conversation with Hewitt, Goujon was captured and safe in a cab bound for
Bow Street. He had been stopped at Newhaven in the morning on his way to
Dieppe, and was brought back to London. But now Nettings met a check.
Late that afternoon he called on Hewitt to explain matters. "We've got
Goujon," he said, gloomily, "but there's a difficulty. He's got two
friends who can swear an _alibi_. Rameau was seen alive at half-past one
on Saturday, and the girl found him dead about three. Now, Goujon's two
friends, it seems, were with him from one o'clock till four in the
afternoon, with the exception of five minutes when the girl saw him, and
then he left them to take a key or something to the housekeeper before
finally leaving. They were waiting on the landing below when Goujon spoke
to the housemaid, heard him speaking, and had seen him go all the way up
to the housekeeper's room and back, as they looked up the wide well of the
staircase. They are men employed near the place, and seem to have good
characters. But perhaps we shall find something unfavorable about them.
They were drinking with Goujon, it seems, by way of 'seeing him off.'"
"Well," Hewitt said, "I scarcely think you need trouble to damage these
men's characters. They are probably telling the truth. Come, now, be
plain. You've come here to get a hint as to whether my theory of the case
helps you, haven't you?"
"Well, if you can give me a friendly hint, although, of course, I may be
right, after all. Still, I wish you'd explain a bit as to what you meant
by looking at a map and all that mystery. Nice thing for me to be taking a
lesson in my own business after all these years! But perhaps I deserve
it."
"See, now," quoth Hewitt, "you remember what map I told you to look at?"
"The West Indies."
"Right! Well, here you are." Hewitt reached an atlas from his book-shelf.
"Now, look here: the biggest island of the lot on this map, barring Cuba,
is Hayti. You know as well as I do that the western part of that island is
peopled by the black republic of Hayti, and that the country is in a
degenerate state of almost unexampled savagery, with a ridiculous show of
civilization. There are revolutions all the time; the South American
republics are peaceful and prosperous compared to Hayti. The state of the
country is simply awful--read Sir Spenser St. John's book on it. President
after president of the vilest sort forces his way to power and commits the
most horrible and bloodthirsty excesses, murdering his opponents by the
hundred and seizing their property for himself and his satellites, who are
usually as bad, if not worse, than the president himself. Whole
families--men, women, and children--are murdered at the instance of these
ruffians, and, as a consequence, the most deadly feuds spring up, and the
presidents and their followers are always themselves in danger of
reprisals from others. Perhaps the very worst of these presidents in
recent times has been the notorious Domingue, who was overthrown by an
insurrection, as they all are sooner or later, and compelled to fly the
country. Domingue and his nephews, one of whom was Chief Minister, while
in power committed the cruellest bloodshed, and many members of the
opposite party sought refuge in a small island lying just to the north of
Hayti, but were sought out there and almost exterminated. Now, I will show
you that island on the map. What is its name?"
"Tortuga."
"It is. 'Tortuga,' however, is only the old Spanish name; the Haytians
speak French--Creole French. Here is a French atlas: now see the name of
that island."
"La Tortue!"
"La Tortue it is--the tortoise. Tortuga means the same thing in Spanish.
But that island is always spoken of in Hayti as La Tortue. Now, do you see
the drift of that paper pinned to Rameau's breast?"
"Punished by an avenger of--or from--the tortoise or La Tortue--clear
enough. It would seem that the dead man had something to do with the
massacre there, and somebody from the island is avenging it. The thing's
most extraordinary."
"And now listen. The name of Domingue's nephew, who was Chief Minister,
was _Septimus Rameau_."
"And this was César Rameau--his brother, probably. I see. Well, this _is_
a case."
"I think the relationship probable. Now you understand why I was inclined
to doubt that Goujon was the man you wanted."
"Of course, of course! And now I suppose I must try to get a nigger--the
chap who wrote that paper. I wish he hadn't been such an ignorant nigger.
If he'd only have put the capitals to the words 'La Tortue,' I might have
thought a little more about them, instead of taking it for granted that
they meant that wretched tortoise in the basement of the house. Well, I've
made a fool of a start, but I'll be after that nigger now."
"And I, as I said before," said Hewitt, "shall be after the person that
carried off Rameau's body. I have had something else to do this afternoon,
or I should have begun already."
