The New Year brought Mrs. Drabdump a new lodger. He was an old gentleman
with a long gray beard. He rented the rooms of the late Mr. Constant,
and lived a very retired life. Haunted rooms--or rooms that ought to be
haunted if the ghosts of those murdered in them had any
self-respect--are supposed to fetch a lower rent in the market. The
whole Irish problem might be solved if the spirits of "Mr. Balfour's
victims" would only depreciate the value of property to a point
consistent with the support of an agricultural population. But Mrs.
Drabdump's new lodger paid so much for his rooms that he laid himself
open to a suspicion of special interest in ghosts. Perhaps he was a
member of the Psychical Society. The neighborhood imagined him another
mad philanthropist, but as he did not appear to be doing any good to
anybody it relented and conceded his sanity. Mortlake, who occasionally
stumbled across him in the passage, did not trouble himself to think
about him at all. He was too full of other troubles and cares. Though he
worked harder than ever, the spirit seemed to have gone out of him.
Sometimes he forgot himself in a fine rapture of eloquence--lashing
himself up into a divine resentment of injustice or a passion of
sympathy with the sufferings of his brethren--but mostly he plodded on
in dull, mechanical fashion. He still made brief provincial tours,
starring a day here and a day there, and everywhere his admirers
remarked how jaded and overworked he looked. There was talk of starting
a subscription to give him a holiday on the Continent--a luxury
obviously unobtainable on the few pounds allowed him per week. The new
lodger would doubtless have been pleased to subscribe, for he seemed
quite to like occupying Mortlake's chamber the nights he was absent,
though he was thoughtful enough not to disturb the hardworked landlady
in the adjoining room by unseemly noise. Wimp was always a quiet man.
Meantime the 21st of the month approached, and the East End was in
excitement. Mr. Gladstone had consented to be present at the ceremony of
unveiling the portrait of Arthur Constant, presented by an unknown donor
to the Bow Break o' Day Club, and it was to be a great function. The
whole affair was outside the lines of party politics, so that even
Conservatives and Socialists considered themselves justified in
pestering the committee for tickets. To say nothing of ladies. As the
committee desired to be present themselves, nine-tenths of the
applications for admission had to be refused, as is usual on these
occasions. The committee agreed among themselves to exclude the fair sex
altogether as the only way of disposing of their womankind who were
making speeches as long as Mr. Gladstone's. Each committeeman told his
sisters, female cousins and aunts that the other committeemen had
insisted on divesting the function of all grace; and what could a man do
when he was in a minority of one?
Crowl, who was not a member of the Break o' Day Club, was particularly
anxious to hear the great orator whom he despised; fortunately Mortlake
remembered the cobbler's anxiety to hear himself, and on the eve of the
ceremony sent him a ticket. Crowl was in the first flush of possession
when Denzil Cantercot returned, after a sudden and unannounced absence
of three days. His clothes were muddy and tattered, his cocked hat was
deformed, his cavalier beard was matted, and his eyes were bloodshot.
The cobbler nearly dropped the ticket at the sight of him. "Hullo,
Cantercot!" he gasped. "Why, where have you been all these days?"
"Terribly busy!" said Denzil. "Here, give me a glass of water. I'm dry
as the Sahara."
Crowl ran inside and got the water, trying hard not to inform Mrs. Crowl
of their lodger's return. "Mother" had expressed herself freely on the
subject of the poet during his absence, and not in terms which would
have commended themselves to the poet's fastidious literary sense.
Indeed, she did not hesitate to call him a sponger and a low swindler,
who had run away to avoid paying the piper. Her fool of a husband might
be quite sure he would never set eyes on the scoundrel again. However,
Mrs. Crowl was wrong. Here was Denzil back again. And yet Mr. Crowl felt
no sense of victory. He had no desire to crow over his partner and to
utter that "See! didn't I tell you so?" which is a greater consolation
than religion in most of the misfortunes of life. Unfortunately, to get
the water, Crowl had to go to the kitchen; and as he was usually such a
temperate man, this desire for drink in the middle of the day attracted
the attention of the lady in possession. Crowl had to explain the
situation. Mrs. Crowl ran into the shop to improve it. Mr. Crowl
followed in dismay, leaving a trail of spilled water in his wake.
"You good-for-nothing, disreputable scarecrow, where have----"
"Hush, mother. Let him drink. Mr. Cantercot is thirsty."
