Cyprian Paynter did not know what he expected to see rise out of
the well--the corpse of the murdered man or merely the spirit of the
fountain. Anyhow, neither of them rose out of it, and he recognized
after an instant that this was, after all, perhaps the more natural
course of things. Once more he pulled himself together, walked to the
edge of the well and looked down. He saw, as before, a dim glimmer of
water, at that depth no brighter than ink; he fancied he still heard
a faint convulsion and murmur, but it gradually subsided to an utter
stillness. Short of suicidally diving in, there was nothing to be
done. He realized that, with all his equipment, he had not even brought
anything like a rope or basket, and at length decided to return for
them. As he retraced his steps to the entrance, he recurred to, and took
stock of, his more solid discoveries. Somebody had gone into the wood,
killed the Squire and thrown him down the well, but he did not admit for
a moment that it was his friend the poet; but if the latter had actually
been seen coming out of the wood the matter was serious. As he walked
the rapidly darkening twilight was cloven with red gleams, that made him
almost fancy for a moment that some fantastic criminal had set fire to
the tiny forest as he fled. A second glance showed him nothing but one
of those red sunsets in which such serene days sometimes close.
As he came out of the gloomy gate of trees into the full glow he saw a
dark figure standing quite still in the dim bracken, on the spot where
he had left the woodcutter. It was not the woodcutter.
It was topped by a tall black hat of a funeral type, and the whole
figure stood so black against the field of crimson fire that edged the
sky line that he could not for an instant understand or recall it. When
he did, it was with an odd change in the whole channel of his thoughts.
“Doctor Brown!” he cried. “Why, what are you doing up here?”
“I have been talking to poor Martin,” answered the doctor, and made
a rather awkward movement with his hand toward the road down to the
village. Following the gesture, Paynter dimly saw another dark figure
walking down in the blood-red distance. He also saw that the hand
motioning was really black, and not merely in shadow; and, coming
nearer, found the doctor’s dress was really funereal, down to the detail
of the dark gloves. It gave the American a small but queer shock, as if
this were actually an undertaker come up to bury the corpse that could
not be found.
“Poor Martin’s been looking for his chopper,” observed Doctor Brown,
“but I told him I’d picked it up and kept it for him. Between ourselves,
I hardly think he’s fit to be trusted with it.” Then, seeing the glance
at his black garb, he added: “I’ve just been to a funeral. Did you know
there’s been another loss? Poor Jake the fisherman’s wife, down in the
cottage on the shore, you know. This infernal fever, of course.”
As they both turned, facing the red evening light, Paynter instinctively
made a closer study, not merely of the doctor’s clothes, but of the
doctor. Dr. Burton Brown was a tall, alert man, neatly dressed, who
would otherwise have had an almost military air but for his spectacles
and an almost painful intellectualism in his lean brown face and bald
brow. The contrast was clinched by the fact that, while his face was of
the ascetic type generally conceived as clean-shaven, he had a strip of
dark mustache cut too short for him to bite, and yet a mouth that often
moved as if trying to bite it. He might have been a very intelligent
army surgeon, but he had more the look of an engineer or one of those
services that combine a military silence with a more than military
science. Paynter had always respected something ruggedly reliable about
the man, and after a little hesitation he told him all the discoveries.
The doctor took the hat of the dead Squire in his hand, and examined it
with frowning care. He put one finger through the hole in the crown and
moved it meditatively. And Paynter realized how fanciful his own fatigue
must have made him; for so silly a thing as the black finger waggling
through the rent in that frayed white relic unreasonably displeased him.
The doctor soon made the same discovery with professional acuteness,
and applied it much further. For when Paynter began to tell him of
the moving water in the well he looked at him a moment through his
spectacles, and then said:
“Did you have any lunch?”
Paynter for the first time realized that he had, as a fact, worked and
thought furiously all day without food.
“Please don’t fancy I mean you had too much lunch,” said the medical
man, with mournful humor. “On the contrary, I mean you had too little.
I think you are a bit knocked out, and your nerves exaggerate things.
Anyhow, let me advise you not to do any more to-night. There’s nothing
to be done without ropes or some sort of fishing tackle, if with that;
but I think I can get you some of the sort of grappling irons the
fishermen use for dragging. Poor Jake’s got some, I know; I’ll bring
them round to you tomorrow morning. The fact is, I’m staying there for
a bit as he’s rather in a state, and I think is better for me to ask for
the things and not a stranger. I am sure you’ll understand.”