"You said you thought he saw the crime. How did you judge that?"
Hewitt smiled. "I think I'll keep that little secret to myself for the
present," he said. "You shall know soon."
"Very well," Nettings replied, with resignation. "I suppose I mustn't
grumble if you don't tell me everything. I feel too great a fool
altogether over this case to see any farther than you show me." And
Inspector Nettings left on his search; while Martin Hewitt, as soon as he
was alone, laughed joyously and slapped his thigh.
* * * * *
There was a cab-rank and shelter at the end of the street where Mr.
Styles' building stood, and early that evening a man approached it and
hailed the cabmen and the waterman. Any one would have known the new-comer
at once for a cabman taking a holiday. The brim of the hat, the bird's-eye
neckerchief, the immense coat-buttons, and, more than all, the rolling
walk and the wrinkled trousers, marked him out distinctly.
"Watcheer!" he exclaimed, affably, with the self-possessed nod only
possible to cabbies and 'busmen. "I'm a-lookin' for a bilker. I'm told one
o' the blokes off this rank carried 'im last Saturday, and I want to know
where he went. I ain't 'ad a chance o' gettin' 'is address yet. Took a cab
just as it got dark, I'm told. Tallish chap, muffled up a lot, in a long
black overcoat. Any of ye seen 'im?"
The cabbies looked at one another and shook their heads; it chanced that
none of them had been on that particular rank at that time. But the
waterman said: "'Old on--I bet 'e's the bloke wot old Bill Stammers took.
Yorkey was fust on the rank, but the bloke wouldn't 'ave a 'ansom--wanted
a four-wheeler, so old Bill took 'im. Biggish chap in a long black coat,
collar up an' muffled thick; soft wide-awake 'at, pulled over 'is eyes;
and he was in a 'urry, too. Jumped in sharp as a weasel."
"Didn't see 'is face, did ye?"
"No--not an inch of it; too much muffled. Couldn't tell if he 'ad a face."
"Was his arm in a sling?"
"Ay, it looked so. Had it stuffed through the breast of his coat, like as
though there might be a sling inside."
"That's 'im. Any of ye tell me where I might run across old Bill Stammers?
He'll tell me where my precious bilker went to."
As to this there was plenty of information, and in five minutes Martin
Hewitt, who had become an unoccupied cabman for the occasion, was on his
way to find old Bill Stammers. That respectable old man gave him full
particulars as to the place in the East End where he had driven his
muffled fare on Saturday, and Hewitt then begun an eighteen, or twenty
hours' search beyond Whitechapel.
* * * * *
At about three on Tuesday afternoon, as Nettings was in the act of leaving
Bow Street Police Station, Hewitt drove up in a four-wheeler. Some
prisoner appeared to be crouching low in the vehicle, but, leaving him to
take care of himself, Hewitt hurried into the station and shook Nettings
by the hand. "Well," he said, "have you got the murderer of Rameau yet?"
"No," Nettings growled. "Unless--well, Goujon's under remand still, and,
after all, I've been thinking that he may know something----"
"Pooh, nonsense!" Hewitt answered. "You'd better let him go. Now, I _have_
got somebody." Hewitt laughed and slapped the inspector's shoulder. "I've
got the man who carried Rameau's body away!"
"The deuce you have! Where? Bring him in. We must have him----"
"All right, don't be in a hurry; he won't bolt." And Hewitt stepped out to
the cab and produced his prisoner, who, pulling his hat farther over his
eyes, hurried furtively into the station. One hand was stowed in the
breast of his long coat, and below the wide brim of his hat a small piece
of white bandage could be seen; and, as he lifted his face, it was seen to
be that of a negro.
"Inspector Nettings," Hewitt said ceremoniously, "allow me to introduce
Mr. César Rameau!"
Netting's gasped.
"What!" he at length ejaculated. "What! You--you're Rameau?"
The negro looked round nervously, and shrank farther from the door.
"Yes," he said; "but please not so loud--please not loud. Zey may be near,
and I'm 'fraid."
"You will certify, will you not," asked Hewitt, with malicious glee, "not
only that you were not murdered last Saturday by Victor Goujon, but that,
in fact, you were not murdered at all? Also, that you carried your own
body away in the usual fashion, on your own legs."
