A QUARTER of an hour later he was standing in the presence of his
superior.
“Good evening, Freyberger,” said the chief.
“Good evening, sir.”
“There is an express to Birmingham from Paddington at a quarter past
midnight.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want you to catch it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The train stops at Reading.”
“So I believe, sir.”
“You must get out at Reading and spend the night there. I want you early
on the spot to-morrow morning. A murder has been committed.”
“At Reading?”
“No, at Sonning.”
“The village of Sonning-on-Thames?”
“Precisely. Do you know it?”
“Slightly. I have in fact—”
“Yes?”
“Well, it is a pleasure resort, a place where young couples—”
“Precisely—where a young man might take a young woman.”
Freyberger smiled discreetly.
“Well,” continued the chief, “I am sending you down there hoping you may
meet some one more interesting than a girl.”
“And who may that be, sir?” asked Freyberger, a sudden glitter coming
into his eye.
“Klein.”
“Ah!”
“Müller, Kolbecker—call him what you will.”
“So!”
“You do not seem as jubilant as one might expect.”
“I am not jubilant, sir; I would swear not to laugh again until I have
this man by the shoulder, only the oath would be unnecessary. I am not
jubilant, but I am glad. May I have the details of this crime?”
“A man named Bronson, a farm-labourer, fifty years of age, has been
found stabbed to death in a field at Sonning.”
“Stabbed!”
“Stabbed; there was no apparent motive for the crime, and the body was
hacked as if by a maniac.”
“That is he!” said Freyberger.
“I suspect so. The only thing that makes me feel doubtful is the use of
the knife. A strangler once a strangler always.”
“He is frightened,” said Freyberger. “He must assuage his passion for
murder, and he has changed his method.”
“Do you think you will find him in the neighbourhood of Sonning?”
“I think it probable.”
“Probable?”
“Yes.”
“We have a few minutes to spare before you need start to catch your
train,” said the chief, who always liked to get at Freyberger’s line of
reasoning. “So you can just tell me why you think it probable. I would
have put it down only as possible.”
“In this way, sir. Why has this murder (if it is one of Klein’s), why
has it taken place at Sonning rather than anywhere else? Sonning is a
pleasant place enough to spend a day, it would be pleasant enough to
spend a week there, but that fact is not an inducement to a murderer. I
believe this man commits his crimes within easy reach of some den of
his. We know from the house-agent that a man, similar to him, took a
house in St Ann’s Road. We have seen that he only furnished one room,
and had no servant or help of any sort. He does not want to be spied on.
“We may suppose he left London, and for some reason or another took
probably a cottage near Sonning, just as he took a cottage on the Fells
of Cumberland.”
“Yes, we may suppose that.”
“Well—when was this murder committed—?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“Then it is probable he is still in the neighbourhood. Leaving aside the
assumption that this murder was a sudden affair, the impulse of a
moment, and that he had not made plans for leaving Sonning, there is the
fact that a murderer of this type has a tendency to cling to the
neighbourhood of his crime. Well, we will see. There is one thing I
would like to have before I start.”
“What is that?”
“The sheath of the knife I found at St Ann’s Road.”
“You shall have it.”
The chief rang, and ordered the officer who answered the summons to
bring the article in question, and Freyberger, placing it in his pocket,
departed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXVII
HE caught the Birmingham express that leaves Paddington at 12.15, and
arrived at Reading nine minutes after one.
Here he took a bed at the Vastern Hotel, and went to sleep.
At eight o’clock the next morning he was in consultation with the Chief
of the Berkshire Constabulary.
“It is a most extraordinary case,” said that gentleman. “Of course, it
can be nothing else but the work of a lunatic. The body was found at
three o’clock yesterday in a turnip field, close to the river. The man
had no enemies, a simple, inoffensive creature, with a wife and five
children. Our surgeon says that the murder must have taken place some
time early in the morning. The throat was cut from ear to ear, most
extraordinary case—mutilated too, but you will see the body for
yourself.”
“Have you the knife?”
“Yes.”
“May I see it?”
“By all means.”
The chief constable opened a drawer and produced something wrapped up in
brown paper.
He unwrapped the paper and produced a savage-looking knife with a green
shagreen handle.
“It is a case knife,” said the chief constable. “The case will be
perhaps a clue when we come upon it.”
“I believe I have it in my pocket,” said Freyberger, and he produced the
sheath he had found in the house in St Ann’s Road.