"Does he care if my children are hungry?"
Denzil tossed the water greedily down his throat almost at a gulp, as if
it were brandy.
"Madam," he said, smacking his lips, "I do care. I care intensely. Few
things in life would grieve me more deeply than to hear that a child, a
dear little child--the Beautiful in a nutshell--had suffered hunger. You
wrong me." His voice was tremulous with the sense of injury. Tears stood
in his eyes.
"Wrong you? I've no wish to wrong you," said Mrs. Crowl. "I should like
to hang you."
"Don't talk of such ugly things," said Denzil, touching his throat
nervously.
"Well, what have you been doin' all this time?"
"Why, what should I be doing?"
"How should I know what became of you? I thought it was another murder."
"What!" Denzil's glass dashed to fragments on the floor. "What do you
mean?"
But Mrs. Crowl was glaring too viciously at Mr. Crowl to reply. He
understood the message as if it were printed. It ran: "You have broken
one of my best glasses. You have annihilated threepence, or a week's
school fees for half the family." Peter wished she would turn the
lightning upon Denzil, a conductor down whom it would run innocuously.
He stooped down and picked up the pieces as carefully as if they were
cuttings from the Koh-i-noor. Thus the lightning passed harmlessly over
his head and flew toward Cantercot.
"What do I mean?" Mrs. Crowl echoed, as if there had been no interval.
"I mean that it would be a good thing if you had been murdered."
"What unbeautiful ideas you have, to be sure!" murmured Denzil.
"Yes; but they'd be useful," said Mrs. Crowl, who had not lived with
Peter all these years for nothing. "And if you haven't been murdered
what have you been doing?"
"My dear, my dear," put in Crowl, deprecatingly, looking up from his
quadrupedal position like a sad dog, "you are not Cantercot's keeper."
"Oh, ain't I?" flashed his spouse. "Who else keeps him I should like to
know?"
Peter went on picking up the pieces of the Koh-i-noor.
"I have no secrets from Mrs. Crowl" Denzil explained courteously. "I
have been working day and night bringing out a new paper. Haven't had a
wink of sleep for three nights."
Peter looked up at his bloodshot eyes with respectful interest.
"The capitalist met me in the street--an old friend of mine--I was
overjoyed at the _rencontre_ and told him the idea I'd been brooding
over for months and he promised to stand all the racket."
"What sort of a paper?" said Peter.
"Can you ask? To what do you think I've been devoting my days and nights
but to the cultivation of the Beautiful?"
"Is that what the paper will be devoted to?"
"Yes. To the Beautiful."
"I know," snorted Mrs. Crowl, "with portraits of actresses."
"Portraits? Oh, no!" said Denzil. "That would be the True--not the
Beautiful."
"And what's the name of the paper?" asked Crowl.
"Ah, that's a secret, Peter. Like Scott, I prefer to remain anonymous."
"Just like your Fads. I'm only a plain man, and I want to know where the
fun of anonymity comes in? If I had any gifts, I should like to get the
credit. It's a right and natural feeling, to my thinking."
"Unnatural, Peter; unnatural. We're all born anonymous, and I'm for
sticking close to Nature. Enough for me that I disseminate the
Beautiful. Any letters come during my absence, Mrs. Crowl?"
"No," she snapped. "But a gent named Grodman called. He said you hadn't
been to see him for some time, and looked annoyed to hear you'd
disappeared. How much have you let him in for?"
"The man's in my debt," said Denzil, annoyed. "I wrote a book for him
and he's taken all the credit for it, the rogue! My name doesn't appear
even in the Preface. What's that ticket you're looking so lovingly at,
Peter?"
"That's for to-night--the unveiling of Constant's portrait. Gladstone
speaks. Awful demand for places."
"Gladstone!" sneered Denzil. "Who wants to hear Gladstone? A man who's
devoted his life to pulling down the pillars of Church and State."
"A man's who's devoted his whole life to propping up the crumbling Fads
of Religion and Monarchy. But, for all that, the man has his gifts, and
I'm burnin' to hear him."
"I wouldn't go out of my way an inch to hear him," said Denzil; and went
up to his room, and when Mrs. Crowl sent him up a cup of nice strong tea
at tea time, the brat who bore it found him lying dressed on the bed,
snoring unbeautifully.