Paynter understood sufficiently to assent, and hardly knew why he stood
vacantly watching the doctor make his way down the steep road to the
shore and the fisher’s cottage. Then he threw off thoughts he had not
examined, or even consciously entertained, and walked slowly and rather
heavily back to the Vane Arms.
The doctor, still funereal in manner, though no longer so in costume,
appeared punctually under the wooden sign next morning, laden with what
he had promised; an apparatus of hooks and a hanging net for hoisting
up anything sunk to a reasonable depth. He was about to proceed on his
professional round, and said nothing further to deter the American from
proceeding on his own very unprofessional experiment as a detective.
That buoyant amateur had indeed recovered most, if not all, of
yesterday’s buoyancy, was now well fitted to pass any medical
examination, and returned with all his own energy to the scene of
yesterday’s labors.
It may well have brightened and made breezier his second day’s toil that
he had not only the sunlight and the bird’s singing in the little wood,
to say nothing of a more scientific apparatus to work with, but also
human companionship, and that of the most intelligent type. After
leaving the doctor and before leaving the village he had bethought
himself of seeking the little court or square where stood the quiet
brown house of Andrew Ashe, solicitor, and the operations of dragging
were worked in double harness. Two heads were peering over the well in
the wood: one yellow-haired, lean and eager; the other redhaired, heavy
and pondering; and if it be true that two heads are better than one, it
is truer that four hands are better than two. In any case, their united
and repeated efforts bore fruit at last, if anything so hard and meager
and forlorn can be called a fruit. It weighed loosely in the net as
it was lifted, and rolled out on the grassy edge of the well; it was a
bone.
Ashe picked it up and stood with it in his hand, frowning.
“We want Doctor Brown here,” he said. “This may be the bone of some
animal. Any dog or sheep might fall into a hidden well.” Then he broke
off, for his companion was already detaching a second bone from the net.
After another half hour’s effort Paynter had occasion to remark, “It
must have been rather a large dog.” There were already a heap of such
white fragments at his feet.
“I have seen nothing yet,” said Ashe, speaking more plainly. “That is
certainly a human bone.” “I fancy this must be a human bone,” said the
American.
And he turned away a little as he handed the other a skull.
There was no doubt of what sort of skull; there was the one unique curve
that holds the mystery of reason, and underneath it the two black holes
that had held human eyes. But just above that on the left was another
and smaller black hole, which was not an eye.
Then the lawyer said, with something like an effort: “We may admit it
is a man without admitting it is--any particular man. There may be
something, after all, in that yarn about the drunkard; he may have
tumbled into the well. Under certain conditions, after certain natural
processes, I fancy, the bones might be stripped in this way, even
without the skill of any assassin. We want the doctor again.”
Then he added suddenly, and the very sound of his voice suggested that
he hardly believed his own words.
“Haven’t you got poor Vane’s hat there?”
He took it from the silent American’s hand, and with a sort of hurry
fitted it on the bony head.
“Don’t!” said the other involuntarily.
The lawyer had put his finger, as the doctor had done, through the hole
in the hat, and it lay exactly over the hole in the skull.
“I have the better right to shrink,” he said steadily, but in a vibrant
voice. “I think I am the older friend.”
Paynter nodded without speech, accepting the final identification.
The last doubt, or hope, had departed, and he turned to the dragging
apparatus, and did not speak till he had made his last find.
The singing of the birds seemed to grow louder about them, and the dance
of the green summer leaves was repeated beyond in the dance of the green
summer sea. Only the great roots of the mysterious trees could be seen,
the rest being far aloft, and all round it was a wood of little, lively
and happy things. They might have been two innocent naturalists, or even
two children fishing for eels or tittlebats on that summer holiday when
Paynter pulled up something that weighed in the net more heavily than
any bone. It nearly broke the meshes, and fell against a mossy stone
with a clang.
“Truth lies at the bottom of a well,” cried the American, with lift in
his voice. “The woodman’s ax.”
It lay, indeed, flat and gleaming in the grasses by the well in the
wood, just as it had lain in the thicket where the woodman threw it in
the beginning of all these things. But on one corner of the bright blade
was a dull brown stain.
“I see,” said Ashe, “the woodman’s ax, and therefore the Woodman. Your
deductions are rapid.”