The chief constable took the sheath and fitted the knife into it.
It fitted exactly.
“But how did you get it?” asked the chief constable in considerable
surprise. “We found the knife in the body; it was fixed by such a
ferocious blow between the ribs that the murderer could not extricate
it. How did you come upon the sheath? You came from London only last
night; did you find it here or in London?”
“I have not time to tell you, sir, the whole history of the case. I
found that sheath more than a month ago in a house in London. If that
knife could speak, its tale would, perhaps, turn your hair grey with
horror. We must act at once, or the game will escape us. We are after a
person who is more than a man, a person infinitely more in the shape of
a devil, a person who can change his form. I tell you, I would sooner
tackle a tiger than this man; yet I am going to tackle him and take him,
too. Have you a map of Sonning?”
The chief constable produced an Ordnance map.
“This,” said he, “is the field where the murder was committed.”
He placed his finger on the spot.
“Is there a pathway across the field?”
“Yes, here between these two roads.”
“There is a cottage here,” said Freyberger, pointing to a spot so marked
at the angle where the path met the road.
“Yes, Bronson’s cottage. He was murdered a hundred yards away from his
home. There is a great heap of refuse in the middle of the field, and
the body lay behind it and so was not discovered for some hours. There
are no back windows to the cottage and no back door.”
“Are there any strangers lodging at Sonning?”
“Yes, a few, but no one at all of a suspicious nature, or likely to have
anything to do with the crime.”
“I imagine,” said Freyberger, “that the murderer is still in the
neighbourhood of Sonning. Of course, I may be wrong, still I intend to
go there and make some observations. I would prefer to go alone; you are
known in the neighbourhood and I am not.”
“How shall you go?”
“I—Oh, I shall go as if I were going for pleasure, not business. I shall
hire a boat and go by river.”
“Have you any arms?”
“No; if I had a pistol, and if I were so fortunate as to find my man, I
might be unfortunate enough to shoot him. Pistols have a habit of going
off in struggles. Besides, I have a nervous horror of them.”
“I remember you arrested that man in Fashion Street, and he was a pretty
tough customer.”
“I have met others worse, but I have never had fire-arms about me. A
walking-stick is the only weapon I ever carry.”
“You have lots of pluck.”
“Lots, but I tell you, all the same, this man I am after now almost
frightens me. No matter, what is, is, and what will be, will be. Can you
tell me where I can get a butterfly net?”
“What do you want that for?”
“To catch butterflies; this warm weather has brought them out in flocks.
I want, also, a flannel coat, such as boating people wear; one does not
go butterfly-hunting in a tall hat.”
“I see; come down town and I will rig you out; but, first, shall we go
to the mortuary?”
“Yes,” replied Freyberger. “Before meeting the murderer I should like to
see the victim.”
They repaired to the mortuary, and there the detective inspected the
body of the unfortunate Bronson.
“It is a most extraordinary case,” said the chief constable. “He was a
most inoffensive creature; he had never, to any man’s knowledge, made an
enemy. He had committed no fault.”
“I beg your pardon, but I imagine he had.”
“How?”
“He had committed the fault of being alive. The man we are after is a
fault-finder when the fit seizes him. A temporary lunacy. Some periodic
lunatics have objections. I knew one who, perfectly sane on other
points, flew into a paroxysm of rage when a musk-melon was brought
within his purview. He objected to musk-melons because they were round.
“He wanted them square. God Almighty, however, preferred that they
should be round. Hence the trouble.
“Another quarrelled with grey cats when he met them, simply because they
were grey. He quarrelled with them by covering them with paraffin and
setting them on fire.
“The man who did this quarrelled with the thing that lies here because
it was alive. He has remedied the defect.”
He had indeed.
It is needful only to say that the body exhibited twenty wounds, each in
itself sufficient to have caused death.
But the master wound was in the throat. It was evidently the first
given. The rest were needless, and the result of maniacal fury on the
part of the murderer.
They left the place and went to a clothier’s, where Freyberger bought a
mulberry-coloured blazer and a straw hat with a striped ribbon.
Having purchased a butterfly net he returned to the hotel and dressed.
When his toilet was complete, he looked at himself in a glass and felt
satisfied.
He looked, in fact, like a shopboy whose taste for entomology had
devoured his taste in dress.
