"So you were right," Denzil could not help saying as he greeted Grodman
a week afterward. "I shall not live to tell the story of how you
discovered the Bow murderer."
"Sit down," growled Grodman; "perhaps you will after all." There was a
dangerous gleam in his eyes. Denzil was sorry he had spoken.
"I sent for you," Grodman said, "to tell you that on the night Wimp
arrested Mortlake I had made preparations for your arrest."
Denzil gasped, "What for?"
"My dear Denzil, there is a little law in this country invented for the
confusion of the poetic. The greatest exponent of the Beautiful is only
allowed the same number of wives as the greengrocer. I do not blame you
for not being satisfied with Jane--she is a good servant but a bad
mistress--but it was cruel to Kitty not to inform her that Jane had a
prior right in you, and unjust to Jane not to let her know of the
contract with Kitty."
"They both know it now well enough, curse 'em," said the poet.
"Yes; your secrets are like your situations--you can't keep them long.
My poor poet, I pity you--betwixt the devil and the deep sea."
"They're a pair of harpies, each holding over me the Damocles sword of
an arrest for bigamy. Neither loves me."
"I should think they would come in very useful to you. You plant one in
my house to tell my secrets to Wimp, and you plant one in Wimp's house
to tell Wimp's secrets to me, I suppose. Out with some, then."
"Upon my honor you wrong me. Jane brought me here, not I Jane. As for
Kitty, I never had such a shock in my life as at finding her installed
in Wimp's house."
"She thought it safer to have the law handy for your arrest. Besides,
she probably desired to occupy a parallel position to Jane's. She must
do something for a living; you wouldn't do anything for hers. And so you
couldn't go anywhere without meeting a wife! Ha! ha! ha! Serve you
right, my polygamous poet."
"But why should you arrest me?"
"Revenge, Denzil. I have been the best friend you ever had in this cold,
prosaic world. You have eaten my bread, drunk my claret, written my
book, smoked my cigars, and pocketed my money. And yet, when you have an
important piece of information bearing on a mystery about which I am
thinking day and night, you calmly go and sell it to Wimp."
"I did-didn't," stammered Denzil.
"Liar! Do you think Kitty has any secrets from me? As soon as I
discovered your two marriages I determined to have you arrested
for--your treachery. But when I found you had, as I thought, put Wimp on
the wrong scent, when I felt sure that by arresting Mortlake he was
going to make a greater ass of himself than even nature had been able to
do, then I forgave you. I let you walk about the earth--and
drink--freely. Now it is Wimp who crows--everybody pats him on the
back--they call him the mystery man of the Scotland-Yard tribe. Poor Tom
Mortlake will be hanged, and all through your telling Wimp about Jessie
Dymond!"
"It was you yourself," said Denzil sullenly. "Everybody was giving it
up. But you said 'Let us find out all that Arthur Constant did in the
last few months of his life.' Wimp couldn't miss stumbling on Jessie
sooner or later. I'd have throttled Constant, if I had known he'd
touched her," he wound up with irrelevant indignation.
Grodman winced at the idea that he himself had worked _ad majorem
gloriam_ of Wimp. And yet, had not Mrs. Wimp let out as much at the
Christmas dinner?
"What's past is past," he said gruffly. "But if Tom Mortlake hangs, you
go to Portland."
"How can I help Tom hanging?"
"Help the agitation as much as you can. Write letters under all sorts of
names to all the papers. Get everybody you know to sign the great
petition. Find out where Jessie Dymond is--the girl who holds the proof
of Tom Mortlake's innocence."
"You really believe him innocent?"
"Don't be satirical, Denzil. Haven't I taken the chair at all the
meetings? Am I not the most copious correspondent of the Press?"
"I thought it was only to spite Wimp."
"Rubbish. It's to save poor Tom. He no more murdered Arthur Constant
than--you did!" He laughed an unpleasant laugh.
Denzil bade him farewell, frigid with fear.
Grodman was up to his ears in letters and telegrams. Somehow he had
become the leader of the rescue party--suggestions, subscriptions came
from all sides. The suggestions were burnt, the subscriptions
acknowledged in the papers and used for hunting up the missing girl.
Lucy Brent headed the list with a hundred pounds. It was a fine
testimony to her faith in her dead lover's honor.