“My deductions are reasonable,” said Paynter, “Look here, Mr. Ashe; I
know what you’re thinking. I know you distrust Treherne; but I’m
sure you will be just for all that. To begin with, surely the first
assumption is that the woodman’s ax is used by the Woodman. What have
you to say to it?”
“I say ‘No’ to it,” replied the lawyer. “The last weapon a woodman would
use would be a woodman’s ax; that is if he is a sane man.”
“He isn’t,” said Paynter quietly; “you said you wanted the doctor’s
opinion just now. The doctor’s opinion on this point is the same as my
own. We both found him meandering about outside there; it’s obvious this
business has gone to his head, at any rate. If the murderer were a
man of business like yourself, what you say might be sound. But this
murderer is a mystic. He was driven by some fanatical fad about the
trees. It’s quite likely he thought there was something solemn and
sacrificial about the ax, and would have liked to cut off Vane’s head
before a crowd, like Charles I’s. He’s looking for the ax still, and
probably thinks it a holy relic.”
“For which reason,” said Ashe, smiling, “he instantly chucked it down a
well.”
Paynter laughed.
“You have me there certainly,” he said. “But I think you have something
else in your mind. You’ll say, I suppose, that we were all watching the
wood; but were we? Frankly, I could almost fancy the peacock trees did
strike me with a sort of sickness--a sleeping sickness.”
“Well,” admitted Ashe, “you have me there too. I’m afraid I couldn’t
swear I was awake all the time; but I don’t put it down to magic
trees--only to a private hobby of going to bed at night. But look here,
Mr. Paynter; there’s another and better argument against any outsider
from the village or countryside having committed the crime. Granted he
might have slipped past us somehow, and gone for the Squire. But why
should he go for him in the wood? How did he know he was in the wood?
You remember how suddenly the poor old boy bolted into it, on what a
momentary impulse. It’s the last place where one would normally look for
such a man, in the middle of the night. No, it’s an ugly thing to say,
but we, the group round that garden table, were the only people who
knew. Which brings me back to the one point in your remarks which I
happen to think perfectly true.”
“What was that?” inquired the other.
“That the murderer was a mystic,” said Ashe. “But a cleverer mystic than
poor old Martin.”
Paynter made a murmur of protest, and then fell silent.
“Let us talk plainly,” resumed the lawyer. “Treherne had all those mad
motives you yourself admit against the woodcutter. He had the knowledge
of Vane’s whereabouts, which nobody can possibly attribute to the
woodcutter. But he had much more. Who taunted and goaded the Squire to
go into the wood at all? Treherne. Who practically prophesied, like an
infernal quack astrologer, that something would happen to him if he did
go into the wood? Treherne. Who was, for some reason, no matter what,
obviously burning with rage and restlessness all that night, kicking
his legs impatiently to and fro on the cliff, and breaking out with wild
words about it being all over soon? Treherne. And on top of all this,
when I walked closer to the wood, whom did I see slip out of it swiftly
and silently like a shadow, but turning his face once to the moon? On my
oath and on my honor--Treherne.”
“It is awful,” said Paynter, like a man stunned. “What you say is simply
awful.”
“Yes,” said Ashe seriously, “very awful, but very simple. Treherne knew
where the ax was originally thrown. I saw him, on that day he lunched
here first, watching it like a wolf, while Miss Vane was talking to him.
On that dreadful night he could easily have picked it up as he went into
the wood. He knew about the well, no doubt; who was so likely to know
any old traditions about the peacock trees? He hid the hat in the trees,
where perhaps he hoped (though the point is unimportant) that nobody
would dare to look. Anyhow, he hid it, simply because it was the one
thing that would not sink in the well. Mr. Paynter, do you think I would
say this of any man in mere mean dislike? Could any man say it of any
man unless the case was complete, as this is complete?”
“It is complete,” said Paynter, very pale. “I have nothing left against
it but a faint, irrational feeling; a feeling that, somehow or other, if
poor Vane could stand alive before us at this moment he might tell some
other and even more incredible tale.”
Ashe made a mournful gesture.
“Can these dry bones live?” he said.
“Lord Thou knowest,” answered the other mechanically. “Even these dry
bones--”
And he stopped suddenly with his mouth open, a blinding light of wonder
in his pale eyes.
“See here,” he said hoarsely and hastily. “You have said the word. What
does it mean? What can it mean? Dry? Why are these bones dry?”
The lawyer started and stared down at the heap.
