THE CEMETERY
Both Simon and Albert easily outran Hugo, and, fast as the first cab was
travelling, they had gained on it by the time it turned into Victoria
Street. And at the turning an incident happened. The driver, though
hurried, was apparently to a certain extent careful and cautious, but he
did not altogether avoid contact with a policeman at the corner. The
policeman was obliged to step sharply out of the way of the cab, and
even then the sleeve of his immaculate tunic was soiled by contact with
the hind-wheel of the vehicle. Now, the driver might have scraped an
ordinary person with impunity, and passed on unchallenged; he might even
have soiled the sleeve of a veteran policeman and got nothing worse than
a sharp word of censure and a fragment of good advice. But this
particular policeman was quite a new policeman, whose dignity was as
delicate and easily smirched as his beautiful shining tunic. And the
result was that the cabby had to stop, give his number, and listen to a
lecture.
Simon and Albert formed part of the audience for the lecture. It did
not, however, interest them, for they had instantly perceived that the
cab was empty.
Then, as the lecturer was growing eloquent, Hugo arrived, and was
informed of the emptiness of the vehicle.
'It was just a trick,' Simon exclaimed; 'a trick to get us out of the
house.'
'We must go back,' said Hugo, breathless.
At this moment the second cab appeared, was delayed a moment by the
multitude listening to the lecture, and passed westwards into Victoria
Street.
'They're in that!' cried Simon.
'Are you sure?' Hugo questioned.
'Of course I'm sure,' said Simon, who in the excitement of the trail had
ceased to be a valet.
To jump into a hansom and order the driver to keep the four-wheeler in
sight ought to have been the work of a few seconds, but it occurred, as
invariably occurs when a hansom is urgently needed, that no hansom was
available. The four-wheeler was receding at a moderate rate in the
direction of the Grosvenor Hotel.
'Run after it!' said Hugo. 'I'll get a cab in the station-yard and
follow.'
The quarry vanished round a corner just as they tumbled into the hansom
on the top of Hugo, but it was never out of observation for more than a
quarter of a minute. Through divers strange streets it came at length
into Fulham Road at Elm Place, and thenceforward, at a higher rate of
speed, it kept to the main thoroughfare. The procession passed the
workhouse and the Redcliffe Arms. Between Edith Grove and Stamford
Bridge the roadway was up for fundamental repairs, and omnibuses were
being diverted down Edith Grove to King's Road. A policeman at the
corner spoke to the driver of the four-wheeler, gave a sign of assent,
and the four-wheeler went straight onwards into a medley of wood-blocks,
which was all that was left of Fulham Road. The hansom followed
intrepidly, and then its three occupants were conscious of a sudden
halt.
'Bobby wants to know where you're going to,' said the driver, opening
the trap.
There was a slight hesitation, and the policeman's voice could be
heard:
'Come out of it!'
'We're following that four-wheeler,' Hugo was about to say, but he
perceived the absurdity of saying such a thing in cold blood to a
policeman.
All three descended. The cabman had to be paid. There was a difficulty
about finding change--one of those silly and ridiculous difficulties
that so frequently supervene in crises otherwise grave; in short, a
succession of trifling delays, each of which might easily have been
obviated by perfect forethought, or by perfect accord between the three
men.
When next they came to close quarters with the four-wheeler it was
leisurely driving away empty from a small semi-detached house which was
separated from the road by a tiny garden. They ran into the garden. The
one thing that flourished in it was a 'To Let' notice. The front-door,
shaded by unpruned trees, was shut, and there were cobwebs on the
handle, as Hugo plainly saw when he struck a match. They hastened round
to the back of the house, where was a larger garden. A French window
gave access to the house. This French window yielded at once to a firm
push. The three men searched the ground-floor and found nothing. They
then ascended the stairs and equally found nothing. The house must have
been empty for many months. From the first-floor window at the back Hugo
gazed out, baffled. Far off he could see lights of houses, but the
foreground was all darkness and mystery.
'What lies between us and those lights?' he asked.
'It must be Brompton Cemetery, sir,' said Albert. 'The garden gives on
the cemetery, I expect.'
As if suddenly possessed by a demon, Hugo flew out of the room, down the
stairs, into the garden. At the extremity of the garden was a brick
wall, and against the wall were two extremely convenient barrels; they
might have been placed there specially for the occasion. In an instant
he was in the cemetery.
* * * * *
The remainder of the adventure survives in Hugo's memory like a sort of
night-picture in which all the minor details of life are lost in large,
vague glooms, and only the central figures of the composition emerge
clearly, in a sharp and striking brilliance, against the mysterious
background.
He knew himself in the cemetery, and immediately, by a tremendous effort
of the brain, he had arranged his knowledge of the place and decided
exactly where he was. Instinctively he ran by side-alleys till he came
to the broad central way which cuts this vast field of the dead north
and south. He hurried northwards, and when he had gone about a hundred
and fifty yards he turned to the left, and then went north again.
'It's here,' he muttered.
He was in the middle of that strange and sinister city within a city,
that flat expanse of silence, decay, and putrefaction which is
surrounded on every side by the pulsating arteries of London. The living
visit the dead during the day, but at night the dead are left to
themselves, and the very flowers which embroider their dissolution close
up and forget them. Round about him everywhere trees and shrubs moved
restlessly and plaintively in the night breeze; the angular grave-stones
raised their kindly lies in the darkness. A few stars flickered in the
sky; no moon. And miles off, so it seemed, north, south, east, and west,
the yellow lights of human habitations, the lights of warm rooms where
living people were so engaged in the business of being alive that they
actually forgot death--these lights winked to each other across the
waste and desolation of a hundred thousand tombs.
