The landlord, who was profuse in the expressions of his admiration at
the light I had thrown upon the case, so far as it was known to us,
accompanied me to the house of Doctor Louis. It was natural that I
should find Lauretta and her mother in a state of agitation, and it
was sweet to me to learn that it was partly caused by their anxieties
for my safety. Doctor Louis was not at home, but had sent a messenger
to my house to inquire after me, and to give me some brief account of
the occurrences of the night. We did not meet this messenger on our
way to the doctor's; he must have taken a different route from ours.
"You did wrong to leave us last night," said Lauretta's mother
chidingly.
I shook my head, and answered that it was but anticipating the date of
my removal by a few days, and that my presence in her house would not
have altered matters.
"Everything was right at home," I said. Home! What inexpressible
sweetness there was in the word! "Martin Hartog showed me to my room,
and the servants you engaged came early this morning, and attended to
me as though they had known my ways and tastes for years."
"You slept well?" she asked.
"A dreamless night," I replied; "but had I suspected what was going on
here, I should not have been able to rest."
"I am glad you had no suspicion, Gabriel; you would have been in
danger. Dreadful as it all is, it is a comfort to know that the
misguided men do not belong to our village."
Her merciful heart could find no harsher term than this to apply to
the monsters, and it pained her to hear me say, "One has met his
deserved fate; it is a pity the other has escaped." But I could not
keep back the words.
Doctor Louis had left a message for me to follow him to the office of
the village magistrate, where the affair was being investigated, but
previous to going thither, I went to the back of the premises to make
an inspection. The village boasted of one constable, and he was now on
duty, in a state of stupefaction. His orders were to allow nothing to
be disturbed, but his bewilderment was such that it would have been
easy for an interested person to do as he pleased in the way of
alteration. A stupid lout, with as much intelligence as a vegetable.
However, I saw at once that nothing had been disturbed. The shutter in
which a hole had been bored was closed; there were blood stains on the
stones, and I was surprised that they were so few; the gate by which
the villains had effected an entrance into the garden was open; I
observed some particles of sawdust on the window-ledge just below
where the hole had been bored. All that had been removed was the body
of the man who had been murdered by his comrade.
I put two or three questions to the constable, and he managed to
answer in monosyllables, yes and no, at random. "A valuable
assistant," I thought, "in unravelling a mysterious case!" And then I
reproached myself for the sneer. Happy was a village like Nerac in
which crime was so rare, and in which an official so stupid was
sufficient for the execution of the law.
The first few stains of blood I noticed were close to the window, and
the stones thereabout had been disturbed, as though by the falling of
a heavy body.
"Was the man's body," I inquired of the constable, "lifted from this
spot?"
He looked down vacantly and said, "Yes."
"You are sure?" I asked.
"Sure," he said after a pause, but whether the word was spoken in
reply to my question, or as a question he put to himself, I could not
determine.
I continued my examination of the grounds. From the open gate to the
window was a distance of forty-eight yards; I stepped exactly a yard,
and I counted my steps. The path from gate to window was shaped like
the letter S, and was for the most part defined by tall shrubs on
either side, of a height varying from six to nine feet. Through this
path the villains had made their way to the window; through this path
the murderer, leaving his comrade dead, had made his escape. Their
operations, for their own safety's sake, must undoubtedly have been
conducted while the night was still dark. Reasonable also to conclude
that, being strangers in the village (although by some means they must
have known beforehand that Doctor Louis's house was worth the
plundering), they could not have been acquainted with the devious
turns in the path from the gate to the window. Therefore they must
have felt their way through, touching the shrubs with their hands,
most likely breaking some of the slender stalks, until they arrived at
the open space at the back of the building.
These reflections impelled me to make a careful inspection of the
shrubs, and I was very soon startled by a discovery. Here and there
some stalks were broken and torn away, and here and there were
indisputable evidences that the shrubs had been grasped by human
hands. It was not this that startled me, for it was in accordance with
my own train of reasoning, but it was that there were stains of blood
on the broken stalks, especially upon those which had been roughly
torn from the parent tree. I seemed to see a man, with blood about
him, staggering blindly through the path, snatching at the shrubs both
for support and guidance, and the loose stalks falling from his hands
as he went. Two men entered the grounds, only one left--that one, the
murderer. The blood stains indicated a struggle. Between whom? Between
the victim and the perpetrator of the deed? In that case, what became
of the theory of action I had so elaborately described to the landlord
of the Three Black Crows? I had imagined an instantaneous impulse of
crime and its instantaneous execution. I had imagined a death as
sudden as it was violent, a deed from which the murderer had escaped
without the least injury to himself; and here, on both sides of me,
were the clearest proofs that the man who had fled must have been
grievously wounded. My ingenuity was at fault in the endeavour to
bring these signs into harmony with the course of events I had
invented in my interview with the landlord.