"Yes, yes," responded Rameau, looking haggardly about; "but is not
zis--zis room publique? I should not be seen."
"Nonsense!" replied Hewitt rather testily; "you exaggerate your danger and
your own importance, and your enemies' abilities as well. You're safe
enough."
"I suppose, then," Nettings remarked slowly, like a man on whose mind
something vast was beginning to dawn, "I suppose--why, hang it, you must
have just got up while that fool of a girl was screaming and fainting
upstairs, and walked out. They say there's nothing so hard as a nigger's
skull, and yours has certainly made a fool of me. But, then, _somebody_
must have chopped you over the head; who was it?"
"My enemies--my great enemies--enemies politique. I am a great man"--this
with a faint revival of vanity amid his fear--"a great man in my countree.
Zey have great secret club-sieties to kill me--me and my fren's; and one
enemy coming in my rooms does zis--one, two"--he indicated wrist and
head--"wiz a choppa."
Rameau made the case plain to Nettings, so far as the actual circumstances
of the assault on himself were concerned. A negro whom he had noticed near
the place more than once during the previous day or two had attacked him
suddenly in his rooms, dealing him two savage blows with a chopper. The
first he had caught on his wrist, which was seriously damaged, as well as
excruciatingly painful, but the second had taken effect on his head. His
assailant had evidently gone away then, leaving him for dead; but, as a
matter of fact, he was only stunned by the shock, and had, thanks to the
adamantine thickness of the negro skull and the ill-direction of the
chopper, only a very bad scalp-wound, the bone being no more than grazed.
He had lain insensible for some time, and must have come to his senses
soon after the housemaid had left the room. Terrified at the knowledge
that his enemies had found him out, his only thought was to get away and
hide himself. He hastily washed and tied up his head, enveloped himself in
the biggest coat he could find, and let himself down into the basement by
the coal-lift, for fear of observation. He waited in the basement of one
of the adjoining buildings till dark and then got away in a cab, with the
idea of hiding himself in the East End. He had had very little money with
him on his flight, and it was by reason of this circumstance that Hewitt,
when he found him, had prevailed on him to leave his hiding-place, since
it would be impossible for him to touch any of the large sums of money in
the keeping of his bank so long as he was supposed to be dead. With much
difficulty, and the promise of ample police protection, he was at last
convinced that it would be safe to declare himself and get his property,
and then run away and hide wherever he pleased.
Nettings and Hewitt strolled off together for a few minutes and chatted,
leaving the wretched Rameau to cower in a corner among several policemen.
"Well, Mr. Hewitt," Nettings said, "this case has certainly been a
shocking beating for me. I must have been as blind as a bat when I started
on it. And yet I don't see that you had a deal to go on, even now. What
struck you first?"
"Well, in the beginning it seemed rather odd to me that the body should
have been taken away, as I had been told it was, after the written paper
had been pinned on it. Why should the murderer pin a label on the body of
his victim if he meant carrying that body away? Who would read the label
and learn of the nature of the revenge gratified? Plainly, that indicated
that the person who had carried away the body was _not_ the person who had
committed the murder. But as soon as I began to examine the place I saw
the probability that there was no murder, after all. There were any number
of indications of this fact, and I can't understand your not observing
them. First, although there was a good deal of blood on the floor just
below where the housemaid had seen Rameau lying, there was none between
that place and the door. Now, if the body had been dragged, or even
carried, to the door, blood must have become smeared about the floor, or
at least there would have been drops, but there were none, and this seemed
to hint that the corpse might have come to itself, sat up on the sofa,
stanched the wound, and walked out. I reflected at once that Rameau was a
full-blooded negro, and that a negro's head is very nearly invulnerable to
anything short of bullets. Then, if the body had been dragged out--as such
a heavy body must have been--almost of necessity the carpet and rugs would
show signs of the fact, but there were no such signs. But beyond these
there was the fact that no long black overcoat was left with the other
clothes, although the housekeeper distinctly remembered Rameau's
possession of such a garment. I judged he would use some such thing to
assist his disguise, which was why I asked her. _Why_ he would want to
disguise was plain, as you shall see presently. There were no towels left
in the bath-room; inference, used for bandages. Everything seemed to show
that the only person responsible for Rameau's removal was Rameau himself.
