Jules Picot had been carefully searched before being locked up in his
cell, and it was an utter puzzle to the jail officials how he had
contrived to conceal about him even so insignificant an article as the
tiny phial of poison so as to evade detection. One of the warders,
however, of a more inquiring turn of mind than his fellows succeeded,
a day or two later, in solving the mystery. The mountebank wore very
high-heeled shoes, as many of his countrymen make a practice of doing.
The heel of one of his shoes had been so made that it could be
unscrewed at will, while inside it was a cavity just large enough to
hold the phial. Picot had evidently prepared himself beforehand for a
contingency the like of that which had at length befallen him. The
letter written a few hours before his death was in French, and was
addressed to "Madame Brouke." The following is a translation of it:
Madame--When these lines reach you, the hand that writes them will be
cold in death. I am tired of life, and life is tired of me: this night
we part company for ever. I take the liberty of addressing you because
of your kindness to my little Henri (whom _le bon Dieu_ has seen fit
to take from me for my sins), and because you were so much in his
thoughts when he was dying. I also address you for another reason,
which I will explain presently.
It was in the first week of the new year that Henri met with the
accident which proved fatal to him. He lingered for two weeks, and
then died. He had but little pain; life faded out of him like a lamp
that slowly expires for want of oil. As I said before, he often talked
about his _belle madame_. He could not remember his mother, and it was
your face that shone on him in his dreams, as it were the face of an
angel.
After he was gone and I was alone in the world, I, too, began to have
dreams such as I had never had before. Every night Henri came and
stood by my bed, but it was always with an averted face; never would
he turn and look at me. I used to try to cry out, to seize his hand;
but I was dumb and motionless as a corpse. Then, after a minute or
two, he would slowly vanish, with bowed head and hands pressed to his
face, as though he were weeping silently. Night after night it was
ever the same. Then a great restlessness took possession of me. I
seemed to be urged onward from place to place by some invisible power
and without any will of my own. When I rose in a morning I knew not
where I should sleep at night; onward, ever onward, I was compelled to
go. Last night I reached this place, and this morning I rose thinking
to resume my wanderings; but a conversation I chanced to overhear led
me to seek the court of justice. You, madame, know what took place
there.
Even before I had spoken a word, I knew why my footsteps had been
directed to this place, and that my wanderings were at an end. This
afternoon, after all was over, I lay down on my pallet and fell
asleep, and while I slumbered, Henri came to me; but this time his
face was no longer averted; his eyes gazed into mine, and he smiled as
he used to smile at me out of his mother's arms. Ah, how shining and
beautiful he looked! Then a soft cool hand was laid on my brow, that
had burned and burned for months, and all the pain went, and I knew
nothing more till I awoke.
A word more and I have done. Madame, pray believe me when I say that
never could a man be more surprised and astounded than I, Jules Picot,
was to-day when I found that it was your good husband who was accused
of the death of the Baron von Rosenberg. When I made my way into the
court after hearing that some one had been arrested for the murder, I
thought to see only a stranger, one whom I had never seen before. But
even in that case I should have done as I did to-day, and have
confessed that it was by my hand and mine alone that Von Rosenberg met
his death. Conceive, then, my astonishment when in the accused I
recognised M. Brouke, whom I had known in London under the name of "M.
Stewart!" I knew that when in London he was in trouble--in hiding--but
never did I dream of the crime that was laid to his charge. Had I but
known it, you and he would long ago have been made happy by the
confession of him who now signs his name for the last time.
Jules Picot.
With what a host of conflicting emotions this document was read by her
to whom it was addressed may be more readily imagined than described.
George Crofton sat alone in his cell, devouring his heart in a
bitterness too deep for words. All was over; all the bright prospects
of his youth and early manhood had ended in this; his home for years
to come would be a felon's cell, his only companions the lowest of the
low, the vilest of the vile. "Facilis est descensus Averno," he
muttered with a sneer. "Yes, in my case the descent has been swift and
easy enough in all conscience." One gleam of lurid joy, and one only,
illumined the black cavernous depths in which his thoughts, like
fallen spirits, winged their way aimlessly to and fro, finding no spot
whereon to rest. Gerald Brooke, the man he hated with an intensity of
hatred bred only in natures such as his, was a prisoner even as he
was, and it was his, Crofton's, hand that had brought him there! He
had but spoken the truth when he said that the hour of his revenge
would come at last. It was here now, although it had come after a
fashion altogether different from what he had expected. Thanks to his
folly, his own outlook was a dreary one enough; but what was it in
comparison with the grim prospect that stared his hated cousin so
closely in the face! When he thought of this it was as the one sweet
drop in the bitter cup which Fate had pressed with such unrelenting
fingers to his lips.
While he sat brooding over these and other matters, just as daylight
was deepening into dusk, a warder unlocked the door of his cell.