Smug and plump, you never would have suspected this shopboy or café
waiter out for a holiday, to be a detective destined to European fame. A
chilly-blooded calculator, a profound thinker, with an intimate
knowledge of all the most terrible abysses of crime. A man merciless and
fearless as a sword.
An hour later, at the boat-slip just above the bridge, Freyberger stood
bargaining for a boat.
It was a lovely day, soft and warm with a cloudless sky.
He was not a very good oarsman, but good enough to scull a boat safely
on a smooth river. After he had passed the bridge and East’s boat-slip,
he rested on his oars for a minute.
“If I had not questioned her imagination,” he said to himself, “that man
Hellier would not have remembered those other crimes, and I would not
have come near the bull’s-eye like this. How terribly right she was. She
divined this devil, she knew his construction, his capacity for murder
without a motive. She is an innocent woman, yet she knew this demon as
well as if she had constructed him—sub-consciously. Ah, the
sub-consciousness of women, what does it not hide? A woman who loves is
a terrible thing, more keen-scented than a hound, more dangerous than a
tiger.
“My friend, Klein, if I miss you here it will not be the fault of
Mademoiselle Lefarge. If I miss you here, I shall find you again, but if
I find you here, I will be the means of saving the lives of perhaps two
more men, perhaps three.”
He resumed his sculls.
The warm weather had brought boats out as well as butterflies and
butterfly-hunters, girls in summer dresses and men in flannels, who
little dreamt that tragedy was passing them in the form of the little
man in the mulberry-coloured coat.
At Sonning Lock he managed to get through without drowning himself or
upsetting his boat. It was the first time he had negotiated a lock, and
he was not sorry when his cockle-shell was safely moored to the
landing-stage of the White Hart Hotel.
There were several people in the gardens, men in flannels and girls in
boating costumes, seated in the arbours.
He passed them and entered the hotel by the backway.
There was no one in the hall, and he took a cane-bottomed easy chair by
the bar window, put his butterfly net in a corner and called for a stone
ginger-beer.
He intended to make a thorough examination of Sonning, and his plan
would be very much simplified by the fact that he could eliminate all
residents, all people who kept servants. What he was looking for was a
man living in a cottage alone.
“Had good sport?” asked the young lady who served him, speaking in a
perfunctory manner and twisting a hairpin straight that had somehow got
loose, whilst she gazed over Freyberger’s head at the sunlit garden as
if she were addressing some one there.
“Oh, the butterfly net?” said he, “it’s not mine. I brought it down for
a friend, he promised to meet me here, a Mr Rogers—you haven’t seen
anything of him, I suppose?”
“What was he like?” asked the lady behind the bar in a disinterested
voice.
Freyberger drew a word picture of Klein.
She shook her head and settled herself down behind the bar to resume the
perusal of a Trumper’s penny story, a compound of love, murder, arson
and religion wonderfully mixed.
Freyberger sipped his drink. He looked around him admiring the place,
for the hall of the White Hart is one of the prettiest and pleasantest
little hotel halls in the world.
“You have had a murder down here they tell me,” he said, lighting a
cigar.
“Yes,” said the girl behind the bar, “Jim Bronson. I saw him brought by,
covered with a sheet. Hacked about horrid they said he was.” She looked
up like an ogre, and then relapsed into _Tracked by a Stain_ just at the
part where the parson in the dogcart is approaching the murderer, who is
hidden behind the hedge.
“It’s not often you have those sort of occurrences here?” said
Freyberger.
“No,” replied the girl, with her eyes glued to the book.
“Very quiet neighbourhood, as a rule, I should think.”
“Yes.”
“Artists and people come here, I suppose, a good deal.”
“A good deal.”
Just at this moment a shadow darkened the doorway.
An old gentleman had entered the hall of “The White Hart.” He walked,
leaning on a stick.
He was dressed in well-worn grey tweed, and wore a felt hat,
fawn-coloured and rather broad of brim.
He came to the bar and called for an absinthe, and his voice caused
Freyberger to examine him more attentively.
There were many things about this voice, and they all conspired to mark
it out as a distinctive voice. A voice in a million.
It was the voice of an educated man, and it would be very hard to say
what there was in it repellent and chilling, but repellent and chilling
it was.
But it was the face of the newcomer that fascinated Freyberger.
“Where have I seen that face before?” he thought.
And then all at once came the reply born of the question.
“It is the face of Klein grown old.”