“Your case complete!” cried Paynter, in mounting excitement. “Where is
the water in the well? The water I saw leap like a flame? Why did it
leap? Where is it gone to? Complete! We are buried under riddles.”
Ashe stooped, picked up a bone and looked at it.
“You are right,” he said, in a low and shaken voice: “this bone is as
dry--as a bone.”
“Yes, I am right,” replied Cyprian. “And your mystic is still as
mysterious as a mystic.”
There was a long silence. Ashe laid down the bone, picked up the ax
and studied it more closely. Beyond the dull stain at the corner of the
steel there was nothing unusual about it save a broad white rag wrapped
round the handle, perhaps to give a better grip. The lawyer thought it
worth noting, however, that the rag was certainly newer and cleaner than
the chopper. But both were quite dry.
“Mr. Paynter,” he said at last, “I admit you have scored, in the spirit
if not in the letter. In strict logic, this greater puzzle is not a
reply to my case. If this ax has not been dipped in water, it has
been dipped in blood; and the water jumping out of the well is not
an explanation of the poet jumping out of the wood. But I admit that
morally and practically it does make a vital difference. We are not
faced with a colossal contradiction, and we don’t know how far it
extends. The body might have been broken up or boiled down to its bones
by the murderer, though it may be hard to connect it with the conditions
of the murder. It might conceivably have been so reduced by some
property in the water and soil, for decomposition varies vastly with
these things. I should not dismiss my strong prima facie case against
the likely person because of these difficulties. But here we have
something entirely different. That the bones themselves should remain
dry in a well full of water, or a well that yesterday was full of
water--that brings us to the edge of something beyond which we can make
no guess. There is a new factor, enormous and quite unknown. While we
can’t fit together such prodigious facts, we can’t fit together a case
against Treherne or against anybody. No; there is only one thing to be
done now. Since we can’t accuse Treherne, we must appeal to him. We
must put the case against him frankly before him, and trust he has an
explanation--and will give it. I suggest we go back and do it now.”
Paynter, beginning to follow, hesitated a moment, and then said:
“Forgive me for a kind of liberty; as you say, you are an older friend
of the family. I entirely agree with your suggestion, but before you act
on your present suspicions, do you know, I think Miss Vane ought to be
warned a little? I rather fear all this will be a new shock to her.”
“Very well,” said Ashe, after looking at him steadily for an instant.
“Let us go across to her first.”
From the opening of the wood they could see Barbara Vane writing at the
garden table, which was littered with correspondence, and the butler
with his yellow face waiting behind her chair. As the lengths of grass
lessened between them, and the little group at the table grew larger and
clearer in the sunlight, Paynter had a painful sense of being part of an
embassy of doom. It sharpened when the girl looked up from the table and
smiled on seeing them.
“I should like to speak to you rather particularly if I may,” said the
lawyer, with a touch of authority in his respect; and when the butler
was dismissed he laid open the whole matter before her, speaking
sympathetically, but leaving out nothing, from the strange escape of the
poet from the wood to the last detail of the dry bones out of the well.
No fault could be found with any one of his tones or phrases, and yet
Cyprian, tingling in every nerve with the fine delicacy of his nation
about the other sex, felt as if she were faced with an inquisitor. He
stood about uneasily, watched the few colored clouds in the clear sky
and the bright birds darting about the wood, and he heartily wished
himself up the tree again.
Soon, however, the way the girl took it began to move him to perplexity
rather than pity. It was like nothing he had expected, and yet he
could not name the shade of difference. The final identification of her
father’s skull, by the hole in the hat, turned her a little pale, but
left her composed; this was, perhaps, explicable, since she had from the
first taken the pessimistic view. But during the rest of the tale there
rested on her broad brows under her copper coils of hair, a brooding
spirit that was itself a mystery. He could only tell himself that she
was less merely receptive, either firmly or weakly, than he would have
expected. It was as if she revolved, not their problem, but her own. She
was silent a long time, and said at last:
“Thank you, Mr. Ashe, I am really very grateful for this. After all, it
brings things to the point where they must have come sooner or later.”
She looked dreamily at the wood and sea, and went on: “I’ve not only had
myself to consider, you see; but if you’re really thinking THAT,
it’s time I spoke out, without asking anybody. You say, as if it were
something very dreadful, ‘Mr. Treherne was in the wood that night.’
Well, it’s not quite so dreadful to me, you see, because I know he was.
In fact, we were there together.”
“Together!” repeated the lawyer.
