Van Bleit's trial occupied considerably less time than was anticipated.
It came on early in the session, and was quickly disposed of. The
evidence was contradictory and unsatisfactory. Van Bleit, who was put
in the witness box by his counsel, gave the only clear and unreserved
account of the night's doings. His plea was that he killed Simmonds in
self-defence. There had been ill-feeling between himself and Simmonds
for some time. On the night in question he had gone to the bungalow in
perfect good faith. There was nothing remarkable in his being armed.
He had carried a revolver ever since he had roughed it in Rhodesia. At
the bungalow he had met with a hostile reception. Simmonds had locked
the door of the room and put the key in his pocket. He had then drawn a
revolver from his coat pocket and had covered Van Bleit with it.
"I recognised that I must defend my life," Van Bleit finished with fine
dramatic effect. "A man hasn't time to consider on such occasions; he
acts on impulse. But I solemnly declare I had no intention to kill the
man. I fired wildly, and I am certain no one could have been more
distressed than myself when I discovered that my shot had proved fatal.
I was scarcely conscious that I had fired until Simmonds fell."
Colonel Grey corroborated his statement as to the locking of the door;
but he added that there was nothing hostile in the act. He believed it
had been done to guard against interruption. He further allowed that
Simmonds had been somewhat hasty. He had been the first to produce a
revolver. He had not, however, covered the prisoner with it. The
prisoner had been excited and had fired without provocation.
The jury retired for about ten minutes. When they returned they
pronounced the prisoner Not Guilty. The verdict was received with
cheers. When a man has stood on trial for his life the tension of
feeling is sufficiently strained to cause a strong reaction on his
acquittal in favour of the accused.
Van Bleit left the court with his friends, and Smythe, who was as much
astonished as relieved at the turn affairs had taken, drove him home to
his wife as the surest proof he could offer her that her cousin was a
free man.
"I don't know how he does it," he confided in Van Bleit's counsel, who
was a personal friend, and whose fee he was responsible for. "I take
it, he's reserved for something worse than hanging."
The strain had told on Van Bleit. He had recognised that he stood in a
particularly tight place. Death had been his constant companion
sleeping and waking for so long that his nerve was shattered for the
time. Excitement had kept him up hitherto, now that the necessity to
brace himself was ended he collapsed like a deflated paper bag.
When he got alone with his cousin he gave way and blubbered feebly as a
child blubbers who has been beaten and desires to but cannot retaliate.
Mrs Smythe was shocked. She pressed whisky on him with a heart
overflowing with pity, and he helped himself liberally from the decanter
until his lachrymose condition gave place to a bombastic assurance that
was almost as pitiful to witness. Mrs Smythe sent her husband off to
his club, unmindful that he should encounter Karl in his present mood,
and she and her cousin dined alone.
"We'll have a nice quiet time together," she said gently. "You'll sleep
here to-night, Karl?"
"I might as well--yes," he replied.
He got up, wandered aimlessly round the room, and then came back, put
his arms round her shoulders and kissed her.
"You haven't told me anything about Her yet," he said. "Has she been
upset? ... anxious? ... I've thought about her day and night."
Mrs Smythe looked troubled.
"You mean--Zoe?"
He stared at her in surprise.
"Why, who else?" he asked.
"She has been with me a lot," she answered evasively. "She's very kind,
Karl--so sympathetic."
"Of course she didn't believe me guilty?" he questioned, his bold dark
eyes holding hers, confident in the remembrance of his last interview
with Mrs Lawless that she could not have thought unkindly of him in the
interval.
"I don't know... She never spoke of you," Mrs Smythe returned
unwillingly. "Zoe is very reserved."
He smiled with some complacence.
"She won't be reserved with me," he said, "when I see her to-morrow.
I'm living for to-morrow. I would have gone to her this evening only--"
He hesitated to complete the sentence, but Mrs Smythe understood.