For a moment Freyberger was seized by a feeling of physical sickness.
The horrors and perplexities of the Gyde case had culminated in this
last horror and perplexity.
This could not be the man who, eight years ago, had sat for his portrait
to the photographer in Paris; this could not be the man whom Hellier had
followed on account of the likeness to that photograph.
This was an old, old man.
Had he aged then in the course of a few weeks? Had premature decay
fallen upon him, turning him almost at a stroke from a man of forty or
so to a man of seventy and more?
Was he himself mistaken?
No. This was indeed the face of the photograph, the face that had left
its imprint on the retina of Leloir, the same face seen through the veil
of age.
Yet if that were so, one would have to believe that this old man, who
seemed scarcely strong enough to harm a child, had a few hours ago
killed, with brutal ferocity, a fellow being.
As Freyberger sat examining the newcomer, he became aware that the
newcomer was examining him.
The young lady behind the bar had relapsed into _Tracked by a Stain_,
the shopboy with the butterfly net, the old gentleman sipping his
absinthe were of no interest to her.
Freyberger yawned. He felt that he was being observed, and he fancied
that he was being observed with approbation—the approbation with which a
butcher observes a fat sheep.
If this were so, the situation was not without its humour. The humour of
it did not, however, strike him. He was deficient in that sense.
He was on the point of making a remark upon the weather in the hope of
starting a conversation when the old man forestalled him.
You never know a man’s face properly till you talk to him, and
Freyberger, as the conversation proceeded, sat drinking in with his eyes
the details and the _tout ensemble_ of the countenance before him.
What a strange, weary, wicked and altogether mysterious face it was!
One said to oneself, “If blood circulates behind it, that blood must
surely be grey in colour.”
They conversed, and it was wonderful how the old man drew Freyberger
out, and in the course of ten minutes or so, without seeming at all
inquisitive, learned most of his private affairs and much about his
life.
Freyberger told him frankly and freely how he had come to England only a
few weeks ago from Bremen in search of a job as book-keeper, how he had
no friends in England, how he had a maiden aunt living in Cologne, and a
widowed sister living Düsseldorf, how he had wandered down to Sonning in
search of the picturesque.
The girl behind the bar here put down her book to answer a call from the
coffee-room, and they found themselves alone.
“You are fond of nature?” asked the old man, sipping the remains of his
absinthe.
“It is my passion,” replied Freyberger.
“Well, if you will allow me to be your guide, I will conduct you to a
spot the most beautiful in England, quite close here, it lies.”
“Ah!”
“Indeed, yes, the most beautiful in England.”
“I shall be happy.”
“We will walk together,” continued the other. “A cigar, please,” to the
young lady who had just returned.
He held out the box to Freyberger, who took one and thanked him.
That the stranger was Klein, despite his miraculous ageing, he felt
almost certain. But to arrest him there and then for no other reason
than lay in an unconfirmed belief was not to be thought of. To let a
murderer escape is bad, but to arrest a man who, if he is not innocent,
still, has no stains or proof of guilt is worse. It is what the Criminal
Investigation Department calls a “serious mistake,” and Freyberger did
not fancy such a tag to his reputation.
The only other course was to leave the protection of houses and people,
to go with this satanic criminal where no eye could see what happened,
to be attacked by him and to master him.
“Are you ready?” asked the old man.
“I am ready,” replied Freyberger. The girl, who was putting the
cigar-box back on its shelf, turned round.
“If your friend calls, shall I say you will come back?” she asked.
“My friend?” said Freyberger, who saw across the grey face of his awful
companion a shadow pass.
“Your friend, Mr Rogers,” said the girl. “He you brought the butterfly
net for.”
He had distinctly told the stranger that he knew nobody in England, and
that he had come down to Sonning moved by impulse and for no especial
purpose save the search after the picturesque. In his surprise at the
old man’s likeness to the man he was in search of he had quite forgotten
the butterfly net—a serious mistake, as he was about to find out.
Another man might have entered into explanations or attempted to do so.
Freyberger laughed in a brutal and cynical manner.
His whole being seemed to change in one swift moment.
He turned his back on the girl and, without vouchsafing an answer, said
to the stranger, “Come.”
It was almost as if he had said, “I arrest you.”
They passed out together into the garden. The day was clouding over, and
the last rays of sunshine fled as if from their presence as they
followed the rose-bordered path to the little gate opening upon the
road.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXIX
“WHERE do you live?” asked Freyberger when they were on the road.