“We were together,” she said quietly, “because we had a right to be
together.”
“Do you mean,” stammered Ashe, surprised out of himself, “that you were
engaged?”
“No, no,” she said. “We were married.”
Then, amid a startled silence, she added, as a kind of afterthought:
“In fact, we are still.”
Strong as was his composure, the lawyer sat back in his chair with a
sort of solid stupefaction at which Paynter could not help smiling.
“You will ask me, of course,” went on Barbara in the same measured
manner, “why we should be married secretly, so that even my poor father
did not know. Well, I answer you quite frankly to begin with; because,
if he had known, he would certainly have cut me off with a shilling. He
did not like my husband, and I rather fancy you do not like him either.
And when I tell you this, I know perfectly well what you will say--the
usual adventurer getting hold of the usual heiress. It is quite
reasonable, and, as it happens, it is quite wrong. If I had deceived
my father for the sake of the money, or even for the sake of a man, I
should be a little ashamed to talk to you about it. And I think you can
see that I am not ashamed.”
“Yes,” said the American, with a grave inclination, “yes, I can see
that.”
She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, as if seeking words for an
obscure matter, and then said:
“Do you remember, Mr. Paynter, that day you first lunched here and told
us about the African trees? Well, it was my birthday; I mean my first
birthday. I was born then, or woke up or something. I had walked in
this garden like a somnambulist in the sun. I think there are many such
somnambulists in our set and our society; stunned with health, drugged
with good manners, fitting their surroundings too well to be alive.
Well, I came alive somehow; and you know how deep in us are the things
we first realize when we were babies and began to take notice. I began
to take notice. One of the first things I noticed was your own story,
Mr. Paynter. I feel as if I heard of St. Securis as children hear of
Santa Claus, and as if that big tree were a bogey I still believed in.
For I do still believe in such things, or rather I believe in them
more and more; I feel certain my poor father drove on the rocks by
disbelieving, and you are all racing to ruin after him. That is why I
do honestly want the estate, and that is why I am not ashamed of wanting
it. I am perfectly certain, Mr. Paynter, that nobody can save this
perishing land and this perishing people but those who understand. I
mean who understand a thousand little signs and guides in the very soil
and lie of the land, and traces that are almost trampled out. My husband
understands, and I have begun to understand; my father would never have
understood. There are powers, there is the spirit of a place, there are
presences that are not to be put by. Oh, don’t fancy I am sentimental
and hanker after the good old days. The old days were not all good; that
is just the point, and we must understand enough to know the good from
the evil. We must understand enough to save the traces of a saint or a
sacred tradition, or, where a wicked god has been worshiped, to destroy
his altar and to cut down his grove.”
“His grove,” said Paynter automatically, and looked toward the little
wood, where the sunbright birds were flying.
“Mrs. Treherne,” said Ashe, with a formidable quietness, “I am not so
unsympathetic with all this as you may perhaps suppose. I will not even
say it is all moonshine, for it is something better. It is, if I may say
so, honeymoonshine. I will never deny the saying that it makes the world
go round, if it makes people’s heads go round too. But there are other
sentiments, madam, and other duties. I need not tell you your father was
a good man, and that what has befallen him would be pitiable, even as
the fate of the wicked. This is a horrible thing, and it is chiefly
among horrors that we must keep our common sense. There are reasons for
everything, and when my old friend lies butchered do not come to me
with even the most beautiful fairy tales about a saint and his enchanted
grove.”
“Well, and you!” she cried, and rose radiantly and swiftly. “With what
kind of fairy tales do you come to me? In what enchanted groves are YOU
walking? You come and tell me that Mr. Paynter found a well where
the water danced and then disappeared; but of course miracles are all
moonshine! You tell me you yourself fished bones from under the same
water, and every bone was as dry as a biscuit; but for Heaven’s sake let
us say nothing that makes anybody’s head go round! Really, Mr. Ashe, you
must try to preserve your common sense!”
She was smiling, but with blazing eyes; and Ashe got to his feet with an
involuntary laugh of surrender.
“Well, we must be going,” he said. “May I say that a tribute is really
due to your new transcendental training? If I may say so, I always knew
you had brains; and you’ve been learning to use them.”
The two amateur detectives went back to the wood for the moment, that
Ashe might consider the removal of the unhappy Squire’s remains. As he
pointed out, it was now legally possible to have an inquest, and, even
at that early stage of investigations, he was in favor of having it at
once.
