official tones, "this affair, strange as it is, must be treated
according to rule and precedent. Sub-inspector Winkel, as your superior
officer, I command you to arrest me upon a charge of murderously
assaulting you. You will commit me to prison for the night, together
with Herr von Schlegel and Herr Wilhelm Schlessinger. We shall take our
trial at the coming sitting of the judges. In the meantime take care of
that piece of evidence"--pointing to the piece of parchment--"and, while
I am away, devote your time and energy to utilising the clue you have
obtained in discovering who it was who slew Herr Schiffer, the Bohemian
Jew."
The one missing link in the chain of evidence was soon supplied. On the
28th of December the wife of Reinmaul the janitor, coming into the
bedroom after a short absence, found her husband hanging lifeless from a
hook in the wall. He had tied a long bolster-case round his neck and
stood upon a chair in order to commit the fatal deed. On the table was a
note in which he confessed to the murder of Schiffer the Jew, adding
that the deceased had been his oldest friend, and that he had slain him
without premeditation, in obedience to some incontrollable impulse.
Remorse and grief, he said, had driven him to self-destruction; and he
wound up his confession by commending his soul to the mercy of Heaven.
The trial which ensued was one of the strangest which ever occurred in
the whole history of jurisprudence. It was in vain that the prosecuting
council urged the improbability of the explanation offered by the
prisoners, and deprecated the introduction of such an element as magic
into a nineteenth-century law-court. The chain of facts was too strong,
and the prisoners were unanimously acquitted. "This silver hatchet,"
remarked the judge in his summing up, "has hung untouched upon the wall
in the mansion of the Graf von Schulling for nearly two hundred years.
The shocking manner in which he met his death at the hands of his
favourite house steward is still fresh in your recollection. It has come
out in evidence that, a few days before the murder, the steward had
overhauled the old weapons and cleaned them. In doing this he must have
touched the handle of this hatchet. Immediately afterwards he slew his
master, whom he had served faithfully for twenty years. The weapon then
came, in conformity with the Count's will, to Buda-Pesth, where, at the
station, Herr Wilhelm Schlessinger grasped it, and, within two hours,
used it against the person of the deceased Professor. The next man whom
we find touching it is the janitor Reinmaul, who helped to remove the
weapons from the cart to the store-room. At the first opportunity he
buried it in the body of his friend Schiffer. We then have the attempted
murder of Strauss by Schlegel, and of Winkel by Inspector Baumgarten,
all immediately following the taking of the hatchet into the hand.
Lastly, comes the providential discovery of the extraordinary document
which has been read to you by the clerk of the court. I invite your most
careful consideration, gentlemen of the jury, to this chain of facts,
knowing that you will find a verdict according to your consciences
without fear and without favour."
Perhaps the most interesting piece of evidence to the English reader,
though it found few supporters among the Hungarian audience, was that of
Dr. Langemann, the eminent medico-jurist, who has written text-books
upon metallurgy and toxicology. He said--
"I am not so sure, gentlemen, that there is need to fall back upon
necromancy or the black art for an explanation of what has occurred. What
I say is merely a hypothesis, without proof of any sort, but in a case
so extraordinary every suggestion may be of value. The Rosicrucians, to
whom allusion is made in this paper, were the most profound chemists of
the early Middle Ages, and included the principal alchemists whose names
have descended to us. Much as chemistry has advanced, there are some
points in which the ancients were ahead of us, and in none more so than
in the manufacture of poisons of subtle and deadly action. This man
Bodeck, as one of the elders of the Rosicrucians, possessed, no doubt,
the recipe of many such mixtures, some of which, like the _aqua tofana_
of the Medicis, would poison by penetrating through the pores of the
skin. It is conceivable that the handle of this silver hatchet has been
anointed by some preparation which is a diffusible poison, having the
effect upon the human body of bringing on sudden and acute attacks of
homicidal mania. In such attacks it is well known that the madman's rage
is turned against those whom he loved best when sane. I have, as I
remarked before, no proof to support me in my theory, and simply put it
forward for what it is worth."
With this extract from the speech of the learned and ingenious
professor, we may close the account of this famous trial.
