The card of Major Bingham Wrynche, C.B., was brought to Saxham one
morning, as, his early-calling patients seen and dismissed, the Doctor was
going out to his waiting motor-brougham.
Bingo, following what he was prone to call his pasteboard, presented
himself--a large, cool, well-bred, if rather stupid-looking, man, arrayed
in excellently-fitting clothes, saying:
"You were goin' out? Don't let me keep you. Look in again!"--even as he
deposited a tightly-rolled silk umbrella in the waste-paper basket, and
tenderly balanced his gleaming hat upon the edge of the writing-table, and
chose, by the ordeal of punch, a comfortable chair, as a man prepared to
remain. Saxham, pushing a cigar-box across the consulting-room table,
asked after Lady Hannah.
"First-rate! Seems to agree with her, having a one-armed husband to fuss
over!"
"She won't have a one-armed husband long," returned Saxham, not unkindly,
glancing at the bandaged and strapped-up limb that had been shattered by
an expanding bullet, and was neatly suspended in its cut sleeve in the
shiny black sling.
"By the Living Tinker! she's had him long enough for me!" exploded Bingo,
who seemed larger and fussier than ever, if a thought less pink. "So'd you
say if they tucked a napkin under your chin at meals, and cut your meat up
into dice for you, and you'd ever tried to fold up your newspaper with one
hand, or had to stop a perfect stranger in the street, as I did just now
outside your door, and ask him to fish a cab-fare out of your right-hand
trouser-pocket if he'd be so good? because your idiot of a man ought to
have put your money in the other one."
"You're lookin' at my head," pursued the Major, "and I don't wonder. She's
been and given me a fringe again. 'Stonishing thing the Feminine Touch is.
Let your servant part your hair and knot your necktie, and you simply look
a filthy bounder. Your wife does it--and you hardly know yourself in the
glass, and wonder why they didn't christen you Anna-Maria. Not bad weeds
these, by half! You remember those cigars of Kreil's and the thunderin'
price me and Beauvayse paid for 'em, biddin' against each other for fun?"
The big man blew a heavy sigh with the light blue smoke-wreath, and added:
"And before the last box was dust and ashes, poor old Toby was! And that
chap Levestre--never fit to brown his shoes--is wearing 'em; and 'll be
Marquess of Foltlebarre when the old man goes. Queer thing, Luck is--when
you come to think of it?"
Saxham nodded and looked at the clock. A dull impatience of this large,
bland, prosperous personage was growing in him. From the rim the top-hat
had left upon his shining forehead to the tightly-screwed eyeglass that
assisted his left eye; from the pink Malmaison carnation in the buttonhole
of his frock-coat to the buff spats that matched his expansive waistcoat
in shade, the large Major was the personification of luxurious, pampered,
West End swelldom, the type of a class Saxham abhorred. He had seen the
heavy dandy under other conditions, in circumstances strenuous, severe,
even tragic. Then he had borne himself after a simple, manly fashion. Now
he had backslidden, retrograded, relaxed. Saxham, always destitute of the
saving sense of humour, frowned as he looked upon the pampered son of
Clubland, and the sullen lowering of the Doctor's heavy smudge of black
eyebrow suggested to the Major that his regrets for "poor old Toby!" had
been misplaced. The man who had married Miss Mildare could hardly be
expected to join with heartiness in deploring the untimely decease of his
predecessor.
"Not that it could have come to anything between poor Toby and her if the
dear old chap had lived," reflected Bingo, and wondered if the Doctor knew
about--about Lessie? "Bound to," he mentally decided, "if he keeps his
ears only half as open as other men keep theirs. Didn't a brace of
bounders of the worst discuss the story in all its bearin's, sittin'
behind my wife and Mrs. Saxham in the stalls at the theatre the other
night! Everybody _is_ discussin' it now that the Foltlebarres have left
off payin' Lessie not to talk, and provided for her and the youngster out
of the estate, and Whittinger's given her a back seat in the family....
That family, too!... Lord! what a rum thing Luck is!"
