintance may see him any day (admirably done in wax) in the
Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's exhibition, in Baker Street.
He is there to be found in the midst of a select society of ladies
and gentlemen of atrocious memory, dressed in the close-cut tweed
suit which he wore on the evening of the murder, and holding in his
hand the identical life-preserver with which he committed it.