"You're wanted in the waiting-room," said the man. "Your uncle,
Colonel Crofton, has called to see you. It's past the hour for
visitors; but as he's brought a magistrate's order, and as he says
he's obliged to go back to London to-night, the governor has agreed to
relax the rules for once."
Crofton stared at the man in stupefaction. To the best of his belief
he had no such relative in the world as the one just named. "Ah, you
didn't expect to see him, I daresay," continued the warder. "A nice
affable gent as ever I see; but I wouldn't keep him waiting if I was
you."
Crofton followed the man without a word; and after being conducted
through a couple of corridors, was ushered into a sparsely furnished
whitewashed room, where a middle-aged, well-built man of military
carriage, who had been perusing through his eyeglass the printed rules
and regulations framed over the mantel-piece, turned to greet him. He
had close-cut grizzled hair and a thick drooping grizzled moustache.
He wore a lightly buttoned frockcoat, gray trousers and straps, and
military boots highly polished. He carried his hat and a tasselled
malacca in his hand, and one corner of a bandana handkerchief
protruded from his pocket behind.
"My dear nephew--my dear George!" he exclaimed with much effusion as
he advanced a step or two and held out his hand. "This is indeed a
dreadful predicament in which to find you. What, oh, what can you have
been about that I should have to seek you in a place like this! Your
poor aunt will be heart-broken when she hears of it. I must break the
terrible news as gently as possible; but really, really, in her
delicate state of health I dread the effect such a disclosure may have
upon her." His voice trembled with emotion; he brushed away a tear, or
seemed to do so.
George Crofton had undergone many surprises in his time, but never one
that left him more dumfounded than this, for in his soi-disant uncle
his quick eyes recognised at a glance no less a personage than Lardy
Bill. If at the moment his eyes fell on him he had been in the least
doubt of the fact, that doubt would have been dispelled by the
expressive wink with which his friend favoured him an instant later.
The man's audacity fairly took Crofton's breath away.
"The first question, my dear boy," resumed the sham colonel, so as to
give the other time to recover himself, "of course is whether anything
can be done for you, and if so, what. I need not say that my purse is
at your service; for, shocked as I am to find you in this place, I
cannot forget that you are my brother's son. I leave for London by the
first train, and immediately on my arrival I will take the advice of
my own lawyers in the matter, which will, I think, be the best thing
that can be done under the painful circumstances of the case."
"I suppose that's about the only thing that can be done," answered
Crofton, who was still utterly at a loss to divine the motive of the
other's visit.
The warder who had conducted Crofton from his cell was present at the
interview, ostensibly for the purpose of seeing that none of the jail
regulations were infringed either by the prisoner or his visitor; but
a sovereign having been pressed into his unreluctant palm at the
moment he ushered the latter into the waiting-room, he now discreetly
turned his back on the pair and stared persistently out of the window.
A little further conversation passed between uncle and nephew, the
chief part of it falling to the lot of the former, then the colonel
looked at his watch and rose to take his leave. The warder turned at
the same instant.
"As I remarked before my dear George," said the uncle as he clasped
both the nephew's hands in his, "however pained--most deeply pained--I
may be, everything shall be done for you that can be done. I refrain
from all reproaches--at present I can only grieve. But your poor aunt,
George--your poor aunt! You are her godson and favourite nephew. Ah
me--oh me!"
He walked out of the room with both hands outspread and slowly shaking
his head, like a man whose feelings were more than he could control.
The jail officials at an early hour next morning, in addition to
making the discovery that in the course of the night their French
prisoner had taken leave of them after an altogether illegal and
unjustifiable fashion, were further astounded by finding that the
inmate of cell No. 5 had also relieved them of his presence, but in a
mode altogether different from that which had found favour with the
mountebank.
Crofton, unheard by any one, had contrived to file through the middle
bar of his cell window and then to squeeze himself through the
aperture thus made, after which there was nothing but a high wall
between himself and liberty. Beyond this wall were some market
gardens, the jail being situated in the outskirts of the town, and
then the open fields. Outside the wall, a coil of rope with a strong
steel hook at each end was found; and the footsteps of two if not of
three men were plainly traceable for some distance in the soft mould
of the garden. As to how Crofton had become possessed of the file, and
by whose connivance and help he had been able to climb the wall and
descend safely on the other side, there was no evidence forthcoming.
The only fact the jail officials could affirm with certainty was that
their prisoner was nowhere to be found.
At as early an hour as possible on the morning following his capture,
Crofton had obtained permission to send a telegram to his wife, and
before noon Stephanie was speeding northward by the express in
response to his summons. When she reached Cummerhays, it was too late
for her to visit her husband that night; so, carrying her little
handbag, she walked from the station to the inn nearest to it and
asked to be accommodated with supper and a bed. She had ascertained
from a constable in the street that the earliest hour at which
visitors were admitted to the jail was ten o'clock.