The evening wore on. It was fine frosty weather. The Whitechapel Road
swarmed, with noisy life, as though it were a Saturday night. The stars
flared in the sky like the lights of celestial costermongers. Everybody
was on the alert for the advent of Mr. Gladstone. He must surely come
through the Road on his journey from the West Bow-wards. But nobody saw
him or his carriage, except those about the Hall. Probably he went by
tram most of the way. He would have caught cold in an open carriage, or
bobbing his head out of the window of a closed.
"If he had only been a German prince, or a cannibal king," said Crowl
bitterly, as he plodded toward the Club, "we should have disguised Mile
End in bunting and blue fire. But perhaps it's a compliment. He knows
his London, and it's no use trying to hide the facts from him. They must
have queer notions of cities, those monarchs. They must fancy everybody
lives in a flutter of flags and walks about under triumphal arches, like
as if I were to stitch shoes in my Sunday clothes." By a defiance of
chronology Crowl had them on to-day, and they seemed to accentuate the
simile.
"And why shouldn't life be fuller of the Beautiful," said Denzil. The
poet had brushed the reluctant mud off his garments to the extent it was
willing to go, and had washed his face, but his eyes were still
bloodshot from the cultivation of the Beautiful. Denzil was accompanying
Crowl to the door of the Club out of good-fellowship. Denzil was himself
accompanied by Grodman, though less obtrusively. Least obtrusively was
he accompanied by his usual Scotland Yard shadows, Wimp's agents. There
was a surging nondescript crowd about the Club, and the police, and the
door-keeper, and the stewards could with difficulty keep out the tide of
the ticketless, through which the current of the privileged had equal
difficulty in permeating. The streets all around were thronged with
people longing for a glimpse of Gladstone. Mortlake drove up in a hansom
(his head a self-conscious pendulum of popularity, swaying and bowing to
right and left) and received all the pent-up enthusiasm.
"Well, good-by, Cantercot," said Crowl.
"No, I'll see you to the door, Peter."
They fought their way shoulder to shoulder.
Now that Grodman had found Denzil he was not going to lose him again. He
had only found him by accident, for he was himself bound to the
unveiling ceremony, to which he had been invited in view of his known
devotion to the task of unveiling the Mystery. He spoke to one of the
policemen about, who said, "Ay, ay, sir," and he was prepared to follow
Denzil, if necessary, and to give up the pleasure of hearing Gladstone
for an acuter thrill. The arrest must be delayed no longer.
But Denzil seemed as if he were going in on the heels of Crowl. This
would suit Grodman better. He could then have the two pleasures. But
Denzil was stopped half-way through the door.
"Ticket, sir!"
Denzil drew himself up to his full height.
"Press," he said, majestically. All the glories and grandeurs of the
Fourth Estate were concentrated in that haughty monosyllable. Heaven
itself is full of journalists who have overawed St. Peter. But the
door-keeper was a veritable dragon.
"What paper, sir?"
"'New Pork Herald,'" said Denzil sharply. He did not relish his word
being distrusted.
"'New York Herald,'" said one of the bystanding stewards, scarce
catching the sounds. "Pass him in."
And in the twinkling of an eye, Denzil had eagerly slipped inside.
But during the brief altercation Wimp had come up. Even he could not
make his face quite impassive, and there was a suppressed intensity in
the eyes and a quiver about the mouth. He went in on Denzil's heels,
blocking up the doorway with Grodman. The two men were so full of their
coming _coups_ that they struggled for some seconds, side by side,
before they recognized each other. Then they shook hands heartily.
"That was Cantercot just went in, wasn't it, Grodman?" said Wimp.
"I didn't notice," said Grodman, in tones of utter indifference.
At bottom Wimp was terribly excited. He felt that his _coup_ was going
to be executed under very sensational circumstances. Everything would
combine to turn the eyes of the country upon him--nay, of the world, for
had not the Big Bow Mystery been discussed in every language under the
sun? In these electric times the criminal achieves a cosmopolitan
reputation. It is a privilege he shares with few other artists. This
time Wimp would be one of them; and, he felt, deservedly so. If the
criminal had been cunning to the point of genius in planning the murder,
he had been acute to the point of divination in detecting it. Never
before had he pieced together so broken a chain. He could not resist the
unique opportunity of setting a sensational scheme in a sensational
frame-work. The dramatic instinct was strong in him; he felt like a
playwright who has constructed a strong melodramatic plot, and has the
Drury Lane stage suddenly offered him to present it on. It would be
folly to deny himself the luxury, though the presence of Mr. Gladstone
and the nature of the ceremony should perhaps have given him pause. Yet,
on the other hand, these were the very factors of the temptation. Wimp
went in and took a seat behind Denzil. All the seats were numbered, so
that everybody might have the satisfaction of occupying somebody else's.
