NARRATES A CONFESSION
Half an hour later the man found in the hiding-hole lay upon a bed in
one of the spare rooms.
Though not dead, he had, when discovered, been in the last stage of
exhaustion. The doctor telephoned for had at once discovered that what
we already suspected was true—the man's left ankle was very badly
sprained. It must, he said, have been sprained ten or twelve days
previously. In addition, the man was almost like a skeleton.
"You found him not an hour too soon," the doctor said when, after
completing his diagnosis, and giving instructions concerning the
treatment of his patient to the nurse who had just arrived, he rejoined
us in the smoking-room downstairs. "He is in a state of complete
collapse. For days he has evidently not touched food."
He looked at us in turn with an odd expression as he said this. He was
clearly mystified at finding a man at Holt Manor dying of starvation—a
starving man dressed for the chase, a man obviously of refinement, and
undoubtedly to be described as a gentleman.
Sir Roland decided under the circumstances to tell the doctor
everything: how the man's presence had been discovered by Dick, how we
had afterwards found him lying upon the floor of the hiding-hole,
apparently dead, and how, with the help of ropes, we had finally pulled
him out. The doctor had, of course, heard of the robbery at Holt nearly
a fortnight before, and he at once put two and two together.
For two days the stranger quivered between life and death. Two nurses
were in constant attendance, and the doctor called frequently. It was on
the afternoon of the third day that he expressed a desire to talk to Sir
Roland; he had, until then, been allowed to speak only a word or two.
He wanted, he said, "to speak with Sir Roland alone"; but to this Sir
Roland would not agree.
"If you want to speak to me, you can speak quite freely before this
gentleman," he said; I was in the room at the time.
At first the man seemed distressed, but at last, finding that Sir Roland
would make no concession, he said in a weak voice:
"I'm dying, Sir Roland, I feel it, and before I go there are things I
should like to say to you—things that it may be to your advantage
to hear."
His voice, I noticed, had in it the _timbre_ peculiar to the voices of
men of education.
"Say anything you like," Sir Roland answered coldly.
"You have been exceedingly kind to me: there are men who, finding me in
concealment as you found me, and after what has happened in this house,
would at once have called in the police. You may believe me or not, but
I am extremely grateful to you. And I want to show my gratitude in the
only way I can."
He paused for nearly a minute, then continued:
"Sir Roland, I will tell you as much as I am justified in telling about
the robbery; but first, has anybody concerned in it been arrested?"
Sir Roland shook his head.
"Nobody—as yet," he answered. "The police have not discovered even the
smallest clue."
"I and another were in your bedroom when your son suddenly sprang from
behind the screen," the stranger went on. "Again you may believe me or
not, but I tried to prevent my companion from doing him any injury. It
was I who put the chloroform on the boy, but I did him no other harm, I
swear, sir."
I saw Sir Roland's eyes blaze. Then, as his glance rested upon the
stranger's starved, almost ashen face—it seemed to be gradually
growing livid—the sternness of his expression relaxed.
"How came you to be in hiding here?" he asked abruptly. "How many
accomplices had you?"
"Seven," the stranger replied, without an instant's hesitation. "The
robbery was carefully planned; it was planned so carefully that it
seemed without the bounds of possibility that it could fail to succeed.
I and others were at your hunt breakfast—"
"Were your accomplices all men?" I interrupted sharply.
The man's stare met mine. He looked at me with, I thought, singular
malevolence.
"They were not," he answered quietly. He turned again to Sir Roland.
"Just after your son had been rendered unconscious, I had the misfortune
to slip up on the polished floor and sprain my ankle badly. No sooner
did my companion realize what had happened, than he snatched from me all
the stolen property I held, in spite of my endeavour to prevent him,
then emptied my pockets, and left me. Dismayed at being thus
deserted—for unless I could hide at once I must, I knew, quickly be
discovered—I crawled out of the room on all fours, and along the
landing as far as the angle where the hiding-place is. The hole was
open—we had opened it before entering your room, lest we might be
surprised and suddenly forced to hide. Almost as I reached it I heard
somebody coming. Instantly I scrambled down and slid the board over
my head."
"How came you to know of the existence and the whereabouts of the
hiding-hole at all?" Sir Roland inquired, eyeing the stranger
suspiciously.
"That I do not wish to tell. I hoped ultimately to be rescued by my
accomplices, and for that reason I made no sound which might have
revealed my presence. My ankle had swollen considerably, and, confined
in my riding-boot, which I couldn't pull off, it gave me intense pain.
To clamber out unaided was consequently an impossibility; so there I
lay, slowly starving, hoping, night after night, that my accomplices
would force an entrance into the house and rescue me, for my companion
who left me must have guessed where I was in hiding—we had agreed, as I
have said, to seek concealment in that hole should either of us be
driven to hide in order to escape detection."
"Was the man who deserted you the man who deliberately strained my boy's
arm by twisting it?" Sir Roland asked.
"Yes."
"What is his name?"
"Gastrell—Hugesson Gastrell, that's the name the brute is known by. He
always was a blackguard—a perisher! I shall refuse to betray any of the
others; they are my friends. But Hugesson Gastrell—don't forget that
name, Sir Roland. You may some day be very glad I told it to you—the
man of The Four Faces!"
He paused. He seemed suddenly to be growing weaker. As we sat there,
watching him, I could not help in a sense feeling pity for the fellow,
and I knew that Sir Roland felt the same. It seemed terrible to find a
man like this, quite young—he was certainly under thirty—a man with
the unmistakable _cachet_ of public school and university, engaged in a
career of infamy. What was his life's story I wondered as I looked at
him, noting how refined his features were, what well-shaped hands he
had. Why had he sunk so low? Above all, who was he? for certainly he was
no ordinary malefactor.