The broken pieces of the silver hatchet were thrown into a deep pond, a
clever poodle being employed to carry them in his mouth, as no one would
touch them for fear some of the infection might still hang about them.
The piece of parchment was preserved in the museum of the University. As
to Strauss and Schlegel, Winkel and Baumgarten, they continued the best
of friends, and are so still for all I know to the contrary.
Schlessinger became surgeon of a cavalry regiment; and was shot at the
battle of Sadowa five years later, while rescuing the wounded under a
heavy fire. By his last injunctions his little patrimony was to be sold
to erect a marble obelisk over the grave of Professor von Hopstein.
_THE MAN FROM ARCHANGEL._
On the fourth day of March, in the year 1867, I being at that time in my
five-and-twentieth year, I wrote the following words in my note-book,
the result of much mental perturbation and conflict:--
"The solar system, amidst a countless number of other systems as large
as itself, rolls ever silently through space in the direction of the
constellation of Hercules. The great spheres of which it is composed
spin and spin through the eternal void ceaselessly and noiselessly. Of
these one of the smallest and most insignificant is that conglomeration
of solid and of liquid particles which we have named the earth. It
whirls onwards now as it has done before my birth, and will do after my
death--a revolving mystery, coming none know whence, and going none know
whither. Upon the outer crust of this moving mass crawl many mites, of
whom I, John McVittie, am one, helpless, impotent, being dragged
aimlessly through space. Yet such is the state of things amongst us
that the little energy and glimmering of reason which I possess is
entirely taken up with the labours which are necessary in order to
procure certain metallic disks, wherewith I may purchase the chemical
elements necessary to build up my ever-wasting tissues, and keep a roof
over me to shelter me from the inclemency of the weather. I thus have no
thought to expend upon the vital questions which surround me on every
side. Yet, miserable entity as I am, I can still at times feel some
degree of happiness, and am even--save the mark!--puffed up occasionally
with a sense of my own importance."
These words, as I have said, I wrote down in my note-book, and they
reflected accurately the thoughts which I found rooted far down in my
soul, ever present and unaffected by the passing emotions of the hour.
Every day for seven months I read over my words, and every day when I had
finished them I said to myself, "Well done, John McVittie; you have said
the thought which was in you. You have reduced things to their least
common measure!" At last came a time when my uncle, McVittie of
Glencairn, died--the same who was at one time chairman of committees of
the House of Commons. He divided his great wealth among his many nephews,
and I found myself with sufficient to provide amply for my wants during
the remainder of my life, and became at the same time owner of a bleak
tract of land upon the coast of Caithness, which I think the old man must
have bestowed upon me in derision, for it was sandy and valueless, and he
had ever a grim sense of humour. Up to this time I had been an attorney
in a midland town in England. Now I saw that I could put my thoughts into
effect, and, leaving all petty and sordid aims, could elevate my mind by
the study of the secrets of nature. My departure from my English home was
somewhat accelerated by the fact that I had nearly slain a man in a
quarrel, for my temper was fiery, and I was apt to forget my own strength
when enraged. There was no legal action taken in the matter, but the
papers yelped at me, and folk looked askance when I met them. It ended by
my cursing them and their vile, smoke-polluted town, and hurrying to my
northern possession, where I might at last find peace and an opportunity
for solitary study and contemplation. I borrowed from my capital before
I went, and so was able to take with me a choice collection of the most
modern philosophical instruments and books, together with chemicals and
such other things as I might need in my retirement.
The land which I had inherited was a narrow strip, consisting mostly of
sand, and extending for rather over two miles round the coast of Mansie
Bay, in Caithness. Upon this strip there had been a rambling, grey-stone
building--when erected or wherefore none could tell me--and this I had
repaired, so that it made a dwelling quite good enough for one of my
simple tastes. One room was my laboratory, another my sitting-room, and
in a third, just under the sloping roof, I slung the hammock in which I
always slept. There were three other rooms, but I left them vacant,
except one which was given over to the old crone who kept house for me.
