"I must apologise for my rudeness to you of last night," he continued.
"I expected, when I took the liberty of turning you round, that I was
going to find myself face to face with a much younger man."
"I took you to be a detective," answered Ellenby, in his soft, gentle
voice. "You will forgive me, I'm sure. I am rather short-sighted. Of
course, I can only conjecture, but if you will take my word, I can
assure you that Mrs. Hepworth has never seen or heard from the man
Charlie Martin since the date of"--he hesitated a moment--"of the
murder."
"It would have been difficult," agreed my friend, "seeing that Charlie
Martin lies buried in Highgate Cemetery."
Old as he was, he sprang from his chair, white and trembling.
"What have you come here for?" he demanded.
"I took more than a professional interest in the case," answered my
friend. "Ten years ago I was younger than I am now. It may have been
her youth--her extreme beauty. I think Mrs. Hepworth, in allowing her
husband to visit her--here where her address is known to the police,
and watch at any moment may be set upon her--is placing him in a
position of grave danger. If you care to lay before me any facts that
will allow me to judge of the case, I am prepared to put my experience,
and, if need be, my assistance, at her service."
His self-possession had returned to him.
"If you will excuse me," he said, "I will tell the boy that he can go."
We heard him, a moment later, turn the key in the outer door; and when
he came back and had made up the fire, he told us the beginning of the
story.
The name of the man buried in Highgate Cemetery was Hepworth, after
all. Not Michael, but Alex, the elder brother.
From boyhood he had been violent, brutal, unscrupulous. Judging from
Ellenby's story, it was difficult to accept him as a product of modern
civilisation. Rather he would seem to have been a throwback to some
savage, buccaneering ancestor. To expect him to work, while he could
live in vicious idleness at somebody else's expense, was found to be
hopeless. His debts were paid for about the third or fourth time, and
he was shipped off to the Colonies. Unfortunately, there were no means
of keeping him there. So soon as the money provided him had been
squandered, he returned, demanding more by menaces and threats.
Meeting with unexpected firmness, he seems to have regarded theft and
forgery as the only alternative left to him. To save him from
punishment and the family name from disgrace, his parents' savings were
sacrificed. It was grief and shame that, according to Ellenby, killed
them both within a few months of one another.
Deprived by this blow of what he no doubt had come to consider his
natural means of support, and his sister, fortunately for herself,
being well out of his reach, he next fixed upon his brother Michael as
his stay-by. Michael, weak, timid, and not perhaps without some
remains of boyish affection for a strong, handsome, elder brother,
foolishly yielded. The demands, of course, increased, until, in the
end, it came almost as a relief when the man's vicious life led to his
getting mixed up with a crime of a particularly odious nature. He was
anxious now for his own sake to get away, and Michael, with little
enough to spare for himself, provided him with the means, on the solemn
understanding that he would never return.
But the worry and misery of it all had left young Michael a broken man.
Unable to concentrate his mind any longer upon his profession, his
craving was to get away from all his old associations--to make a fresh
start in life. It was Ellenby who suggested London and the ship
furnishing business, where Michael's small remaining capital would be
of service. The name of Hepworth would be valuable in shipping
circles, and Ellenby, arguing this consideration, but chiefly with the
hope of giving young Michael more interest in the business, had
insisted that the firm should be Hepworth and Co.
They had not been started a year before the man returned, as usual
demanding more money. Michael, acting under Ellenby's guidance,
refused in terms that convinced his brother that the game of bullying
was up. He waited a while, and then wrote pathetically that he was ill
and starving. If only for the sake of his young wife, would not
Michael come and see them?
This was the first they had heard of his marriage. There was just a
faint hope that it might have effected a change, and Michael, against
Ellenby's advice, decided to go. In a miserable lodging-house in the
East End he found the young wife, but not his brother, who did not
return till he was on the point of leaving. In the interval the girl
seems to have confided her story to Michael.
She had been a singer, engaged at a music-hall in Rotterdam. There
Alex Hepworth, calling himself Charlie Martin, had met her and made
love to her. When he chose, he could be agreeable enough, and no doubt
her youth and beauty had given to his protestations, for the time
being, a genuine ring of admiration and desire. It was to escape from
her surroundings, more than anything else, that she had consented. She
was little more than a child, and anything seemed preferable to the
nightly horror to which her life exposed her.
He had never married her. At least, that was her belief at the time.
During his first drunken bout he had flung it in her face that the form
they had gone through was mere bunkum. Unfortunately for her, this was
a lie. He had always been coolly calculating. It was probably with
the idea of a safe investment that he had seen to it that the ceremony
had been strictly legal.
Her life with him, so soon as the first novelty of her had worn off,
had been unspeakable. The band that she wore round her neck was to
hide where, in a fit of savagery, because she had refused to earn money
for him on the streets, he had tried to cut her throat. Now that she
had got back to England she intended to leave him. If he followed and
killed her she did not care.
It was for her sake that young Hepworth eventually offered to help his
brother again, on the condition that he would go away by himself. To
this the other agreed. He seems to have given a short display of
remorse. There must have been a grin on his face as he turned away.
His cunning eyes had foreseen what was likely to happen. The idea of
blackmail was no doubt in his mind from the beginning. With the charge
of bigamy as a weapon in his hand, he might rely for the rest of his
life upon a steady and increasing income.
Michael saw his brother off as a second-class passenger on a ship bound
for the Cape. Of course, there was little chance of his keeping his
word, but there was always the chance of his getting himself knocked on
the head in some brawl. Anyhow, he would be out of the way for a
season, and the girl, Lola, would be left. A month later he married
her, and four months after that received a letter from his brother
containing messages to Mrs. Martin, "from her loving husband, Charlie,"
who hoped before long to have the pleasure of seeing her again.
Inquiries through the English Consul in Rotterdam proved that the
threat was no mere bluff. The marriage had been legal and binding.
What happened on the night of the murder, was very much as my friend
had reconstructed it. Ellenby, reaching the office at his usual time
the next morning, had found Hepworth waiting for him. There he had
remained in hiding until one morning, with dyed hair and a slight
moustache, he had ventured forth.
Had the man's death been brought about by any other means, Ellenby
would have counselled his coming forward and facing his trial, as he
himself was anxious to do; but, viewed in conjunction with the relief
the man's death must have been to both of them, that loaded revolver
was too suggestive of premeditation. The isolation of the house, that
conveniently near pond, would look as if thought of beforehand. Even
if pleading extreme provocation, Michael escaped the rope, a long term
of penal servitude would be inevitable.
Nor was it certain that even then the woman would go free. The
murdered man would still, by a strange freak, be her husband; the
murderer--in the eye of the law--her lover.
Her passionate will had prevailed. Young Hepworth had sailed for
America. There he had no difficulty in obtaining employment--of
course, under another name--in an architects office; and later had set
up for himself. Since the night of the murder they had not seen each
other till some three weeks ago.
* * *
I never saw the woman again. My friend, I believe, called on her.
Hepworth had already returned to America, and my friend had succeeded
in obtaining for her some sort of a police permit that practically left
her free.
Sometimes of an evening I find myself passing through the street. And
always I have the feeling of having blundered into an empty
theatre--where the play is ended.