“We shall pass the place, and I will show you,” replied the other.
They turned to the left towards the village and walked for a moment in
silence.
The stranger, despite his age and apparent infirmity, walked with a
brisk step. Freyberger did not lag behind.
Then this conversation began between them, Freyberger speaking first:
“So you have had a murder here?”
“Is that so?”
“It is so, and I have come down here to arrest the murderer.”
“You are——”
“I am Gustave Freyberger.”
“Indeed!”
“When I was talking to you in the bar, I fancied that some one was
listening to me, and so I told you of my aunt—in Bremen was it? and of
my sister in Düsseldorf.”
Freyberger, as they walked, took side glances at the terrible profile of
his companion rigid as the profile of the Sphinx; at a sign or movement
indicative of guilt he was prepared to act. He was waiting for the
psychological moment.
But the stranger made neither sign nor movement, and they passed through
the little village, past the post office, past the cottage, which serves
as a police station. Then they turned a corner, and a lonely country
road lay before them.
Lonely-looking would, perhaps, be a better term, for the roads about
here are by no means destitute of travellers on a summer’s day.
“You do not live in the village, then?” said Freyberger.
“No,” replied the other, “I live a little way down this road.”
“That is convenient,” said Freyberger, “for if I am not mistaken we are
going to have a storm.”
“So it would seem.”
“We can shelter at your cottage, for you live in a cottage, at least I
fancy you told me so.”
“I live in a cottage, but I am unaware that I mentioned the fact.”
“Ah, it must have been my imagination. It plays one tricks. I am full of
imaginations and fancies to-day. For instance, in the bar a moment ago I
fancied I knew your face.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes. I fancied there was a resemblance between you and an artist named
Müller, no, no, an artist named Kolbecker. Ah! there I am again, my
memory is playing me false. Upon my word, if this goes on I shall resign
my position and my trade, which, after all, is a dirty trade, seeing
that it is the trade of catching murderers and delivering them to the
hangman. KLEIN was the name of the artist, he was a sculptor.”
The other said nothing, his face was still immobile, but a great drop of
sweat was coursing down the side of it.
The clouds were rolling in funereal masses over Reading and spreading
towards the southern sky. A few large drops of rain fell on the dust of
the road and the occasional grumbling of thunder sounded as if from a
vast distance.
The road took a turn upon itself, and there, a hundred yards or so away
in front of them, well set back from the highway and half hidden by a
hedge, lay a cottage.
Freyberger was only waiting now to discover the living place of the man
beside him before arresting him.
They were nearly level with the cottage gate, when, unperceived by
Freyberger, the old man’s left hand stole into the old man’s pocket.
Next moment Freyberger, with a gasping cry and hands outspread, fell
face forward in the dust of the road—sandbagged.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XL
WHEN he awoke it was with a sensation of pain extending all over his
body. He was lying on the tiled floor of a small room, which was
evidently the kitchen and living room of a labourer’s cottage. A door
wide open showed the glimpse of a garden gone to ruin and overgrown with
a monstrous growth of weeds.
By the door, holding a spade in one hand, stood Klein.
Freyberger tried to move, but failed. His body was absolutely rigid.
From the nape of his neck to his heels ran a board, to which he was
splinted by turn upon turn of rope. He tried to speak—he was gagged.
Klein stood and looked at him.
After the first glance round, Freyberger saw nothing but Klein. He could
scarcely see his withered face in the shadow cast by the doorpost, but
the hand holding the spade stood out awful in its energy and brutality,
lit by the storm-light illuminating the doorway.
Then the old man, assured that his victim was awake and in full
possession of his senses, began to speak in pantomime.
He pointed to his own lips and to the barred front door as if to
indicate secrecy and the fact that the terrible things about to take
place would never be known to the world.
Freyberger was not deaf, and the old man was not speechless, yet he
never uttered a word, though he chuckled at times, making that sound
which had frozen Leloir’s heart when he had heard it issue from the lips
of Sir Anthony Gyde in the corridor at Throstle Hall.
Then the demon at the doorway began, in pantomime, to dig with his
spade, shovelling up imaginary earth from an imaginary grave; without a
word he went through the postures necessary in dragging a heavy body to
the graveside and flinging it in. Then he spat three times into the
imaginary grave, and closed it in. All this without a word.