“I shall be the coroner,” he said, “and I think it will be a case of
‘some person or persons unknown.’ Don’t be surprised; it is often done
to give the guilty a false security. This is not the first time the
police have found it convenient to have the inquest first and the
inquiry afterward.”
But Paynter had paid little attention to the point; for his great gift
of enthusiasm, long wasted on arts and affectations, was lifted to
inspiration by the romance of real life into which he had just walked.
He was really a great critic; he had a genius for admiration, and his
admiration varied fittingly with everything he admired.
“A splendid girl and a splendid story,” he cried. “I feel as if I were
in love again myself, not so much with her as with Eve or Helen of Troy,
or some such tower of beauty in the morning of the world. Don’t you love
all heroic things, that gravity and great candor, and the way she took
one step from a sort of throne to stand in a wilderness with a vagabond?
Oh, believe me, it is she who is the poet; she has the higher reason,
and honor and valor are at rest in her soul.”
“In short, she is uncommonly pretty,” replied Ashe, with some cynicism.
“I knew a murderess rather well who was very much like her, and had just
that colored hair.”
“You talk as if a murderer could be caught red-haired instead of
red-handed,” retorted Paynter. “Why, at this very minute, you could be
caught red-haired yourself. Are you a murderer, by any chance?”
Ashe looked up quickly, and then smiled.
“I’m afraid I’m a connoisseur in murderers, as you are in poets,” he
answered, “and I assure you they are of all colors in hair as well
as temperament. I suppose it’s inhumane, but mine is a monstrously
interesting trade, even in a little place like this. As for that girl,
of course I’ve known her all her life, and--but--but that is just the
question. Have I known her all her life? Have I known her at all? Was
she even there to be known? You admire her for telling the truth; and so
she did, by God, when she said that some people wake up late, who have
never lived before. Do we know what they might do--we, who have only
seen them asleep?”
“Great heavens!” cried Paynter. “You don’t dare suggest that she--”
“No, I don’t,” said the lawyer, with composure, “but there are other
reasons.... I don’t suggest anything fully, till we’ve had our interview
with this poet of yours. I think I know where to find him.”
They found him, in fact, before they expected him, sitting on the bench
outside the Vane Arms, drinking a mug of cider and waiting for
the return of his American friend; so it was not difficult to open
conversation with him. Nor did he in any way avoid the subject of the
tragedy; and the lawyer, seating himself also on the long bench that
fronted the little market place, was soon putting the last developments
as lucidly as he had put them to Barbara.
“Well,” said Treherne at last, leaning back and frowning at the
signboard, with the colored birds and dolphins, just about his head;
“suppose somebody did kill the Squire. He’d killed a good many people
with his hygiene and his enlightened landlordism.”
Paynter was considerably uneasy at this alarming opening; but the poet
went on quite coolly, with his hands in his pockets and his feet thrust
out into the street.
“When a man has the power of a Sultan in Turkey, and uses it with the
ideas of a spinster in Tooting, I often wonder that nobody puts a knife
in him. I wish there were more sympathy for murderers, somehow. I’m very
sorry the poor old fellow’s gone myself; but you gentlemen always seem
to forget there are any other people in the world. He’s all right;
he was a good fellow, and his soul, I fancy, has gone to the happiest
paradise of all.”
The anxious American could read nothing of the effect of this in the
dark Napoleonic face of the lawyer, who merely said: “What do you mean?”
“The fool’s paradise,” said Treherne, and drained his pot of cider.
The lawyer rose. He did not look at Treherne, or speak to him; but
looked and spoke straight across him to the American, who found the
utterance not a little unexpected.
“Mr. Paynter,” said Ashe, “you thought it rather morbid of me to collect
murderers; but it’s fortunate for your own view of the case that I
do. It may surprise you to know that Mr. Treherne has now, in my eyes,
entirely cleared himself of suspicion. I have been intimate with several
assassins, as I remarked; but there’s one thing none of them ever did. I
never knew a murderer to talk about the murder, and then at once deny
it and defend it. No, if a man is concealing his crime, why should he go
out of his way to apologize for it?”
“Well,” said Paynter, with his ready appreciation, “I always said you
were a remarkable man; and that’s certainly a remarkable idea.”
“Do I understand,” asked the poet, kicking his heels on the cobbles,
“that both you gentlemen have been kindly directing me toward the
gallows?”