"I think it just as well not to be too precipitate," she said.
Something in her manner arrested him. He glanced at her sharply.
"You don't know... you haven't heard anything?" he stammered.
She had neither the heart nor the courage to shatter his hopes. She
smiled at him and shook her head.
"Women don't bare their hearts to one another," she answered. "But I
always feel with Zoe Lawless that she lives in the past."
"Pshaw!" he returned easily. "You're a sentimentalist, Kate."
The following day when Van Bleit called upon Mrs Lawless he had
occasion to remember his cousin's words, and to wonder whether she might
not have some grounds for her opinion. The message he received at the
door was that Mrs Lawless was out. He left the magnificent basket of
flowers he had brought with him, and scribbled hastily on a visiting
card that he would call again on the morrow, and went away dissatisfied.
She must have known that he would call that day. If she had felt
kindly towards him she would have remained at home to receive him. He
was undecided whether to infer from her action that she no longer had
any wish to meet him, or if she was merely piqued that he had not gone
straightway to her after his liberation, and desired to show by her
coldness her displeasure at his negligence. The latter view appealing
more to his self-esteem he inclined towards adopting it; though a
knowledge of Zoe Lawless' character should have dispelled any such
supposition.
The next day when he reached the house and rang the bell, with
considerably less confidence than on the former occasion, he was met
with the same disconcerting message as before. Mrs Lawless was not at
home. There could be no mistake this time as to the intention of the
rebuff.
He ground his heel savagely into the gravel of the path and turned away.
It was the trial and the charge of murder, he decided, which had
probably shocked her. It was not sufficient apparently that he had been
acquitted of the charge; womanlike, she held him responsible for the
life he had taken.
He went back to his own rooms. He had left the Smythes. The animosity
that existed between himself and Smythe rendered it inadvisable for them
to remain long beneath the same roof. And he had no inclination for his
cousin's society. He shrank from the thought of her sympathy. It was
humiliating beyond measure to have to acknowledge his defeat to her.
Then, like an inspiration, the advice Lawless had given him on the last
occasion when they had lunched together flashed into his mind. He
decided to adopt it, to leave Cape Town immediately. It did not seem to
occur to him that had absence been likely to further his cause his
recent detention should have considerably advanced him in favour.
At this crisis a telegraphic message arrived from Lawless himself.
"_Congrats try change of air bed board and welcome here grit_."
Van Bleit read this message many times, and considered it for fully half
an hour before he wrote a reply. He considered his reply with equal
care, and made several alterations in the form before finally writing it
out on a fresh form and dispatching it.
"_good travelling with denzil might as well come your way karl_."
He put on his hat and went out. It remained for him to look up Denzil
and inform him of the holiday he had planned. He had taken all the
risks he intended taking. He had had experience of two men against one;
on this occasion he determined the strength of numbers should be on his
side.
Denzil was astonished, and not altogether delighted, when he heard Van
Bleit's proposal. He had no particular fancy for wintering on the high
veld, and he did not desire to leave Cape Town.
"What makes you suspect treachery in Grit Lawless?" he asked. "I
thought he was a particular chum of yours."
"I thought so myself until I found out he was in Colonel Grey's pay."
"And how did you discover that?" the other inquired sceptically. "Told
you, I suppose?"
"Not much," Van Bleit answered craftily. "But I keep a watch on the
Colonel's doings, and I know fairly accurately all the visitors he
receives at the bungalow. It was the greatest surprise in the world to
me when I tracked Grit Lawless there. I watched him unseen go in and
out on three separate occasions. He has passed me so close that by
stretching out a hand he could have touched me, and bade me good-night
in response to my `Good-night, baas,' taking me for the Kaffir I
disguised myself to represent. He is very wide awake is Grit Lawless,
but I'm wider awake still. I've followed him up to the stoep of the
bungalow and heard him greet the old man, unconscious of a listener. He
can't kid me. The only thing that puzzles me is his absconding with
that she-devil. It's just possible that he has had a split with the
Colonel. But that doesn't make him any friend of ours, you understand.