Then turning from his victim he went into the garden and began to dig
the real grave.
Freyberger’s eyes travelled about the floor of the room; they lit upon
an object, it was a sandbag. He knew now what had happened to him.
Sandbagged on the road, dragged into this cottage, bound and gagged, he
lay now waiting for the last act in the tragedy—his own burial.
The service for the burial of the dead would not be required over his
grave, for, that Klein would bury him alive, he felt certain.
He lay listening to the patter of the rain on the leaves in the garden
and the sound of the spade.
Incessant, rhythmical, it seemed wielded by a giant.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XLI
THAT night in London the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department
sat in his office. It required ten minutes to midnight, and he had just
laid down his pen after several hours’ hard work over official
correspondence and reports.
The Goldberg case was still exercising the public mind, and several
editors were asking the world from editorial easy chairs what the police
were paid for.
The night was warm, and through the open window came vague and fugitive
sounds from the city that never sleeps; voices, the bells of passing
hansoms and the clop, clop of the horses’ hoofs, the hum of distant
traffic.
A little draught of wind suddenly stirred the papers on the desk before
him; he turned, the door was open, and Freyberger stood before him,
pale, haggard and bearing a black bag in his hand. Behind Freyberger
stood a stranger.
“I knocked, sir,” said Freyberger.
“Ah! I was thinking. I suppose I did not hear you. Sit down—this
gentleman——?”
“This gentleman’s name is Hellier, sir,” replied Freyberger. “I have
ventured to bring him with me as he has assisted me in clearing up the
Gyde case.”
“Ah! what’s that you say?”
“The Gyde case, sir. Also he has saved my life to-day—”
“Sit down, sit down,” said the chief, indicating chairs. “This is good,
if it is as you say. I want details; but first tell me, is Sir Anthony
Gyde alive?”
“No, sir, he was murdered in the Cottage on the Fells.”
“Good God! by whom?”
“Klein.”
“Is Klein alive?”
“No, sir, he is dead. He died to-day, and his body lies in the mortuary
at Reading. Let me say at once, and with the humility of a man who has
just escaped a terrible death, that all my assumptions were absolutely
correct. Klein, _alias_ Kolbecker, _alias_ Müller, was the author of the
Lefarge tragedy, the Gyde tragedy and all the subsidiary murders,
concluding with the murder of Bronson yesterday. Look at this.”
He produced a black notebook from his pocket. The chief examined the
book; it was a volume of some hundred pages or so, every page covered
with close writing.
“This book,” said Freyberger, taking back the volume, “contains the life
history of the greatest criminal who ever lived. It is the diary of
Ludwig Spahn, _alias_ Müller, _alias_ Kolbecker, _alias_ Klein. I
mastered it in the train to-night, and from it I will sketch you the
story of which the murder of Sir Anthony Gyde is but a chapter.
“Spahn was born in Munich, sixty-five years ago.”
“Sixty-five?”
“Yes, sir. He was an old man.”
“But the man in the photograph was a man of middle age.”
“Yes, sir. He seemed of middle age, but I will explain the matter as I
go on. Spahn, at seventeen, left the business to which he was
apprenticed and went to Rome to study art, or, to speak more correctly,
to teach it, for this strange genius had ideals of his own, and very
soon he had a little following, a cult. Vicious to the core, he never
could keep money. He was always in debt. One day he murdered a banker,
was caught red-handed, sentenced to death and allowed to escape the
extreme penalty by that infernal law which allows murderers to escape
unexterminated. He was condemned to imprisonment for life and released
after twenty-five years.
“He was fifty when he left prison, full of hatred towards society and a
determination to be revenged.
“He went to Paris.
“The art which was born with him remained with him, and the love of
pleasure.
“He refused to be old, and, with the aid of the art of the chemist and
the maker-up, he appeared to the world as a man at least twenty years
younger than he was.
“He lived for years in Paris in the Latin Quarter, a notoriously vicious
character, yet forgiven for the sake of his genius. His sculptures were
marvellous, but his vice and laziness were to match, so he made little
profit of his art and did little work.
“His hatred of the rich and well-to-do amounted to a monomania, and he
was always searching around for some means by which he might avenge
himself upon them.
“To the man who hates a class, an individual of that class will serve as
a butt for his revenge.
“One day, walking along a street in Paris, he saw coming towards him
what seemed a little old man wearing a pinafore. It was a child wearing
a mask.