The musing Major cleared his throat, and his large, rather stupid, blonde
face was perfectly stolid as he smoked and stared at his host, reminding
himself that Beauvayse had been jealous of Saxham, Attached Medical Staff,
Gueldersdorp, and had feared that, if the fellow knew of the scratch
against him, he might force the running; and recalling, with a tingling of
the shamed blood in his expansive countenance, how he--Wrynche--had let
Beauvayse into the sordid secret that Alderman Brooker had blabbed. He
wondered, looking at the square, set face, whether Saxham had ever really
earned the degrading nickname that he could not get quite right. The 'Peg
Doctor,' was it?--or the 'Lush Doctor?' Something in that way.... Not that
Saxham looked like a man given to lifting his elbow with undue
frequency....
"--But you never know," thought experienced Bingo sagely, even as, in his
heavy fashion, he went pounding on: "The Chief's continuin' the Work of
Pacification, and acceptin' the surrender of arms--any date of manufacture
you like between the _chassepot_ of 1870 and the leather-breeched firelock
of Oliver Cromwell's time. The modern kind, you find by employin' the
Divinin' Rod"--the large narrator bestowed a wink on Saxham and added--"on
the backs of the fellows who buried the guns. Never fails--used in that
way. And--as it chances--I have a communication to make to you."
"A communication--a message--from the Chief to me?"
Saxham's face changed, and softened, and brightened curiously and
pleasantly.
Major Bingo nodded and cleared his throat. He rebalanced his shiny hat
upon the table corner, and said with his eyes engaged in this way:
"I was to remind you--from him--that--not long before the ending of the
Siege, a lady who is now a near connection of yours sustained a terrible
bereavement through the--infernally dastardly crime of a--person then
unknown!"
Saxham's vivid eyes leaped at the speaker's as if to drag out the
knowledge he withheld. But Bingo was balancing the glossy triumph of a
Bond Street hatter, and looked at it and not at the Doctor, who said:
"You refer to the murder of the Mother-Superior at the Convent of the Holy
Way on February the --th, 1900. And you say a person _then_ unknown....
Has the murderer been arrested?"
Major Bingo shook his head.
"He hasn't been arrested, but his name is known. You remember the runner
who came in from Diamond Town with a letter for a man called Casey? Not
long after--after my wife was exchanged for a spy of Brounckers'?"
"I did not see the man myself," returned Saxham, "but I perfectly
recollect his getting through."
Major Bingo said:
"I thought you would. Well, the letter was a blind; the bearer an agent of
the firm of Huysmans and Eybel, sent to make certain of our weakest points
before they put in the attack on the Barala town; and--that's the man who
committed the murder!"
"The man who committed the murder?"
Saxham's vivid eyes were intent upon the Major's face. The Major coughed,
and went on:
"My wife came across that man at Tweipans under curious circumstances,
which I'm here to put before you as plainly as may be.... She'd met him
before the Siege, travelling up from Cape Town. He scraped acquaintance,
called himself a loyal Johannesburger, and an Agent of the British South
African War-Intelligence-Bureau. Not that there ever was such a Bureau."
Major Bingo blinked nervously, and ran a thick finger round the inside of
his collar as he added: "The beggar spoofed Lady Hannah up hill and down
dale with that, and she believed him. And when she subsequently flew the
coop--dash this cold of mine!..."
The Major drew out a very large pink cambric pocket-handkerchief, and
performed behind its shelter an elaborate but unconvincing sneeze:
"--When she shot the moon with Nixey's mare and spider, it was by private
arrangement with this oily, lying blackguard, who had given her an
address--a farm on the Transvaal Border, known as Haargrond Plaats--where
she might communicate with him through another scoundrel in the Transport
Agency line, supposin' she chose to do a little business on her own in
Secret Intelligence----"
Saxham interrupted:
"I shall say nothing to my wife of this, and I trust you will impress upon
Lady Hannah that it would be highly inadvisable for her to do so."
"She won't, you may depend on it." Major Bingo palpably grew warm, and
mopped the dew from his large, kind, rather stupid countenance with the
pink cambric handkerchief--"She's awfully afraid, as it is, that a word or
two she dropped quite innocently, to that infernal liar and swindler,
who'd bled her of a monkey, good English cash--paid for procurin' and
forwardin' items of information that he took damned good care should reach
us at Gueldersdorp too late to be of use, led up to--to the crime!... By
the Living Tinker! it's out at last!"