Grit is cunning enough to play the game off his own bat. I'm not for
trusting any man. We'll go, but we'll need to be wide awake."
Denzil looked at the speaker admiringly. He was cunning himself; it was
due to his fertile brain that the letters had fallen into Van Bleit's
hands, otherwise he would never have participated in the profits; but
his cunning was not equal to the Dutchman's, nor his courage. He was a
nervous little fellow, and would gladly have parted with the letters for
the handsome sum offered by the other side. He was always keenly alive
to the danger of his profession as blackmailer. It was only his fear of
Van Bleit that kept him in subjection. And he was sorely afraid that
Van Bleit would overreach himself and land them both some day into
difficulties with the law.
"Why go," he asked sensibly, "if you don't trust the man?"
Van Bleit shrugged his huge shoulders.
"It suits me to go somewhere," he answered. "And I'd like to test the
fellow."
"You're more than a match for him," Denzil remarked tentatively.
Van Bleit smiled drily.
"I daresay, Dick," he said. "But I've a fancy for your company... I
shouldn't like the Colonel to get worrying you just now."
"You mean," Denzil said stiffly, "that you distrust me?"
"Not you, my dear fellow, but your judgment," Van Bleit replied easily.
"If it hadn't been for me you would have parted with a fortune for a
beggarly sum long since."
"I'd be content," observed Denzil in an injured tone, "with a handsome
sum down. Where's the sense in squeezing a man past his endurance?"
"We've got to find out how far his endurance goes," the other answered.
"Your conscience is over sensitive, my boy, for a job of this kind.
We've a handsome annuity in those letters... Why on earth should we
sink it in a sum we should both squander in a year? There's no reason
in it, and no commercial instinct. Apart from that, I've gone through
an experience that entitles me to redress. Do you suppose I've endured
nothing in standing on my trial? I wasn't responsible for Simmonds'
death; it was his own silly fault. But I might have had to pay for it.
The other side has got to make that good to me, and it isn't to be done
cheaply. Putting a man's private feelings on one side, think of the
expense of counsel's fees, and such things?"
Van Bleit was careful not to mention that all the expenses of his trial
had been borne by Theodore Smythe, who laboured under the delusion that
his wife's cousin had very little ready money at his command. It was a
mystery to him how Van Bleit lived. Had he suspected him of
blackmailing, he would not have lifted a finger to save his neck from
the rope.
Denzil nodded shortly.
"Yes, of course... I quite see your point," he said. "At the same
time, I wish you could come to some sort of agreement. I think after
this Grey might meet you quite handsomely. And it would be satisfactory
to me, at least, to be finished with the business. Men have got twenty
years for blackmail before now."
Van Bleit drew himself up and eyed his subordinate aggressively.
"If you're funking it," he said, "say so, and be done with it. I'm not
going to work with a man I can't be sure of. We have worked together so
far satisfactorily that it will be regrettable if you separate our
interests now. But it has to be now or never. I'm not throwing this up
for any scruple. Do you, or do you not, stand in with me?"
Denzil's nature was weak, prone to any influence; and the dominating
personality of the other man bore him down easily.
"Of course I stand in with you," he said. "Our interests are
identical."
"Good!" Van Bleit rejoined. "You're a wobbler, Dick; but you generally
rise to the occasion. Then you go with me to-morrow? You won't find it
very amusing, though it may have its exciting moments... Unless, of
course, the lady is still keeping house for Grit. But from the invite I
imagine she has left him in the lurch."
"He'd scarcely ask you up there if he'd got any women about," was the
reply, which Van Bleit construed into a compliment. He smiled
complacently.
"I wouldn't mind hunting down the quarry on my own account," he said.
"She was devilishly handsome--and a dashed bad lot."