“The occurrence gave him food for thought. ‘If,’ said he to himself, ‘a
man who makes these paper masks for five sous a dozen, can produce an
even momentary illusion, what could not a genius do in the same
direction were he to give all his mind to the matter?’
“He played with the subject in his mind.
“‘If I wanted to make the mask of a man,’ thought he, ‘a mask that would
deceive everybody by its resemblance to the flesh, how would I proceed?
“‘I would first have to procure a cast of his face, or execute a bust of
him exactly identical with the reality. Only very slightly larger.
“‘I would then rub that face of marble with a very fine powder, and I
would apply a coating of the finest caoutchouc, over that a layer of
stiffening varnish.
“‘I would remove the whole, and paint the interior of the caoutchouc
with the flesh tints, thus giving the true appearance of life, _for the
human face is painted_ from the inside.
“‘I would then back the thing with a thicker layer of rubber and remove
the stiffening varnish from the outside.
“‘If my art did not fail me, I would now have a facsimile of my friend
or my enemy’s face. Could I wear it and masquerade as him? Only on two
conditions (1) that I could make the inside of the mask a perfect mould
of my own face (2) that he was a man, a man of my own height and a man
who wore glasses and a beard, for the joining at the eyes and at the
neck would present an insuperable difficulty were I to imitate a
clean-shaven man who did not wear glasses.’
“He brooded over the thing.
“One day he fell in with M. Lefarge, a rich jeweller, who was at times a
frequenter of the Latin Quarter, and the whole diabolical plan of the
Lefarge case was conceived in a flash.
“The plan of robbing and murdering a rich man in such a manner that the
world would fancy that the rich man was the assassin, not the victim.
“He made a bust of Lefarge, from the bust he made Lefarge’s face.
Lefarge wore a beard and glasses. The making of the exterior of the mask
was a bagatelle; the real difficulty was the interior, which had to be a
perfect adaptation to his own features, but he did it.
“Whilst this was going on, he made a most profound study of Lefarge
himself: his walk, his manner, his voice, his handwriting.
“He was, in fact, preparing to be Lefarge’s understudy for an hour or
two upon the stage of life.
“For three hours every day, during a space of four months, he wore the
mask, conversing with himself, laughing and talking before a
looking-glass, so that the thing might gain the lines and wrinkles of
life.
“One day he asked Lefarge to call upon him.
“Lefarge called. Muller murdered him, and stripped him of his clothes
and decapitated him.
“Then he dressed the body in his own clothes, put on the clothes of his
victim, put on his face, put on his hat, his manner, his walk and his
voice.
“Then, with his victim’s head in a black bag, he ran down the stairs,
got into his victim’s carriage, drove home, collected a hundred thousand
pounds’ worth of jewels, drove to the corner of the Rue d’Amsterdam and
disappeared.
“But Nemesis followed him. The murder of Lefarge had wakened up the lust
for killing that lay like a spectre in the darkness of his soul. He
killed three people to satiate this madness, as we have seen. Then he
was at peace.
“Six years passed. Then, in Vienna, he met Sir Anthony Gyde.
“He was living in Vienna under the name of Klein; living extravagantly
on the proceeds of the Lefarge business. He belonged to a very vicious
circle, amidst whom Gyde became implicated, and he was in low water
financially.
“Klein looked at Gyde, and saw that here was another chance of playing
the old comedy of masks and faces. For Gyde’s face and figure lent
themselves entirely to the trick.
“He obtained a hold over Gyde and blackmailed him to a considerable
amount, but this did not satisfy him.
“His hatred of the rich and well-to-do and respected had to be satiated.
“He made a bust of Gyde and his face, he studied him profoundly. He
could reproduce his handwriting with absolute and marvellous precision,
and his voice.
“The bust was made in London; he took rooms in Howland Street, broke up
the bust and came to Cumberland.
“Took the Cottage on the Fells and awaited the coming of Sir Anthony.
“Sir Anthony called upon him, as we have seen.
“Klein stunned him with a sandbag, stripped him and decapitated him;
dipped the head in a solution of chlorine which shrunk the skin and
preserved it, placed the head in a black leather bag, dressed himself in
his victim’s clothes, assumed his face and personality, dressed his
victim in his own clothes and departed.
“We know the rest. But one or two points may be made clearer.
