IN THE STRAITS OF SUNDA
The Captain of a British ship is every kind of civil authority, from
magistrate and chaplain to hangman. In his capacity as coroner, Robert
Ching held an enquiry in the saloon on the morning which followed the
death of Willatopy. He was supported by those of his officers who were
not on duty above and below deck. Marie, sore and grievously bruised
from shoulder to knee, was carried in and laid at length upon a sofa.
Her bones were unbroken, and though she suffered much pain, she was a
very happy Marie Lambert. Madame Gilbert had passed the sponge of
forgiveness over the maid's disreputable past; her one act of
self-forgetting courage had blotted out the treachery in France, and the
fatal amour in Tops Island. Marie had won her final reprieve.
John Clifford, broken down by days of drunkenness and by the collapse of
his professional ambition, attended the inquest as the legal adviser of
the slain Baron of Topsham. His spirit of the night before had faded out
of him with the alcohol which stimulated it. It was a very miserable and
draggled Hedge Lawyer who met for the last time his fellow voyagers in
the _Humming Top_.
I will not trouble the reader with the whole enquiry, which was long and
tedious. Ching, foreseeing scandal and legal complications when the
tragic story came to be told in England, wrote down in his round, slow
sailor's hand, every word that was spoken, and obtained the signatures
of all present, even that of the reluctant John Clifford, to the
evidence as given on oath.
No new facts were disclosed, except by Marie. She described how she had
been awakened, and had felt Lord Topsham's face against hers and his
dagger's point at her breast. She had tried to cry out, but his rude
hand upon her mouth commanded silence. She had whispered urging him to
go, and warning him that Madame, in the adjoining room, would hear.
"How did he get into your room?" asked Ching.
Marie said that he had come through Madame's cabin, crawling along the
floor. He must have entered by the bathroom. The door of that room which
gave upon the corridor was always bolted, had naturally always been kept
bolted. Willie must have slipped in sometime when the rooms were empty,
and unfastened that door. The slipping of the bolt had not been
perceived. She had been afraid to cry out, even when Lord Topsham
removed his hand from her mouth, for the dagger which he carried was
very sharp. She had already felt its point. Yet she struggled, and
whispered that Madame would hear, that Madame would interpose furiously,
and that she would be a Marie Lambert doomed to a cruel death in France.
Lord Topsham's breath smelled strongly of wine, and she was sure that he
was half drunk. Had he been sober he would never have raised his hand
against Madame Gilbert. But when Marie urged that her life would pay
the toll for any further indiscretions, Willie had ground his teeth in
rage.
"'It is always Madame,' he growled. 'I am tired of Madame. She stands
between me and you, and she threatens you with death. Wait, Marie,' he
had said. 'I will kill this Madame nuisance, and then will come back to
you. I am a great English Lord, and will kill anyone who interferes with
me.'"
Marie went on to say that Lord Topsham had then let her go, and turned
to enter Madame's room. He held the trench dagger in his right hand.
Marie was terribly frightened, but she could not lie still and let
Madame be murdered in her sleep. She did not know that Madame Gilbert
was already awake and watching. So, as the half-drunken savage boy
approached the door of communication with Madame's room, she slipped out
of bed, and followed behind him. And when he opened the door she jumped
upon his back and screamed.
"He couldn't kill me then," she explained simply, "until Madame had
awakened and got ready to meet him. I knew that she slept with her
pistol beside her. I jumped on Lord Topsham's back to save Madame's
life."
A murmur of admiration ran round the table of the saloon.
"We all feel," said Ching gravely, "that your conduct was very brave and
splendid. You risked your life for a mistress whom you had no cause to
love and good reason to fear. I shall put this commendation in my
report."
"Thank you, sir," said Marie. "Of course I knew that if I saved Madame
she would forgive me everything."
The Court smiled at this ingenuous display of heroism combined with
regard for the main chance. Marie was sprung from thrifty French peasant
stock.
Madame followed, and told what we already know. She would not, she
declared, have shot to kill if she could have stopped Willie by wounding
him. John Clifford interposed with a question. Madame, he said, was a
first-rate pistol shot. She could have hit her assailant in any part of
his body that she pleased. Could she not have preserved her own life by
disabling Lord Topsham's right arm or breaking his leg?
Madame, with a sad little smile, offered him her automatic pistol.