Why, then, had he gone away secretly and hurriedly, without making
complaint, and why had he stayed away? What reason would he have for doing
this if it had been Goujon that had attacked him? None. Goujon was going
to France. Clearly, Rameau was afraid of another attack from some
implacable enemy whom he was anxious to avoid--one against whom he feared
legal complaint or defense would be useless. This brought me at once to
the paper found on the floor. If this were the work of Goujon and an open
reference to his tortoise, why should he be at such pains to disguise his
handwriting? He would have been already pointing himself out by the mere
mention of the tortoise. And, if he could not avoid a shake in his
natural, small handwriting, how could he have avoided it in a large,
clumsy, slowly drawn, assumed hand? No, the paper was not Goujon's."
"As to the writing on the paper," Nettings interposed, "I've told you how
I made that mistake. I took the readiest explanation of the words, since
they seemed so pat, and I wouldn't let anything else outweigh that. As to
the other things--the evidences of Rameau's having gone off by
himself--well, I don't usually miss such obvious things; but I never
thought of the possibility of the _victim_ going away on the quiet and not
coming back, as though _he'd_ done something wrong. Comes of starting with
a set of fixed notions."
"Well," answered Hewitt, "I fancy you must have been rather 'out of form,'
as they say; everybody has his stupid days, and you can't keep up to
concert pitch forever. To return to the case. The evidence of the chopper
was very untrustworthy, especially when I had heard of Goujon's careless
habits--losing shovels and leaving coal-scuttles on stairs. Nothing more
likely than for the chopper to be left lying about, and a criminal who had
calculated his chances would know the advantage to himself of using a
weapon that belonged to the place, and leaving it behind to divert
suspicion. It is quite possible, by the way, that the man who attacked
Rameau got away down the coal-lift and out by an adjoining basement, just
as did Rameau himself; this, however, is mere conjecture. The would-be
murderer had plainly prepared for the crime: witness the previous
preparation of the paper declaring his revenge, an indication of his pride
at having run his enemy to earth at such a distant place as this--although
I expect he was only in England by chance, for Haytians are not a
persistently energetic race. In regard to the use of small instead of
capital letters in the words 'La Tortue' on the paper, I observed, in the
beginning, that the first letter of the whole sentence--the 'p' in
'puni'--was a small one. Clearly, the writer was an illiterate man, and it
was at once plain that he may have made the same mistake with ensuing
words.
"On the whole, it was plain that everybody had begun with a too ready
disposition to assume that Goujon was guilty. Everybody insisted, too,
that the body had been carried away--which was true, of course, although
not in the sense intended--so I didn't trouble to contradict, or to say
more than that I guessed who _had_ carried the body off. And, to tell you
the truth, I was a little piqued at Mr. Styles' manner, and indisposed,
interested in the case as I was, to give away my theories too freely.
"The rest of the job was not very difficult. I found out the cabman who
had taken Rameau away--you can always get readier help from cabbies if you
go as one of themselves, especially if you are after a bilker--and from
him got a sufficiently near East End direction to find Rameau after
inquiries. I ventured, by the way, on a rather long shot. I described my
man to the cabman as having an injured arm or wrist--and it turned out a
correct guess. You see, a man making an attack with a chopper is pretty
certain to make more than a single blow, and as there appeared to have
been only a single wound on the head, it seemed probable that another had
fallen somewhere else--almost certainly on the arm, as it would be raised
to defend the head. At Limehouse I found he had had his head and wrist
attended to at a local medico's, and a big nigger in a fright, with a long
black coat, a broken head, and a lame hand, is not so difficult to find in
a small area. How I persuaded him up here you know already; I think I
frightened him a little, too, by explaining how easily I had tracked him,
and giving him a hint that others might do the same. He is in a great
funk. He seems to have quite lost faith in England as a safe asylum."
The police failed to catch Rameau's assailant--chiefly because Rameau
could not be got to give a proper description of him, nor to do anything
except get out of the country in a hurry. In truth, he was glad to be quit
of the matter with nothing worse than his broken head. Little Goujon made
a wild storm about his arrest, and before he did go to France managed to
extract twenty pounds from Rameau by way of compensation, in spite of the
absence of any strictly legal claim against his old tormentor. So that, on
the whole, Goujon was about the only person who derived any particular
profit from the tortoise mystery.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Martin Hewitt, Investigator, by Arthur Morrison