Save the Youngs and the McLeods, who were fisher-folk living round at
the other side of Fergus Ness, there were no other people for many miles
in each direction. In front of the house was the great bay, behind it
were two long barren hills, capped by other loftier ones beyond. There
was a glen between the hills, and when the wind was from the land it
used to sweep down this with a melancholy sough and whisper among the
branches of the fir trees beneath my attic window.
I dislike my fellow-mortals. Justice compels me to add that they appear
for the most part to dislike me. I hate their little crawling ways,
their conventionalities, their deceits, their narrow rights and wrongs.
They take offence at my brusque outspokenness, my disregard for their
social laws, my impatience of all constraint. Among my books and my
drugs in my lonely den at Mansie I could let the great drove of the
human race pass onwards with their politics and inventions and
tittle-tattle, and I remained behind stagnant and happy. Not stagnant
either, for I was working in my own little groove, and making progress.
I have reason to believe that Dalton's atomic theory is founded upon
error, and I know that mercury is not an element.
During the day I was busy with my distillations and analyses. Often I
forgot my meals, and when old Madge summoned me to my tea I found my
dinner lying untouched upon the table. At night I read Bacon, Descartes,
Spinoza, Kant--all those who have pried into what is unknowable. They
are all fruitless and empty, barren of result, but prodigal of
polysyllables, reminding me of men who while digging for gold have
turned up many worms, and then exhibit them exultantly as being what
they sought. At times a restless spirit would come upon me, and I would
walk thirty and forty miles without rest or breaking fast. On these
occasions, when I used to stalk through the country villages, gaunt,
unshaven, and dishevelled, the mothers would rush into the road and drag
their children indoors, and the rustics would swarm out of their
pot-houses to gaze at me. I believe that I was known far and wide as the
"mad laird o' Mansie." It was rarely, however, that I made these raids
into the country, for I usually took my exercise upon my own beach,
where I soothed my spirit with strong black tobacco, and made the ocean
my friend and my confidant.
What companion is there like the great restless, throbbing sea? What
human mood is there which it does not match and sympathise with? There
are none so gay but that they may feel gayer when they listen to its
merry turmoil, and see the long green surges racing in, with the glint
of the sunbeams in their sparkling crests. But when the grey waves toss
their heads in anger, and the wind screams above them, goading them on
to madder and more tumultuous efforts, then the darkest-minded of men
feels that there is a melancholy principle in Nature which is as gloomy
as his own thoughts. When it was calm in the Bay of Mansie the surface
would be as clear and bright as a sheet of silver, broken only at one
spot some little way from the shore, where a long black line projected
out of the water looking like the jagged back of some sleeping monster.
This was the top of the dangerous ridge of rocks known to the fishermen
as the "ragged reef o' Mansie." When the wind blew from the east the
waves would break upon it like thunder, and the spray would be tossed
far over my house and up to the hills behind. The bay itself was a bold
and noble one, but too much exposed to the northern and eastern gales,
and too much dreaded for its reef, to be much used by mariners. There
was something of romance about this lonely spot. I have lain in my boat
upon a calm day, and, peering over the edge, I have seen far down the
flickering ghostly forms of great fish--fish, as it seemed to me, such
as naturalists never knew, and which my imagination transformed into the
genii of that desolate bay. Once, as I stood by the brink of the waters
upon a quiet night, a great cry, as of a woman in hopeless grief, rose
from the bosom of the deep, and swelled out upon the still air, now
sinking and now rising, for a space of thirty seconds. This I heard with
my own ears.
In this strange spot, with the eternal hills behind me and the eternal
sea in front, I worked and brooded for more than two years unpestered by
my fellow-men. By degrees I had trained my old servant into habits of
silence, so that she now rarely opened her lips, though I doubt not that
when twice a year she visited her relations in Wick, her tongue during
those few days made up for its enforced rest. I had come almost to
forget that I was a member of the human family, and to live entirely
with the dead whose books I pored over, when a sudden incident occurred
which threw all my thoughts into a new channel.
