THE MASK.
But although such was George Bascombe's judgment of Leopold, and
such his conduct of his affair, he could not prevent the recurrent
intrusion of the flickering doubt which had showed itself when first
he listened to the story. Amid all the wildness of the tale there
was yet a certain air, not merely of truthfulness in the
narrator--that was not to be questioned--but of verisimilitude in
the narration, which had its effect, although it gave rise to no
conscious exercise of discriminating or ponderating faculty.
Leopold's air of conviction also, although of course that might well
accompany the merest invention rooted in madness, yet had its force,
persistently as George pooh-poohed it--which he did the more
strenuously from the intense, even morbid abhorrence of his nature
to being taken in, and having to confess himself of unstable
intellectual equilibrium. Possibly this was not the only kind of
thing in which the sensitiveness of a vanity he would himself have
disowned, had rendered him unfit for perceiving the truth. Nor do I
know how much there may be to choose between the two shames--that of
accepting what is untrue, and that of refusing what is true.
The second time he listened to Leopold's continuous narrative, the
doubt returned with more clearness and less flicker: there was such
a thing as being over-wise: might he not be taking himself in with
his own incredulity? Ought he not to apply some test? And did
Leopold's story offer any means of doing so?--One thing, he then
found, had been dimly haunting his thoughts ever since he heard it:
Leopold affirmed that he had thrown his cloak and mask down an old
pit-shaft, close by the place of murder: if there was such a shaft,
could it be searched?--Recurring doubt at length so wrought upon his
mind, that he resolved to make his holiday excursion to that
neighbourhood, and there endeavour to gain what assurance of any
sort might be to be had. What end beyond his own possible
satisfaction the inquiry was to answer he did not ask himself. The
restless spirit of the detective, so often conjoined with
indifference to what is in its own nature true, was at work in
him--but that was not all: he must know the very facts, if possible,
of whatever concerned Helen. I shall not follow his proceedings
closely: it is with their reaction upon Leopold that I have to do.
The house where the terrible thing took place was not far from a
little moorland village. There Bascombe found a small inn, where he
took up his quarters, pretending to be a geologist out for a
holiday. He soon came upon the disused shaft.
The inn was a good deal frequented in the evenings by the colliers
of the district--a rough race, but not beyond the influences of such
an address, mingled of self-assertion and good fellowship, as
Bascombe brought to bear upon them, for he had soon perceived that
amongst them he might find the assistance he wanted. In the course
of conversation, therefore, he mentioned the shaft, on which he
pretended to have come in his rambles. Remarking on the danger of
such places, he learned that this one served for ventilation, and
was still accessible below from other workings. Thereafter he begged
permission to go down one of the pits, on pretext of examining the
coal-strata, and having secured for his guide one of the most
intelligent of those whose acquaintance he had made at the inn,
persuaded him, partly by expressions of incredulity because of the
distance between, to guide him to the bottom of the shaft whose
accessibility he maintained. That they were going in the right
direction, he had the testimony of the little compass he carried at
his watch-chain, and at length he saw a faint gleam before him. When
at last he raised his head, wearily bent beneath the low roofs of
the passages, and looked upwards, there was a star looking down at
him out of the sky of day! But George never wasted time in staring
at what was above his head, and so began instantly to search about
as if examining the indications of the strata. Was it possible?
Could it be? There was a piece of black something that was not coal,
and seemed textile! It was a half-mask, for there were the
eye-holes in it! He caught it up and hurried it into his bag--not so
quickly but that the haste set his guide speculating. And Bascombe
saw that the action was noted. The man afterwards offered to carry
his bag, but he would not allow him.
The next morning he left the place and returned to London, taking
Glaston, by a detour, on his way. A few questions to Leopold drew
from him a description of the mask he had worn, entirely
corresponding with the one George had found; and at length he was
satisfied that there was truth more than a little in Leopold's
confession. It was not his business, however, he now said to
himself, to set magistrates right. True, he had set Mr. Hooker wrong
in the first place, but he had done it in good faith, and how could
he turn traitor to Helen and her brother? Besides, he was sure the
magistrate himself would be anything but obliged to him for opening
his eyes! At the same time Leopold's fanatic eagerness after
confession might drive the matter further, and if so, it might
become awkward for him. He might be looked to for the defence, and
were he not certain that his guide had marked his concealment of
what he had picked up, he might have ventured to undertake it, for
certainly it would have been a rare chance for a display of the
forensic talent he believed himself to possess; but as it was, the
moment he was called to the bar--which would be within a
fortnight--he would go abroad, say to Paris, and there, for twelve
months or so, await events.
When he disclosed to Helen his evil success in the coalpit, it was
but the merest film of a hope it destroyed, for she KNEW that her
brother was guilty. George and she now felt that they were linked by
the possession of a common, secret.
But the cloak had been found a short time before, and was in the
possession of Emmeline's mother. That mother was a woman of strong
passions and determined character. The first shock of the
catastrophe over, her grief was almost supplanted by a rage for
vengeance, in the compassing of which no doubt she vaguely imagined
she would be doing something to right her daughter. Hence the
protracted concealment of the murderer was bitterness to her soul,
and she vowed herself to discovery and revenge as the one business
of her life. In this her husband, a good deal broken by the fearful
event, but still more by misfortunes of another kind which had begun
to threaten him, offered her no assistance, and indeed felt neither
her passion urge him, nor her perseverance hold him to the pursuit.
In the neighbourhood her mind was well known, and not a few found
their advantage in supplying her passion with the fuel of hope. Any
hint of evidence, however small, the remotest suggestion even
towards discovery, they would carry at once to her, for she was an
open-handed woman, and in such case would give with a profusion
that, but for the feeling concerned, would have been absurd, and did
expose her to the greed of every lying mendicant within reach of
her. Not unnaturally, therefore, it had occurred to a certain
collier to make his way to the bottom of the shaft, on the
chance--hardly of finding, but of being enabled to invent something
worth reporting; and there, to the very fooling of his barren
expectation, he had found the cloak.
The mother had been over to Holland, where she had instituted
unavailing inquiries in the villages along the coast and among the
islands, and had been home but a few days when the cloak was carried
to her. In her mind it immediately associated itself with the
costumes of the horrible ball, and at once she sought the list of
her guests thereat. It was before her at the very moment when the
man, who had been Bascombe's guide, sent in to request an interview,
the result of which was to turn her attention for the time in
another direction.--Who might the visitor to the mine have been?
Little was to be gathered in the neighbourhood beyond the facts that
the letters G. B. were on his carpet-bag, and that a scrap of torn
envelope bore what seemed the letters mple. She despatched the poor
indications to an inquiry-office in London.