“No,” said Paynter thoughtfully. “I never thought you guilty; and even
supposing I had, if you understand me, I should never have thought it
quite so guilty to be guilty. It would not have been for money or any
mean thing, but for something a little wilder and worthier of a man of
genius. After all, I suppose, the poet has passions like great unearthly
appetites; and the world has always judged more gently of his sins.
But now that Mr. Ashe admits your innocence, I can honestly say I have
always affirmed it.”
The poet rose also. “Well, I am innocent, oddly enough,” he said. “I
think I can make a guess about your vanishing well, but of the death and
dry bones I know no more than the dead; if so much. And, by the way, my
dear Paynter”--and he turned two bright eyes on the art critic--“I will
excuse you from excusing me for all the things I haven’t done; and
you, I hope, will excuse me if I differ from you altogether about the
morality of poets. As you suggest, it is a fashionable view, but I
think it is a fallacy. No man has less right to be lawless than a man of
imagination. For he has spiritual adventures, and can take his holidays
when he likes. I could picture the poor Squire carried off to elfland
whenever I wanted him carried off, and that wood needed no crime to make
it wicked for me. That red sunset the other night was all that a murder
would have been to many men. No, Mr. Ashe; show, when next you sit
in judgment, a little mercy to some wretched man who drinks and robs
because he must drink beer to taste it, and take it to drink it. Have
compassion on the next batch of poor thieves, who have to hold things in
order to have them. But if ever you find ME stealing one small farthing,
when I can shut my eyes and see the city of El Dorado, then”--and he
lifted his head like a falcon--“show me no mercy, for I shall deserve
none.”
“Well,” remarked Ashe, after a pause, “I must go and fix things up for
the inquest. Mr. Treherne, your attitude is singularly interesting; I
really almost wish I could add you to my collection of murderers. They
are a varied and extraordinary set.”
“Has it ever occurred to you,” asked Paynter, “that perhaps the men who
have never committed murder are a varied and very extraordinary set?
Perhaps every plain man’s life holds the real mystery, the secret of
sins avoided.”
“Possibly,” replied Ashe. “It would be a long business to stop the next
man in the street and ask him what crimes he never committed and why
not. And I happen to be busy, so you’ll excuse me.”
“What,” asked the American, when he and the poet were alone, “is this
guess of yours about the vanishing water?”
“Well, I’m not sure I’ll tell you yet,” answered Treherne, something
of the old mischief coming back into his dark eyes. “But I’ll tell you
something else, which may be connected with it; something I couldn’t
tell until my wife had told you about our meeting in the wood.” His face
had grown grave again, and he resumed after a pause:
“When my wife started to follow her father I advised her to go back
first to the house, to leave it by another door and to meet me in the
wood in half an hour. We often made these assignations, of course,
and generally thought them great fun, but this time the question was
serious, and I didn’t want the wrong thing done in a hurry. It was a
question whether anything could be done to undo an experiment we
both vaguely felt to be dangerous, and she especially thought, after
reflection, that interference would make things worse. She thought the
old sportsman, having been dared to do something, would certainly not
be dissuaded by the very man who had dared him or by a woman whom he
regarded as a child. She left me at last in a sort of despair, but I
lingered with a last hope of doing something, and drew doubtfully near
to the heart of the wood; and there, instead of the silence I expected,
I heard a voice. It seemed as if the Squire must be talking to himself,
and I had the unpleasant fancy that he had already lost his reason in
that wood of witchcraft. But I soon found that if he was talking he was
talking with two voices. Other fancies attacked me, as that the other
was the voice of the tree or the voices of the three trees talking
together, and with no man near. But it was not the voice of the tree.
The next moment I knew the voice, for I had heard it twenty times across
the table. It was the voice of that doctor of yours; I heard it as
certainly as you hear my voice now.”
After a moment’s silence, he resumed: “I left the wood, I hardly knew
why, and with wild and bewildered feelings; and as I came out into the
faint moonshine I saw that old lawyer standing quietly, but staring at
me like an owl. At least, the light touched his red hair with fire, but
his square old face was in shadow. But I knew, if I could have read it,
that it was the face of a hanging judge.”
He threw himself on the bench again, smiled a little, and added: “Only,
like a good many hanging judges, I fancy, he was waiting patiently to
hang the wrong man.”
“And the right man--” said Paynter mechanically. Treherne shrugged his
shoulders, sprawling on the ale bench, and played with his empty pot.