The big man, so cool and nonchalant a minute or so before, fanned himself
with the pocket-handkerchief, and turned red, and went white, and went
red, and turned white half a dozen times, in twice as many beats of his
flurried pulse.
"--Out at last, Saxham, and that's why I've been gulpin' and blunderin'
and bogglin' for the last ten minutes. Poof!" Major Bingo exhaled a vast
breath of relief. "Tellin' tales on a woman--and her your wife--even when
she's begged you to, isn't the sweetest job a man can tackle!"
"Let me have this story in detail once and for all," said Saxham, turning
a stern, white face, and hard, compelling eyes upon the embarrassed Major.
"What utterance of Lady Hannah's do you suppose to have led to the tragedy
in the Convent Chapel? Upon this point I must and shall be clear before
you leave me!"
"You shall have things as clearly as I can put 'em. This pretended Secret
Agent of the War-Intelligence-Bureau that never existed, and who called
himself Van Busch--a name that's as common among Boers as Murphy is among
Irishmen--arranged to pass off my wife as his sister, a refugee from
Gueldersdorp, who'd married a German drummer, and buried him not long
before. Women are so dashed fond of play-actin'! Kids, Saxham,--that's
what they are in their weakness for dressin' up and makin'-believe! And my
wife----"
The large Major was in a violent lather as he ran the thick finger round
inside his collar, and swallowed at the lump in his throat.
"--My wife saw Van Busch at Kink's hotel at Tweipans from time to time. He
came, I've already explained, to sell bogus information for good money.
And as the boodle ran low, the cloven hoof began to show, and the brute
became downright insolent."
"As might have been expected," said Saxham, coldly.
"--Kept his hat on in my wife's room, talked big, and twiddled a
signet-ring he wore," went on the Major. "And, bein' quick, you know, and
sharp as they make 'em, you know, my wife recognised the crest of an old
acquaintance cut upon the stone. I knew the man myself"--declared Major
Bingo--"and a better never stepped in leather. A brother-officer of the
Chiefs, too, and a rippin' good fellow!--Dicky Mildare, of the Grey
Hussars."
"Mildare!" repeated Saxham.
"You understand, Saxham, the name did it. My wife had seen the present
Mrs. Saxham at Gueldersdorp, and, not knowin' that the surname of Mildare
had been taken by her at the wish of her adopted mother, supposed--got the
maggot into her head that the Mother-Superior's ward might possibly be
a--a daughter of the man the seal-ring had belonged to, knowing--Lord!
what a mull I'm making of it!--that Mildare had at one time been engaged
to marry that"--the Major boggled horribly--"that uncommonly brave and
noble lady, and had, in fact, thrown her over, and made a bolt of it with
the wife of his Regimental C.O., Colonel Sir George Hawting."
The faint stain of colour that had showed through Saxham's dead-white skin
faded. He waited with strained attention for what was coming.
"South Africa Lady Lucy and Mildare bolted to," went on Bingo, "and now
you know the kind of mare's-nest her ladyship had scratched up. And,"
declared Bingo, "rather than have had to spin this yarn. I'd have faced a
Court-Martial of Inquiry respectin' my conduct in the Field. For my wife
has a kind heart and a keen sense of honour, and rather than bring harm
upon Miss Mildare that was, or anyone connected with her, she'd have stood
up to be shot! By G----!" trumpeted Bingo, "I know she would!"
Saxham's face was blue-white now, and looked oddly shrunken. His voice
came in a rasping croak from his ashen lips as he said:
"Lady Hannah mentioned my wife to this man, thinking that she might prove
to be the daughter of the owner of the ring. What could possibly lead her
to infer such a relationship?"
"You must understand that the blackguard had given my wife details of
Mildare's death at a farm owned by a friend of his in Natal, and that
Hannah--that my wife knew poor little Lucy Hawting had had a child by
Mildare," Major Bingo spluttered. "That was why she asked Van Busch
outright whether the girl with the nuns at Gueldersdorp was--could be--the
same child, grown up? By the Living Tinker!--I never was in such a lather
in my life! The better the light I try to put the thing in, the dirtier it
looks. And I'm not half through yet, that's the worst of it!"