With the certainty of a blind man, the assurance of a seer who has
divined what the future holds, he approached the vault. He was aware
that the little gate in the railing would be open. It was. He was aware
that the iron door in the side of the vault would be unlocked. It was.
He pushed it and entered. All difficulties and hindrances had been
removed. No odour of death greeted his nostrils, unless the strong smell
of chloroform can be called the odour of death. He struck a match. The
first thing he saw was a candle and a screwdriver, and then the match
blew out. The door of the vault was ajar, and he would not close it. He
dared not. He struck another match and put it to the candle, and the
vault was full of jumping shadows. And he looked and looked again. Yes,
down in that corner she lay, motionless, lifeless, done with for ever
and ever. Only her face was visible. The rest of her seemed to be
covered with a man's overcoat, flung hastily down. He stared, enchanted
by the horror. What was that white stuff round her head? Part of it
seemed to be torn, and a strip fluttered across her closed eyelids. He
went nearer. He touched--cold! Could she be so soon cold? And then the
truth swept over him, and almost swept his senses away, that this image
in the corner was not she, but merely that waxen thing made by the
sculptor in Paris, that counterfeit which had deceived him in the
drawing-room of the flat.
Then where was she? And why was not this counterfeit in its coffin, in
which it had been buried with all the rites of the Church? The coffin?
Yes, the coffin was there at his feet, with its brass plate, which had
rusted at the corners; and below it, in some undefined depth, was
another coffin, the sarcophagus of Tudor himself. He stooped and shifted
the candle. On Camilla's coffin were a number of screws, rolled about in
various directions; only one screw was in its place. He seized the
screwdriver--and in that moment a tiny part of his intelligence found
leisure to decide that this screwdriver was slightly longer than the one
he had used aforetime for a similar purpose--and he unscrewed the
solitary screw and raised the lid of the coffin, letting all the screws
roll off it with a great rattle.... An overwhelming rush of chloroform
vapour escaped.... She lay within, dressed in her black dress, and her
dress had been crammed into the coffin hastily, madly, and was thrust
down in thick, disorderly folds about her feet, and her hair half
covered her face. And her face was slightly flushed, and her eyelids
quivered, and the cheeks were warm. He put his hands under her armpits
and wrenched her out and carried her from the vault. And then he sank to
the ground sobbing.
What caused him to sob? If any man dared now to ask him, and if he dared
to answer, he might reply that it was not grief nor joy, nor the
reaction from an intolerable strain, but simply the idea of the terrific
and heart-breaking cruelty of Ravengar which had dragged from him a sob.
The path followed by the madman's brain was easy to pursue once the clue
found. He had been cheated into the belief that Camilla's body rested in
that coffin, and when he had discovered that it did not rest there he
had determined that the mistake should be rectified, the false made
true. That had seemed to him logical and just. She was supposed to be
in the coffin; she should really be in the coffin; she should be forced
and jammed into it. And his lunatic and inhuman fancy had added even to
that conception. She should be drugged and carried to the vault, and
drugged again, and then immured, unconscious, but alive; and if by
chance she awoke from the chloroform sleep after he had finished
screwing in the screws, so much the better! So it was that his mind had
worked. And the scheme had been executed with that courage, that
calmness, that audacity, that minute attention to detail, of which only
madmen at their maddest appear to be capable. Beyond any question the
scheme would have succeeded had not Hugo, the moment Albert Shawn
uttered the word 'cemetery,' perceived the general trend of it in a
single wondrous flash of intuition. He had guessed it, and even while
afraid to believe that he was right, had known absolutely and
convincingly that he was right.
Camilla murmured some phrase, and gave a sigh as she lay on the
gravelled path.
She had recovered from the fatal torpor in the cool night air. He said
nothing, because he felt that he could do nothing else. Albert and Simon
were certainly looking for him in the maze of the cemetery; they would
find him soon. It did not seem to him extraordinary that he had left
them in that sudden, swift fashion without a word.
Then he heard, or thought he heard, a noise in the vault, and, summoning
all his strength of will, he descended the steps again and glanced
within. Ravengar was there. Had he been there all the time, hidden
behind the door? Or had he fled and stealthily returned? Only Ravengar
could say. He had taken up the image from the corner and was replacing
it in the coffin. It was as if he had bowed his obstinate purpose to
some higher power which was inscrutable to him. Children and madmen can
practise this singular and surprising fatalism. Disturbed, he raised his
head and caught sight of Hugo. They gazed at one another by the
flickering candle.
'Where's the man who helped you?' Hugo demanded faintly.
He had not much heart, much force, much firmness left. Ravengar's eyes,
at once empty and significant, blank and yet formidable, startled him.
He had the revolver and the handcuffs in his pocket, but he could not
have used them. Ravengar's eyes, so fiendish and so ineffably sad,
melted his spine. Ravengar stepped forward and Hugo stepped back.
'Let me pass,' said Ravengar, in the tone of one who has suffered much
and does not mean to suffer much more.
And Hugo let him pass, inexplicably, weakly; and at the end of a narrow
path he merged into the vague, general darkness. And then Hugo heard the
sound of a struggle, and the voices of Simon and Albert--young and
boisterous and earthly and sane. And then scampering footfalls which
died away in the uttermost parts of the cemetery.
And Camilla sat up, rubbing her eyes.
'It's all right,' he soothed her.