I went straight to the office of the magistrate, a small building of
four rooms on the ground floor, the two in front being used as the
magistrate's private room and court, the two in the rear as cells, not
at all uncomfortable, for aggressors of the law. It was but rarely
that they were occupied. At the door of the court I encountered Father
Daniel. He was pale, and much shaken. During his lifetime no such
crime had been perpetrated in the village, and his only comfort was
that the actors in it were strangers. But that did not lessen his
horror of the deed, and his large heart overflowed with pity both for
the guilty man and the victim.
"So sudden a death!" he said, in a voice broken by tears. "No time for
repentance! Thrust before the Eternal Presence weighed down by sin! I
have been praying by his side for mercy, and for mercy upon his
murderer. Poor sinners! poor sinners!"
I could not sympathise with his sentiments, and I told him so sternly.
He made no attempt to convert me to his views, but simply said, "All
men should pray that they may never be tempted."
And so he left me, and turned in the direction of his little chapel to
offer up prayers for the dead and the living sinners.
Doctor Louis was with the magistrate; they had been discussing
theories, and had heard from the landlord of the Three Black Crows my
own ideas of the movements of the strangers on the previous night.
"In certain respects you may be right in your speculations," the
magistrate said; "but on one important point you are in error."
"I have already discovered," I said, "that my theory is wrong, and not
in accordance with fact; but we will speak of that presently. What is
the point you refer to?"
"As to the weapon with which the murder was done," replied the
magistrate, a shrewd man, whose judicial perceptions fitted him for a
larger sphere of duties than he was called upon to perform in Nerac.
"No knife was used."
"What, then, was the weapon?" I asked.
"A club of some sort," said the magistrate, "with which the dead man
was suddenly attacked from behind."
"Has it been found?"
"No, but a search is being made for it and also for the murderer."
"On that point we are agreed. There is no shadow of doubt that the
missing man is guilty."
"There can be none," said the magistrate.
"And yet," urged Doctor Louis, in a gentle tone, "to condemn a man
unheard is repugnant to justice."
"There are circumstances," said the magistrate, "which point so surely
to guilt that it would be inimical to justice to dispute them. By the
way," he continued, addressing me, "did not the landlord of the Three
Black Crows mention something to the effect that you were at his inn
last night after you left Dr. Louis's house, and that you and he had a
conversation respecting the strangers, who were at that time in the
same room as yourselves?"
"If he did," I said, "he stated what is correct. I was there, and saw
the strangers, of whom the landlord entertained suspicions which have
been proved to be well founded."
"Then you will be able to identify the body, already," added the
magistrate, "identified by the landlord. Confirmatory evidence
strengthens a case."
"I shall be able to identify it," I said.
We went to the inner room, and I saw at a glance that it was one of
the strangers who had spent the evening at the Three Black Crows, and
whom I had afterwards watched and followed.
"The man who has escaped," I observed, "was hump backed."
"That tallies with the landlord's statement," said the magistrate.
"I have something to relate," I said, upon our return to the court,
"of my own movements last night after I quitted the inn."
I then gave the magistrate and Doctor Louis a circumstantial account
of my movements, without, however, entering into a description of my
thoughts, only in so far as they affected my determination to protect
the doctor and his family from evil designs.
They listened with great interest, and Doctor Louis pressed my hand.
He understood and approved of the solicitude I had experienced for the
safety of his household; it was a guarantee that I would watch over
his daughter with love and firmness and protect her from harm.
"But you ran a great risk, Gabriel," he said affectionately.
"I did not consider that," I said.
The magistrate looked on and smiled; a father himself, he divined the
undivulged ties by which I and Doctor Louis were bound.
"At what time," he asked, "do you say you left the rogues asleep in
the woods?"
"It was twenty minutes to eleven," I replied, "and at eleven o'clock I
reached my house, and was received by Martin Hartog's daughter. Hartog
was absent, on business his daughter said, and while we were talking,
and I was taking the keys from her hands, Hartog came home, and
accompanied me to my bedroom."
"Were you at all disturbed in your mind for the safety of your friends
in consequence of what had passed?"