He mopped and mopped, and took several violent turns about the room, and
subsided in a chair at length, and went on, waving the large pink cambric
handkerchief, now a damp rag, in the air, at intervals, to dry it.
"She says--Lady Hannah says--that the eagerness and curiosity with which
the brute snapped up the hint she'd never meant to drop, warned her to
shunt him off on another line, and give no more information. They got on
money matters; and, seeing plain how she'd been bilked, my wife gave the
welsher a bit of her mind, and he showed his teeth in a way that meant
Murder. Just in time--before he could wring her neck round--and he'd
started in to do it, you understand--Brounckers came stormin' and bullyin'
in, to tell the prisoner she was exchanged, and would be sent down to
Gueldersdorp.... They packed her back that very day.... And not a week
after, the pretended runner came in from Diamond Town with the bogus
letter from Mrs. Casey."
Saxham had thought. He said now:
"This man, this rascally Van Busch, acting as a spy for Brounckers, was
disguised as the runner? Is that what has been proved? Did Lady Hannah see
the man and recognise him?"
Bingo leaned forward to answer.
"Lady Hannah never set eyes on the man from Diamond Town. But the day the
_Siege Gazette_ came out, with a blithering paragraph in it that never
ought to have appeared, announcin'"--he coughed and crimsoned--"Lord
Beauvayse's formal engagement to Miss Mildare;--my wife was rung up at the
Convalescent Hospital by a caller who wouldn't say where he telephoned
from. And the message that came through--couched in queer, ambiguous
language, and purportin' to come from an old friend--was a message for the
young lady who is now Mrs. Saxham!"
Saxham's eyes flickered dangerously. He said not a word. The Major went
on:
"My wife didn't then and there identify the voice with Van Busch's. She
remembered the name given her as that of the owner of the farm at which
Mildare died, a place which by rights was in what's now the Orange River
Colony, and not Natal at all. She asked plump and plain: 'Are you
So-and-So?' There was no answer to the question. But seven hours later the
Mother-Superior was shot; and the nuns and Miss Mildare, on their way to
the Convent, were passed by a thickset, bearded man, who ran into one of
the Sisters in his hurry, and nearly knocked her down."
"That," said Saxham, "has always been regarded as a suspicious
circumstance. But the man was never subsequently traced."
"No! Because," said Bingo, "the runner from Diamond Town evaporated that
night."
Saxham said, with his grim under-jaw thrust out:
"Surely that circumstance, when reported to the Officer commanding the
Garrison, might then have awakened his suspicions?"
"Naturally," agreed Bingo, "and therefore he kept 'em dark. As for my
wife, the shock of the murder, accompanied with her own secret conviction
that, in some indirect way, she'd helped to set a malicious, lurking,
watchful, dangerous Force of some kind working against your wife--when
she dropped that hint I've told you of--bowled her over with a nervous
fever."
"I remember," said Saxham, who had been called in.
"Consequently, it wasn't until some days after the Relief--a bare hour or
two before the Division--Irregular Horse and Baraland Rifles, and a
company or so of Civilian Johnnies that had made believe they were genuine
fightin' Tommies till they couldn't get out of the notion--marched out of
Gueldersdorp for Frostenberg, that her ladyship got a chance of makin' a
clean breast to the Chief. Hold on a minute, Doctor----"
For Saxham would have spoken.
"--The Chief had had his own private opinion, from the very first. He
heard what my wife had to say. As you may guess, she'd worked herself up
into a regular cooker of remorse and anxiety--told him she was ready to go
anywhere and do anything--he'd only got to give her orders, and all that
sort of thing! He charged her with the simple but difficult role of
holdin' her tongue, and keepin' her oar out, and findin' him--if by good
luck she'd got it by her--a specimen of the handwritin' of the clever
scoundrel who'd played at bein' a War Intelligence Agent, and waltzed with
her five hundred pounds, which sample, as it chanced, she was able to
supply. And the fist of the man who'd swindled her, and the writin' of the
Mrs. Casey who'd sent a letter per despatch-runner from Diamond Town to a
husband who didn't exist, tallied to an upstroke and the crossin' of a
'_t_'!"