The release of the Jury had unloosed "The Greater Jury," which always
now sits upon the smaller. Every means was taken to nullify the value of
the "palladium of British liberty." The foreman and the jurors were
interviewed, the judge was judged, and by those who were no judges. The
Home Secretary (who had done nothing beyond accepting office under the
Crown) was vituperated, and sundry provincial persons wrote
confidentially to the Queen. Arthur Constant's backsliding cheered many
by convincing them that others were as bad as themselves; and well-to-do
tradesmen saw in Mortlake's wickedness the pernicious effects of
socialism. A dozen new theories were afloat. Constant had committed
suicide by Esoteric Buddhism, as witness his devotion to Mme. Blavatsky,
or he had been murdered by his Mahatma, or victimized by Hypnotism,
Mesmerism, Somnambulism, and other weird abstractions. Grodman's great
point was--Jessie Dymond must be produced, dead or alive. The electric
current scoured the civilized world in search of her. What wonder if the
shrewder sort divined that the indomitable detective had fixed his last
hope on the girl's guilt? If Jessie had wrongs why should she not have
avenged them herself? Did she not always remind the poet of Joan of Arc?
Another week passed; the shadow of the gallows crept over the days; on,
on, remorselessly drawing nearer, as the last ray of hope sank below the
horizon. The Home Secretary remained inflexible; the great petitions
discharged their signatures at him in vain. He was a Conservative,
sternly conscientious; and the mere insinuation that his obstinacy was
due to the politics of the condemned only hardened him against the
temptation of a cheap reputation for magnanimity. He would not even
grant a respite, to increase the chances of the discovery of Jessie
Dymond. In the last of the three weeks there was a final monster meeting
of protest. Grodman again took the chair, and several distinguished
faddists were present, as well as numerous respectable members of
society. The Home Secretary acknowledged the receipt of their
resolutions. The Trade Unions were divided in their allegiance; some
whispered of faith and hope, others of financial defalcations. The
former essayed to organize a procession and an indignation meeting on
the Sunday preceding the Tuesday fixed for the execution, but it fell
through on a rumor of confession. The Monday papers contained a last
masterly letter from Grodman exposing the weakness of the evidence, but
they knew nothing of a confession. The prisoner was mute and disdainful,
professing little regard for a life empty of love and burdened with
self-reproach. He refused to see clergymen. He was accorded an interview
with Miss Brent in the presence of a jailer, and solemnly asseverated
his respect for her dead lover's memory. Monday buzzed with rumors; the
evening papers chronicled them hour by hour. A poignant anxiety was
abroad. The girl would be found. Some miracle would happen. A reprieve
would arrive. The sentence would be commuted. But the short day darkened
into night even as Mortlake's short day was darkening. And the shadow of
the gallows crept on and on and seemed to mingle with the twilight.
Crowl stood at the door of his shop, unable to work. His big gray eyes
were heavy with unshed tears. The dingy wintry road seemed one vast
cemetery; the street lamps twinkled like corpse-lights. The confused
sounds of the street-life reached his ear as from another world. He did
not see the people who flitted to and fro amid the gathering shadows of
the cold, dreary night. One ghastly vision flashed and faded and flashed
upon the background of the duskiness.
Denzil stood beside him, smoking in silence. A cold fear was at his
heart. That terrible Grodman! As the hangman's cord was tightening round
Mortlake, he felt the convict's chains tightening round himself. And yet
there was one gleam of hope, feeble as the yellow flicker of the
gas-lamp across the way. Grodman had obtained an interview with the
condemned late that afternoon, and the parting had been painful, but the
evening paper, that in its turn had obtained an interview with the
ex-detective, announced on its placard:
"GRODMAN STILL CONFIDENT,"
and the thousands who yet pinned their faith on this extraordinary man
refused to extinguish the last sparks of hope. Denzil had bought the
paper and scanned it eagerly, but there was nothing save the vague
assurance that the indefatigable Grodman was still almost pathetically
expectant of the miracle. Denzil did not share the expectation; he
meditated flight.
"Peter," he said at last, "I'm afraid it's all over."
Crowl nodded, heart-broken. "All over!" he repeated, "and to think that
he dies--and it is--all over!"
He looked despairingly at the blank winter sky, where leaden clouds shut
out the stars. "Poor, poor young fellow! To-night alive and thinking.
To-morrow night a clod, with no more sense or motion than a bit of
leather! No compensation nowhere for being cut off innocent in the pride
of youth and strength! A man who has always preached the Useful day and
night, and toiled and suffered for his fellows. Where's the justice of
it, where's the justice of it?" he demanded fiercely. Again his wet eyes
wandered upward toward heaven, that heaven away from which the soul of a
dead saint at the Antipodes was speeding into infinite space.