"Not in the least. The men I left slumbering in the woods appeared to
me to be but ordinary tramps, without any special evil intent, and I
was satisfied and relieved. I could not have slept else; it is seldom
that I have enjoyed a better night."
"Cunning rascals! May not their slumbers have been feigned?"
"I think not. They were in a profound sleep; I made sure of that. No,
I could not have been mistaken."
"It is strange," mused Doctor Louis, "how guilt can sleep, and can
forget the present and the future!"
I then entered into an account of the inspection I had made of the
path from the gate to the window; it was the magistrate's opinion,
from the position in which the body was found, that there had been no
struggle between the two men, and here he and I were in agreement.
What I now narrated materially weakened his opinion, as it had
materially weakened mine, and he was greatly perplexed. He was annoyed
also that the signs I had discovered, which confirmed the notion that
a struggle must have taken place, had escaped the attention of his
assistants. He himself had made but a cursory examination of the
grounds, his presence being necessary in the court to take the
evidence of witnesses, to receive reports, and to issue instructions.
"There are so many things to be considered," said Doctor Louis, "in a
case like this, resting as it does at present entirely upon
circumstantial evidence, that it is scarcely possible some should not
be lost sight of. Often those that are omitted are of greater weight
than those which are argued out laboriously and with infinite
patience. Justice is blind, but the law must be Argus-eyed. You
believe, Gabriel, that there must have been a struggle in my garden?"
"Such is now my belief," I replied.
"Such signs as you have brought before our notice," continued the
doctor, "are to you an indication that the man who escaped must have
met with severe treatment?"
"Undoubtedly."
"Therefore, that the struggle was a violent one?"
"Yes."
"And prolonged?"
"That is the feasible conclusion."
"Such a struggle could not have taken place without considerable
disarrangement about the spot in which it occurred. On an even
pavement you would not look for any displacement of the stones; the
utmost you could hope to discover would be the scratches made by iron
heels. But the path from the gate of my house to the back garden, and
all the walking spaces in the garden itself, are formed of loose
stones and gravel. No such struggle could take place there without
conspicuous displacement of the materials of which the ground is
composed. If it took place amongst the flowers, the beds would bear
evidence. I observed no disorder in the flower beds. Did you?"
"No."
"Then did you observe such a disarrangement of the stones and gravel
as I consider would be necessary evidence of the struggle in which you
suppose these men to have been engaged?"
I was compelled to admit--but I admitted it grudgingly and
reluctantly--that such a disarrangement had not come within my
observation.
"That is partially destructive of your theory," pursued the doctor.
"There is still something further of moment which I consider it my duty
to say. You are a sound sleeper ordinarily, and last night you slept
more soundly than usual. I, unfortunately, am a light sleeper, and it
is really a fact that last night I slept more lightly than usual. I
think, Gabriel, you were to some extent the cause of this. I am
affected by changes in my domestic arrangements; during many pleasant
weeks you have resided in our house, and last night was the first, for
a long time past, that you slept away from us. It had an influence
upon me; then, apart from your absence, I was thinking a great deal of
you." (Here I observed the magistrate smile again, a fatherly
benignant smile.) "As a rule I am awakened by the least noise--the
dripping of water, the fall of an inconsiderable object, the mewing of
a cat, the barking of a dog. Now, last night I was not disturbed,
unusually wakeful as I was. The wonder is that I was not aroused by
the boring of the hole in the shutter; the unfortunate wretch must
have used his gimlet very softly and warily, and under any
circumstances the sound produced by such a tool is of a light nature.
But had any desperate struggle taken place in the garden it would have
aroused me to a certainty, and I should have hastened down to
ascertain the cause. Gabriel, no such struggle occurred."
"Then," said the magistrate, "how do you account for the injuries the
man who escaped must have undoubtedly received?"
The words were barely uttered when we all started to our feet. There
was a great scuffling outside, and cries and loud voices. The door was
pushed open and half-a-dozen men rushed into the room, guarding one
whose arms were bound by ropes. He was in a dreadful condition, and so
weak that, without support, he could not have kept his feet. I
recognised him instantly; he was the hump backed man I had seen in the
Three Black Crows.
He lifted his eyes and they fell on the magistrate; from him they
wandered to Doctor Louis; from him they wandered to me. I was gazing
steadfastly and sternly upon him, and as his eyes met mine his head
drooped to his breast and hung there, while a strong shuddering ran
through him.