"It carried a .25 nickel-coated bullet," said she. "A tiny bullet with
no stopping power. With a .45 revolver and a lump of soft lead, I could
have knocked the poor boy over long before he reached me. I should have
fired at him immediately after he flung off Marie. But with this little
toy I had no choice. When he launched himself at me I shot him through
the heart, and should, even then, have been pierced by his dagger had I
not evaded the stroke by flinging myself instantly flat on my back. The
dagger point just missed me. If I had done no more than wound him, had I
merely punctured a hole in a leg or arm, he would have had plenty of
time to kill me. You may not believe me, Mr. John Clifford, but I swear
to you that I did not shoot willingly. I loved Willatopy very
sincerely."
Clifford said no more, and when Ching asked for his signature to the
evidence he gave it without another word.
"I find," declared Ching solemnly, "and so I shall write in my report
to the English Board of Trade, that Madame Gilbert shot and killed
William, Lord Topsham, in defence of her own life, and that she was
fully justified in what she did."
After the enquiry had been closed, Madame went to her room, and rummaged
among her trunks. She was looking for something which she vaguely
remembered to have packed, and presently she found what she sought.
Madame Gilbert, a Catholic by birth and upbringing, was infamously
negligent of religious observances, yet she always, impelled by some
inherited instinct, carried upon her travels a small ivory crucifix. It
had been her mother's. Now Madame drew forth this emblem of her loosely
fitting faith and bore it reverently to the cabin where the body of
Willatopy lay awaiting sea burial. There she stood looking down upon the
face of the boy whom she had killed. The bright blue eyes were closed
for ever, but the quiet, almost smiling face was that of the Willatopy
of Tops Island. She laid the crucifix upon the boy's breast that it
might go into the depths with him. It was the last service that she
could render, and, for some reason, it brought solace to her.
She had never kissed Willie in life, but now she stooped and pressed her
lips upon the cold forehead.
"Willie," she murmured, "forgive the Madame who loved and killed you. I
was the best friend that you ever had, Willie dear. It was better, far
better, that you should die by my little bullet than that you should
cease for always to be Willatopy." And with that kiss of farewell,
there departed from Madame Gilbert all sense of blood guilt. Her hand
had been the Hand of Fate, and it had been a bountiful and kindly Fate.
Willatopy lies in the depths of the Straits of Sunda. The seas are all
one, and he, a sailor on both sides of the house, went home to the Great
Mother upon whose bosom he had been born and lived. Madame's crucifix
was sewn up in his sailcloth shroud, and he lies with it for ever upon
his breast. The yacht was stopped for the ceremony, and the whole ship's
company with bared heads watched the Twenty-Eighth Lord of Topsham enter
into his inheritance. For his true heritage was the Sea, which he knew
and loved so well.
As Madame told the story to me, in that room of mine in Whitehall--so
remote in distance and in atmosphere from Tops Island and the Torres
Straits--she asked me anxiously, often with tears glittering in those
violet eyes of hers, if there was anything which she could have done, or
left undone, to thrust tragedy away from the bright young life of
Willatopy. She had loved the boy, though his skin was of so very dark a
brown, and his hair so definitely negroid. And I could do no better than
shake my head and lament that which was inevitable. The Hedge Lawyer,
that little London cad, quickened the movement towards destruction, and
set at naught Madame's own kindly exertions, but sooner or later tragedy
must have fallen, heavy footed, upon Willatopy's soul and body.
"You fought and lost," said I sadly, "but in the end you won. I am sure
of this: that when Will Toppys, the wise mad father, met beyond the
stars the brave though erring son, the blessing of the father descended
from Heaven upon the head and hand of Madame Gilbert. He knew, that
beachcomber, from what a calamitous fate your shot had saved his
Willatopy."
"Do you really, honestly think so?" she asked eagerly.
"I do, really and honestly," said I.
* * * * * * *
It fell to the lot of the silent, always dependable Ching to speed at
Singapore the parting guest. The _Humming Top_ had been warped into
dock, and there was a bustle of preparation for her cleansing, when the
Hedge Lawyer, bearing his suit case, appeared on the main deck and
accosted the skipper.
"I am leaving you here," said he. "I shall not stay upon this
blood-stained ship. I said little at your precious enquiry, for I knew
that you were all in the interest of Sir John Toppys, your owner. I go
now to England to make very sure that justice shall be done upon that
murderess."
"I will help you on the road," replied Ching serenely, and gripping the
wretch by collar and pants, he hove him over the rail into the dock. No
one saw him climb forth, and yet, when the water had run away, there was
no trace of him in the mud--except his half-buried suit case. Hove by
Captain Ching, he disappeared over the rail, and, so far as I can
discover, has never since been seen. Roger Gatepath, who has his own
underground methods of enquiry, declares that John Clifford has not
returned to St. Mary Axe. The "Justice" which he demanded against Madame
Gilbert has never been invoked. He is not in the dock at Singapore; he
must have clambered out; so much we know--but the rest is silence.