"Well, where was the justice for Arthur Constant if he, too, was
innocent?" said Denzil. "Really, Peter, I don't see why you should take
it for granted that Tom is so dreadfully injured. Your horny-handed
labor leaders are, after all, men of no aesthetic refinement, with no
sense of the Beautiful; you cannot expect them to be exempt from the
coarser forms of crime. Humanity must look to for other leaders--to the
seers and the poets!"
"Cantercot, if you say Tom's guilty I'll knock you down." The little
cobbler turned upon his tall friend like a roused lion. Then he added,
"I beg your pardon, Cantercot, I don't mean that. After all, I've no
grounds. The judge is an honest man, and with gifts I can't lay claim
to. But I believe in Tom with all my heart. And if Tom is guilty I
believe in the Cause of the People with all my heart all the same. The
Fads are doomed to death, they may be reprieved, but they must die at
last."
He drew a deep sigh, and looked along the dreary Road. It was quite dark
now, but by the light of the lamps and the gas in the shop windows the
dull, monotonous Road lay revealed in all its sordid, familiar outlines;
with its long stretches of chill pavement, its unlovely architecture,
and its endless stream of prosaic pedestrians.
A sudden consciousness of the futility of his existence pierced the
little cobbler like an icy wind. He saw his own life, and a hundred
million lives like his, swelling and breaking like bubbles on a dark
ocean, unheeded, uncared for.
A newsboy passed along, clamoring "The Bow murderer, preparations for
the hexecution!"
A terrible shudder shook the cobbler's frame. His eyes ranged
sightlessly after the boy; the merciful tears filled them at last.
"The Cause of the People," he murmured, brokenly, "I believe in the
Cause of the People. There is nothing else."
"Peter, come in to tea, you'll catch cold," said Mrs. Crowl.
Denzil went in to tea and Peter followed.
* * * * *
Meantime, round the house of the Home Secretary, who was in town, an
ever-augmenting crowd was gathered, eager to catch the first whisper of
a reprieve.
The house was guarded by a cordon of police, for there was no
inconsiderable danger of a popular riot. At times a section of the crowd
groaned and hooted. Once a volley of stones was discharged at the
windows. The news-boys were busy vending their special editions, and the
reporters struggled through the crowd, clutching descriptive pencils,
and ready to rush off to telegraph offices should anything "extra
special" occur. Telegraph boys were coming up every now and again with
threats, messages, petitions and exhortations from all parts of the
country to the unfortunate Home Secretary, who was striving to keep his
aching head cool as he went through the voluminous evidence for the last
time and pondered over the more important letters which "The Greater
Jury" had contributed to the obscuration of the problem. Grodman's
letter in that morning's paper shook him most; under his scientific
analysis the circumstantial chain seemed forged of painted cardboard.
Then the poor man read the judge's summing up, and the chain became
tempered steel. The noise of the crowd outside broke upon his ear in his
study like the roar of a distant ocean. The more the rabble hooted him,
the more he essayed to hold scrupulously the scales of life and death.
And the crowd grew and grew, as men came away from their work. There
were many that loved the man who lay in the jaws of death, and a spirit
of mad revolt surged in their breasts. And the sky was gray, and the
bleak night deepened and the shadow of the gallows crept on.
Suddenly a strange inarticulate murmur spread through the crowd, a vague
whisper of no one knew what. Something had happened. Somebody was
coming. A second later and one of the outskirts of the throng was
agitated, and a convulsive cheer went up from it, and was taken up
infectiously all along the street. The crowd parted--a hansom dashed
through the center. "Grodman! Grodman!" shouted those who recognized the
occupant. "Grodman! Hurrah!" Grodman was outwardly calm and pale, but
his eyes glittered; he waved his hand encouragingly as the hansom dashed
up to the door, cleaving the turbulent crowd as a canoe cleaves the
waters. Grodman sprang out, the constables at the portal made way for
him respectfully. He knocked imperatively, the door was opened
cautiously; a boy rushed up and delivered a telegram; Grodman forced his
way in, gave his name, and insisted on seeing the Home Secretary on a
matter of life and death. Those near the door heard his words and
cheered, and the crowd divined the good omen, and the air throbbed with
cannonades of joyous sound. The cheers rang in Grodman's ears as the
door slammed behind him. The reporters struggled to the front. An
excited knot of working men pressed round the arrested hansom, they took
the horse out. A dozen enthusiasts struggled for the honor of placing
themselves between the shafts. And the crowd awaited Grodman.