Three rough days in June had been succeeded by one calm and peaceful
one. There was not a breath of air that evening. The sun sank down in
the west behind a line of purple clouds, and the smooth surface of the
bay was gashed with scarlet streaks. Along the beach the pools left by
the tide showed up like gouts of blood against the yellow sand, as if
some wounded giant had toilfully passed that way, and had left these red
traces of his grievous hurt behind him. As the darkness closed in,
certain ragged clouds which had lain low on the eastern horizon
coalesced and formed a great irregular cumulus. The glass was still low,
and I knew that there was mischief brewing. About nine o'clock a dull
moaning sound came up from the sea, as from a creature who, much
harassed, learns that the hour of suffering has come round again. At ten
a sharp breeze sprang up from the eastward. At eleven it had increased
to a gale, and by midnight the most furious storm was raging which I
ever remember upon that weather-beaten coast.
As I went to bed the shingle and sea-weed was pattering up against my
attic-window, and the wind was screaming as though every gust were a
lost soul. By that time the sounds of the tempest had become a lullaby
to me. I knew that the grey walls of the old house would buffet it out,
and for what occurred in the world outside I had small concern. Old
Madge was usually as callous to such things as I was myself. It was a
surprise to me when, about three in the morning, I was awoke by the
sound of a great knocking at my door and excited cries in the wheezy
voice of my housekeeper. I sprang out of my hammock, and roughly
demanded of her what was the matter.
"Eh, maister, maister!" she screamed in her hateful dialect. "Come doun,
mun; come doun! There's a muckle ship gaun ashore on the reef, and the
puir folks are a' yammerin' and ca'in' for help--and I doobt they'll a'
be drooned. Oh, Maister McVittie, come doun!"
"Hold your tongue, you hag!" I shouted back in a passion. "What is it to
you whether they are drowned or not? Get back to your bed and leave me
alone." I turned in again, and drew the blankets over me. "Those men out
there," I said to myself, "have already gone through half the horrors of
death. If they be saved they will but have to go through the same once
more in the space of a few brief years. It is best, therefore, that they
should pass away now, since they have suffered that anticipation which
is more than the pain of dissolution." With this thought in my mind I
endeavoured to compose myself to sleep once more, for that philosophy
which had taught me to consider death as a small and trivial incident in
man's eternal and ever-changing career, had also broken me of much
curiosity concerning worldly matters. On this occasion I found, however,
that the old leaven still fermented strongly in my soul. I tossed from
side to side for some minutes endeavouring to beat down the impulses of
the moment by the rules of conduct which I had framed during months of
thought. Then I heard a dull roar amid the wild shriek of the gale, and I
knew that it was the sound of a signal-gun. Driven by an uncontrollable
impulse, I rose, dressed, and, having lit my pipe, walked out on to the
beach.
It was pitch dark when I came outside, and the wind blew with such
violence that I had to put my shoulder against it and push my way along
the shingle. My face pringled and smarted with the sting of the gravel
which was blown against it, and the red ashes of my pipe streamed away
behind me dancing fantastically through the darkness. I went down to
where the great waves were thundering in, and, shading my eyes with my
hand to keep off the salt spray, I peered out to sea. I could
distinguish nothing, and yet it seemed to me that shouts and great
inarticulate cries were borne to me by the blasts. Suddenly as I gazed I
made out the glint of a light, and then the whole bay and the beach were
lit up in a moment by a vivid blue glare. They were burning a coloured
signal-light on board of the vessel. There she lay on her beam ends
right in the centre of the jagged reef, hurled over to such an angle
that I could see all the planking of her deck. She was a large,
two-masted schooner, of foreign rig, and lay perhaps a hundred and
eighty or two hundred yards from the shore. Every spar and rope and
writhing piece of cordage showed up hard and clear under the livid light
which sputtered and flickered from the highest portion of the
forecastle. Beyond the doomed ship out of the great darkness came the
long rolling lines of black waves, never ending, never tiring, with a
petulant tuft of foam here and there upon their crests. Each as it
reached the broad circle of unnatural light appeared to gather strength
and volume, and to hurry on more impetuously until, with a roar and a
jarring crash, it sprang upon its victim. Clinging to the weather
shrouds I could distinctly see some ten or twelve frightened seamen,
who, when their light revealed my presence, turned their white faces
towards me and waved their hands imploringly. I felt my gorge rise
against these poor cowering worms. Why should they presume to shirk the
narrow pathway along which all that is great and noble among mankind has
travelled? There was one there who interested me more than they. He was
a tall man who stood apart from the others, balancing himself upon the
swaying wreck as though he disdained to cling to rope or bulwark. His
hands were clasped behind his back, and his head was sunk upon his
breast; but even in that despondent attitude there was a litheness and
decision in his pose and in every motion which marked him as a man
little likely to yield to despair. Indeed, I could see by his occasional
rapid glances up and down and all around him that he was weighing every
chance of safety; but though he often gazed across the raging surf to
where he could see my dark figure upon the beach, his self-respect, or
some other reason, forbade him from imploring my help in any way. He
stood, dark, silent, and inscrutable, looking down on the black sea, and
waiting for whatever fortune Fate might send him.