Suddenly he turned on to his back, wincing with pain as he did so; he
had been lying partly on his side.
"I can't betray my friends, Sir Roland," he murmured, "but believe me
when I say I am deeply grateful for your kindness to me. I was not
always what I am now, you know," his voice grew weaker still; "not
always an adventurer—a criminal if you will. Yes, I am a criminal, and
have been for many years; unconvicted as yet, but none the less a
criminal. I was once what you are, Sir Roland; I took pride in being a
gentleman and in calling myself one. Educated at Marlborough and at
Trinity—but why should I bore you with my story—eh, Sir Roland? Why
should I bore you with, with—ah! The Four Faces! The Four Faces!"
he repeated.
His eyes rolled strangely, then looked dully up at the ceiling. What did
he mean by "The Four Faces"? Did he refer to the medallion worn by
Gastrell? His mind was beginning to wander. He muttered and murmured for
a minute, then again his words became articulate.
"Jasmine—oh, Jasmine my darling, I love you so!"
I started.
"Jasmine, if only you would ... oh, yes, that is all I ask, all I want,
my darling woman, all I ... you remember it all, don't you? ... yes ...
oh, it was her fault ... he wouldn't otherwise have killed her ... oh,
no, discovery is impossible, the ... it was quite unrecognizable.... The
Four Faces—ha! ha! ... I myself saw it, black, charred beyond all hope
of recognition ... he did right to ... dear, I should have done
the same...."
Between these scraps of sentences were words impossible to catch the
meaning of, so indistinctly were they uttered, some being said beneath
his breath, some muttered and inarticulate, some little more than
murmurings.
He moved restlessly on the bed. Then his eyes slowly closed, and for a
minute he lay still. And then, all at once, he seemed to spring back
into life.
"Mother!" he shouted suddenly in quite a strong voice.
He started up in bed, and now sat erect and still, his wide-stretched
eyes staring straight before him.
The nurse had, at Sir Roland's request, left the room before the
stranger had begun to speak to him. Now, opening the door quickly, Sir
Roland called to her to return.
The stranger's eyes were fixed. Motionless he sat there glaring, as it
seemed to us, at some figure facing him. Instinctively we followed the
direction of his gaze, but naught was visible to us save the artistic
pattern upon the pink-tinted wall-paper opposite the foot of the bed.
His lips were slightly parted, now. We saw them move as though he spoke
rapidly, but no words came. And then, all at once, he smiled.
"The Four Faces!" he repeated, almost inaudibly.
It was not a vacant smile, not the smile of a man mentally deficient,
but a smile charged with meaning, with intelligent expression; a smile
of delight, of greeting—a smile full of love. It was the first time we
had seen a smile, or anything approaching one, upon his face, and in an
instant it revealed how handsome the man had been.
"Mother!"
This time the word was only murmured, a murmur so low as to be barely
audible. The fellow's pyjama jacket, one Sir Roland Challoner had lent
to him, had become unfastened at the throat, and now I noticed that a
thin gold chain was round his neck, and that from it there depended a
flat, circular locket.
Sir Roland was seated close beside the bed. Almost as I noticed this
locket, he saw it too. I saw him bend forward a little, and take it in
his fingers, and turn it over. I could see it distinctly from where I
sat. Upon the reverse side was a miniature—the portrait of a woman—a
woman of forty-five or so, very beautiful still, a striking face of
singular refinement. Yes, there could be no doubt whatever—the eyes of
the miniature bore a striking likeness to the stranger's, which now
gazed at nothing with that fixed, unmeaning stare.
I had noticed Sir Roland raised his eyebrows. Now he sat staring
intently at the miniature which lay flat upon the palm on his hand. At
last he let it drop and turned to me, while the stranger still sat
upright in the bed, gazing still at something he seemed to see
before him.
"I believe I have discovered his identity," Sir Roland whispered. "I
recognize the portrait in that locket; I couldn't possibly mistake it
seeing that years ago I knew the original well. It's a miniature of
Lady Logan, who died some years ago. Her husband, Lord Logan, was a
gambler, a spendthrift, and a drunkard, and he treated her with
abominable cruelty. They had one child, a son. I remember the son
sitting on my knee when he was quite a little chap—he couldn't at that
time have been more than five or six. He went to Marlborough, I know;
then crammed for the army, but failed to pass; and yet he was
undoubtedly clever. His father became infuriated upon hearing that he
had not qualified, and, in a fit of drunkenness, turned him with curses
out of the house, forbidding him ever to return, in spite of Lady
Logan's pleading on the lad's behalf. The lad had from infancy been
passionately devoted to his mother, though he couldn't bear his father.
The mother died soon afterwards—of a broken heart it was said—and Lord
Logan survived her only a few months, dying eventually of _delirium
tremens_. Upon his death the little money he left was swallowed up in
paying his debts. The son, whose name was Harold, didn't show up even at
the funerals—none knew where he was or what had become of him. It was
generally believed that he had gone abroad, and Logan's executors
thought it probable that the son had not had news of either his mother's
or his father's death. Altogether it was a very sad story and—"
He checked himself, for the stranger had turned his head and was looking
at us—never shall I forget the infinite pathos of his expression at
that moment. There was something in the face which betrayed misery and
dejection so abject that for days afterwards the look haunted me. Again
I saw the lips move, but no sound came.
He had sunk back upon his pillows. Once more his eyes gazed fixedly at
the ceiling. Some moments later the mouth gaped, the lips turned slowly
blue, a dull, leaden hue spread over the pale features.
The nurse hurried forward, but there was nothing to be done. Harold
Logan, Lord Logan's wastrel son, was dead.