"Is it beyond doubt that the letter from the supposed Mrs. Casey was not a
genuine communication?" Saxham asked.
"Beyond doubt. As a fact, the neatly-directed envelope had simply got a
sheet of blank paper inside. Another odd fact brought to light was, that
the person who communicated with my wife at the Convalescent Hospital
about half-past twelve on the day of the murder, rang her up on the
telephone belongin' to the orderly-room at the Headquarters of the
Baraland Rifles. We had up the orderly, and after some solid lyin', he
owned that the man from Diamond Town had bribed him with 'baccy to let him
put a message through. And that's another link in the evidence, I take
it?" said Major Bingo.
"Undoubtedly!"
"There's not much more to tell, except," said Bingo, "that the first march
of the Division on its route to Frostenberg led past the Border farm
called Haargrond Plaats. It looked deserted and half-ruined, with only a
slipshod woman and a coloured man in charge; but something was known of
what had gone on there, and might be going on still, and the Boers are
clever stage-managers, and it don't do to trust to appearances! So the
Chief detached a party with dynamite cartridges and express orders to make
the ruin real. Our men searched the place thoroughly before they blew it
up; and hidden in a disused chimney--solid bit of old Dutch masonry big
enough to accommodate a baker's dozen of sweeps--were a few things
calculated to facilitate that search for the needle in the haystack--you
understand? Disguises of various kinds--a suit of clothes lined with
chamois-leather bags for gold-smugglin'--a good deal of the raw stuff
itself, scattered all over the shop by the blow-up--and in a rusty cashbox
a diary or private ledger, posted up in a clumsy kind of thieves' cipher,
impossible to make out, but with the name written on it of the identical
man my wife suspected and the Chief believed to be the murderer of Miss
Mildare's adopted mother! And that's what you may call the Clue Direct,
Saxham, I rather fancy?"
Major Bingo Wrynche leaned back with an air of some finality, and with
some little difficulty extracted a biggish square envelope from the left
inner pocket of the accurately-fitting frock-coat. He lightly placed the
envelope upon the blotter before Saxham; reached out and took the shiny
top-hat off the writing-table, fitted it with peculiar care on his
pinkish, sandy, close-cropped head, and said, looking at Saxham with a
pleasant smile.
"Perhaps you wouldn't mind throwin' your eye over the contents of that
envelope? There are three photographs of handwritin' inside, marked on the
backs respectively." He waited for Saxham to take the enclosures from the
big envelope, examining the polish of his own varnished patent-leather
boots with a fastidious air of anxiety that was extremely well assumed, if
it was not strictly genuine. His large face was as bland and
expressionless as the face of the grandfather-clock in the Sheraton case
that ticked against the wainscot behind him, as he advised:
"Take 'em in numerical sequence. No. 1 is the photographed facsimile of
the cover of the bogus letter to Mr. Casey. No. 2"--the speaker lightly
touched it with a large round finger-tip--"that's the replica--also
photographed--of a card the man we're after wrote on and gave to Lady
Hannah, in case she found herself inclined to invest a hundred or so in
the kind of wares he professed to supply. Photo No. 3 is a reproduction of
an autograph and address that's written on the inside cover of the ledger
--posted up in thieves' cipher--that was in the cashbox found at Haargrond
Plaats." He waited, screwing painfully at the stiff, waxed ends of the
scrubby moustache.
Saxham took the photographs in their order. The envelope of the bogus
letter brought by the supposed runner from Diamond Town had been addressed
in a big bold black round hand with curiously malformed capitals, to
"Mr. BARNEY CASEY,
"Commercial Traveller,
"Gueldersdorp.
"Care of the Officer Commanding H.M. Forces"
"--Don't put it back in the envelope," said Major Bingo. "Compare the
writin' with No. 2."
No. 2 was the photograph of an oblong card. On it was written in ink, in
the same bold hand:
"Mr. HENDRYK VAN BUSCH,
"C/o Mr. W. Bough,
"Transport Agent,
"Haargrond Plaats,
"Near Matambani,
"Transvaal."