Denzil was in the special reserved places in the front row just by the
central gangway; Crowl was squeezed into a corner behind a pillar near
the back of the hall. Grodman had been honored with a seat on the
platform, which was accessible by steps on the right and left, but he
kept his eye on Denzil. The picture of the poor idealist hung on the
wall behind Grodman's head, covered by its curtain of brown holland.
There was a subdued buzz of excitement about the hall, which swelled
into cheers every now and again as some gentleman known to fame or Bow
took his place upon the platform. It was occupied by several local M.
P.'s of varying politics, a number of other Parliamentary satellites of
the great man, three or four labor leaders, a peer or two of
philanthropic pretensions, a sprinkling of Toynbee and Oxford Hall men,
the president and other honorary officials, some of the family and
friends of the deceased, together with the inevitable percentage of
persons who had no claim to be there save cheek. Gladstone was
late--later than Mortlake, who was cheered to the echo when he arrived,
someone starting "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," as if it were a
political meeting. Gladstone came in just in time to acknowledge the
compliment. The noise of the song, trolled out from iron lungs, had
drowned the huzzahs heralding the old man's advent. The convivial chorus
went to Mortlake's head, as if champagne had really preceded it. His
eyes grew moist and dim. He saw himself swimming to the Millenium on
waves of enthusiasm. Ah, how his brother-toilers should be rewarded for
their trust in him!
With his usual courtesy and consideration, Mr. Gladstone had refused to
perform the actual unveiling of Arthur Constant's portrait. "That," he
said in his postcard, "will fall most appropriately to Mr. Mortlake, a
gentleman who has, I am given to understand, enjoyed the personal
friendship of the late Mr. Constant, and has co-operated with him in
various schemes for the organization of skilled and unskilled classes of
labor, as well as for the diffusion of better ideals--ideals of
self-culture and self-restraint--among the workingmen of Bow, who have
been fortunate, so far as I can perceive, in the possession (if in one
case unhappily only temporary possession) of two such men of undoubted
ability and honesty to direct their divided counsels and to lead them
along a road, which, though I cannot pledge myself to approve of it in
all its turnings and windings, is yet not unfitted to bring them
somewhat nearer to goals to which there are few of us but would extend
some measure of hope that the working classes of this great Empire may
in due course, yet with no unnecessary delay, be enabled to arrive."
Mr. Gladstone's speech was an expansion of his postcard, punctuated by
cheers. The only new thing in it was the graceful and touching way in
which he revealed what had been a secret up till then--that the portrait
had been painted and presented to the Bow Break o' Day Club, by Lucy
Brent, who in the fulness of time would have been Arthur Constant's
wife. It was a painting for which he had sat to her while alive, and she
had stifled yet pampered her grief by working hard at it since his
death. The fact added the last touch of pathos to the occasion. Crowl's
face was hidden behind his red handkerchief; even the fire of excitement
in Wimp's eye was quenched for a moment by a tear-drop, as he thought of
Mrs. Wimp and Wilfred. As for Grodman, there was almost a lump in his
throat. Denzil Cantercot was the only unmoved man in the room. He
thought the episode quite too Beautiful, and was already weaving it into
rhyme.
At the conclusion of his speech Mr. Gladstone called upon Tom Mortlake
to unveil the portrait. Tom rose, pale and excited. His hand faltered as
he touched the cord. He seemed overcome with emotion. Was it the mention
of Lucy Brent that had moved him to his depths?
The brown holland fell away--the dead stood revealed as he had been in
life. Every feature, painted by the hand of Love, was instinct with
vitality: the fine, earnest face, the sad kindly eyes, the noble brow
seeming still a-throb with the thought of Humanity. A thrill ran through
the room--there was a low, undefinable murmur. O, the pathos and the
tragedy of it! Every eye was fixed, misty with emotion, upon the dead
man in the picture and the living man who stood, pale and agitated, and
visibly unable to commence his speech, at the side of the canvas.
Suddenly a hand was laid upon the labor leader's shoulder, and there
rang through the hall in Wimp's clear, decisive tones the words: "Tom
Mortlake, I arrest you for the murder of Arthur Constant!"