Next morning, which was that of Saturday, Stephanie rose betimes.
While she was eating her breakfast the landlady bustled in, carrying
an open newspaper. "Here's the weekly paper, ma'am," she said. "The
boy has just brought it; and as it contains a long account of the
doings at the justice-room yesterday, about which you may have heard,
I thought that perhaps you would like to read it over your breakfast."
"Thank you very much; I shall be glad to do so," said Stephanie
quietly. She had given no name at the inn, and the landlady had not
the slightest suspicion that her guest had any reason for being more
interested than any stranger might be supposed to be in the news
contained in the paper. Nor, in fact, had Stephanie any knowledge of
what had happened. Her husband's telegram had been of the briefest; it
had merely said: "I am in trouble. Come at once. Bring money. Inquire
for me at the jail." But from what she knew already, she guessed, and
rightly, that the enterprise on which Crofton was bent when he left
home had failed, and that by some mischance he himself had come to
grief.
The moment she was left alone Stephanie opened the paper with eager
fingers. Her quick eyes were not long in finding the particular news
of which they were in search. She read the story of the attempted
robbery, as detailed in the evidence, with ever-growing wonder--a
wonder that was intensified twenty-fold when she read how Gerald
Brooke had been arrested at the same time as her husband, and by what
strange chance the two cousins had once more been brought face to
face. But when, a few lines lower down, her eyes caught sight of
another well-known name, all the colour ebbed from her face, leaving
it as white as the face of a dead woman. She read to the end, to the
last word of Picot's strange confession before the magistrates, and
then the paper dropped from her hands.
"My father the murderer of Von Rosenberg, and I--I the cause of it!"
she murmured in horror-stricken accents. For a little while she sat
like a woman stunned, stupefied, her eyes staring into vacancy, her
mind a whirling chaos in which thoughts and fancies the most bizarre
and incongruous came and went, mixing and mingling with each other in
a sort of mad Brocken dance, all the elements of which were lurid,
vague, and elusive.
How long she sat thus she never knew; but she was roused by the
entrance of the landlady, who had come to reclaim the newspaper, there
being three or four people in the taproom who were anxious to obtain a
glimpse of it. Fortunately, the good woman was somewhat short-sighted,
and perceived nothing out of the ordinary in her guest's appearance or
demeanour. But her entrance broke the spell and served to recall
Stephanie to the realities of her position.
For a little while all thought of her husband had vanished from her
mind. This second blow had smitten her so much more sharply than the
first that the pain caused by the former seemed deadened thereby. But
now that her waking trance was broken, the double nature of her
calamity forced itself on her mind. "My father and my husband shut up
in one prison!" she said to herself; and it was all she could do to
refrain from bursting into laughter. For are there not some kinds of
laughter the sources of which lie deeper than the deepest fountains of
tears?
Suddenly she started to her feet and pressed both hands to her
forehead. "But why--why should my father have gone to Von Rosenberg to
demand from him tidings of me, when I wrote to him from London telling
him all that had happened to me and where I was? Can it be possible
that my letter never reached him? Had he received it, there would have
been no need for him to seek Von Rosenberg. Even after so long a time
I could almost repeat my letter word for word. In it I told my father
how I had left home with Von Rosenberg, but only after he had given me
his solemn promise to make me his wife the moment we set foot in
England. I told how, within an hour after our arrival in London, I had
claimed the fulfilment of his promise, and how he had laughed me to
scorn, thinking that he had now got me completely in his power. I told
how I flung all Von Rosenberg's presents at his feet and left him
there and then, and going out into the rainy streets of the great
city, fled as for my life. I told how I hid for weeks in a garret,
living on little more than bread and milk; and how at last, when my
money was all gone, I found my way to the nearest cirque, and there
obtained an engagement. All this I told my father in my letter, and
then I prayed him to forgive me, and told him how I longed to go back
to him and my mother. Weeks and months I waited with an aching heart
for the answer which never came. Then I said to myself: 'My father
will not forgive me. I shall never see him or my mother again.' But
the letter never reached him. Had it done so he would not be where he
is to-day." Tearless sobs shook her from head to foot.
At this juncture in burst the landlady with an air of much importance.
"As you have read the paper, I thought that maybe you would like to
hear the news that one of the warders just off duty has brought us
from the jail. Such times as we live in, to be sure!"
"News--what news? asked Stephanie faintly.
"John Myles has brought word--and he ought to know, if anybody
does--that one of the prisoners--Crifton or Crofton by name--managed
to break out of his cell in the night, and has got clear away. But
that's not all by any means. The foreigner--him as accused himself in
open court of the murder--was found dead this morning, poisoned by his
own hand. The news will be all over England before nightfall--Gracious
me, ma'am, whatever is the matter!--Mary, Eliza--quick, quick!"