“On his arrival in London the supposed Gyde went to his bedroom. There
was one weak point about the mask. Its prolonged use caused insufferable
torment to the wearer, on account of the skin irritation it caused.
“He had removed the mask for a moment when Leloir, who had left the
room, returned, and saw reflected in a looking-glass his master removing
his own face. Klein, hearing the footstep of Leloir, turned.
“The expression on Klein’s face at that moment is preserved for us in
the retinal photograph taken from the eye of the valet, who, beholding
this monstrosity, gave vent to the awful cry heard by the secretary and
fell dead.
“Klein, in his hurry and the confusion caused by this incident,
collected all the jewellery he could find. Having no immediate plan he
thought it safest to leave his victim’s head behind him, trusting it
would not be discovered for some time. He passed the night at Howland
Street, going there disguised as Gyde. Next morning, early, under the
same disguise, he withdrew the jewels at the bank and cashed the cheque
at the jewellers. It was a cheque he had found in the pocket of his
victim, and he cashed it, not so much for the money as to foul his
traces and prove to the police, by extra evidence, the existence of
Gyde.
“Then he destroyed the mask and became Klein again, taking the house in
St Ann’s Road, and moving in there with a few sticks of furniture
hastily bought.
“Mr Goldberg’s murder followed.
“Then this gentleman, Mr Hellier, saw him and followed him. And Klein
suspected that he was at last suspected.
“He determined to disguise himself. How? Simply by becoming his own age.
“He flung away all artifice, and became the old man he was. The removal
of his false teeth alone gave him twenty years of age.
“He took the cottage at Sonning, determining to lie close. But the
murder instinct was too strong for him, and he killed Bronson.”
Then Freyberger told his own story.
“I was lying in the cottage listening to this monster digging my grave,
when, suddenly, I heard him fall crash amidst the weeds. I fainted, I
believe. Mr Hellier will tell you the rest.”
“I had a reason for mixing myself up in this affair,” said Hellier;
“and, reading of the murder of Bronson I came down to Sonning to make
inquiries. I asked, had anyone come to live there lately? and I was told
by a woman that a gentleman had taken a cottage on the Henley Road.
Fortunately, she did not say an old gentleman, or I should not have gone
there.
“I went to the cottage, knocked, could get no answer, and went round the
backway.
“In the back garden, by a newly-dug grave, I found a man lying, with a
spade clutched in his hand; he was dead. I found Mr Freyberger bound in
the cottage, and I released him.”
“Klein must have dropped dead then?” said the chief.
“Yes,” replied Freyberger. “He died of heart-disease, accelerated by the
excitement of digging my grave.”
“One last question,” said the Chief, “How about those initials tattooed
on the body of Gyde?”
“They were tattooed after death,” replied Freyberger, “and as a blind.
He had the art of tattooing _post mortem_ and, strangely enough, it was
this piece of cleverness that connected the cases in my mind and gave us
our man.”
--------------
As Hellier left the Yard that night, somebody, who had followed him,
touched him upon his shoulder. It was Freyberger.
“I want to tell you,” he said, “just this. If you hadn’t mixed up in the
affair and scented out those subsidiary murders I wouldn’t have caught
Klein.”
“You mean,” said Hellier, laughing, “Klein would not have caught you.”
“Yes, that is the better way of putting it, for Klein was the real hero
of this business; and if all criminals were made like Klein—”
“Why, then,” said Hellier, “society would be lost, unless all detectives
were made like Freyberger.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XLII
NEXT evening, at nine o’clock, Hellier called at the Langham.
Mademoiselle Lefarge, who had come to England in response to a telegram,
was waiting for him.
“Well?” she asked, as she held both of his hands in hers.
“It is done,” said Hellier. “To-morrow your father’s name will be
cleared in the sight of all men. You have suffered and waited a long,
long time, but yesterday you were avenged.”
--------------
Throstle Hall, up in Cumberland, still lies empty, waiting a tenant, for
Sir Anthony’s heir, a distant cousin, has no fancy for the place.
And men walk at night on the Blencarn road in couples, if they have to
walk there at all, for fear of the ghost of Sir Anthony Gyde, which
waits, so the legend runs, at the gate of the field leading to the
Cottage on the Fells.
THE END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
○ Unbalanced quotation marks were left as the author intended.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Spelling and hyphenation were made consistent when a predominant
form was found in this book; otherwise it was not changed.
○ Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); text in
bold by “equal” signs (=bold=).