It seemed to me that that problem would very soon be settled. As I
looked, an enormous billow, topping all the others, and coming after
them, like a driver following a flock, swept over the vessel. Her
foremast snapped short off, and the men who clung to the shrouds were
brushed away like a swarm of flies. With a rending, riving sound the
ship began to split in two, where the sharp back of the Mansie reef was
sawing into her keel. The solitary man upon the forecastle ran rapidly
across the deck and seized hold of a white bundle which I had already
observed, but failed to make out. As he lifted it up the light fell upon
it, and I saw that the object was a woman, with a spar lashed across her
body and under her arms in such a way that her head should always rise
above water. He bore her tenderly to the side and seemed to speak for a
minute or so to her, as though explaining the impossibility of remaining
upon the ship. Her answer was a singular one. I saw her deliberately
raise her hand and strike him across the face with it. He appeared to be
silenced for a moment or so by this; but he addressed her again,
directing her, as far as I could gather from his motions, how she should
behave when in the water. She shrank away from him, but he caught her in
his arms. He stooped over her for a moment and seemed to press his lips
against her forehead. Then a great wave came welling up against the side
of the breaking vessel, and, leaning over, he placed her upon the summit
of it as gently as a child might be committed to its cradle. I saw her
white dress flickering among the foam on the crest of the dark billow,
and then the light sank gradually lower, and the riven ship and its
lonely occupant were hidden from my eyes.
As I watched those things my manhood overcame my philosophy, and I felt
a frantic impulse to be up and doing. I threw my cynicism to one side as
a garment which I might don again at leisure, and I rushed wildly to my
boat and my sculls. She was a leaky tub, but what then? Was I, who had
cast many a wistful, doubtful glance at my opium bottle, to begin now to
weigh chances and to cavil at danger? I dragged her down to the sea
with the strength of a maniac, and sprang in. For a moment or two it was
a question whether she could live among the boiling surge, but a dozen
frantic strokes took me through it, half-full of water but still afloat.
I was out on the unbroken waves now, at one time climbing, climbing up
the broad black breast of one, then sinking down, down on the other
side, until looking up I could see the gleam of the foam all around me
against the dark heavens. Far behind me I could hear the wild wailings
of old Madge, who, seeing me start, thought no doubt that my madness had
come to a climax. As I rowed I peered over my shoulder, until at last on
the belly of a great wave which was sweeping towards me I distinguished
the vague white outline of the woman. Stooping over I seized her as she
swept by me, and with an effort lifted her, all sodden with water, into
the boat. There was no need to row back, for the next billow carried us
in and threw us upon the beach. I dragged the boat out of danger, and
then lifting up the woman I carried her to the house, followed by my
housekeeper, loud with congratulation and praise.
Now that I had done this thing a reaction set in upon me. I felt that my
burden lived, for I heard the faint beat of her heart as I pressed my
ear against her side in carrying her. Knowing this, I threw her down
beside the fire which Madge had lit, with as little sympathy as though
she had been a bundle of faggots. I never glanced at her to see if she
were fair or no. For many years I had cared little for the face of a
woman. As I lay in my hammock upstairs, however, I heard the old woman,
as she chafed the warmth back into her, crooning a chorus of "Eh, the
puir lassie! Eh, the bonnie lassie!" from which I gathered that this
piece of jetsam was both young and comely.
* * * * *