The next morning I had a stormy interview with my landlord. He would
wait no longer for the arrears of rent. He gave me three days to pay
or to find other rooms. In the meantime he would detain my things. My
little skiff had decidedly reached the rocks.
I went down to the house at Clapham, which I had failed to let. The
blinds were drawn and a weather-beaten notice board leant in an
intoxicated manner over the shabby railings. I had not been near it
for months, and as I opened the front door the place smelt damp and
reminded me with a shiver of the deaths that had taken place there. I
almost heard the whisper of my mother’s voice in my ear.
Curiously enough, I had made no attempt to sell the furniture. I
seemed to have had a premonition that the house would yet be a home
for me. I went over it, drawing up the blinds and letting in the
dreary February light. Every now and then I paused and listened. I
seemed to hear someone moving about the house. The garden, which had
been my mother’s hobby, was in a most desolate condition, and a dead
and decomposing cat lay across the threshold of the back door. The
atmosphere of the whole place seemed tuned to the key of my own
depression, and I must admit to sitting down in the forlorn parlour
and shedding tears. Even the most self-reliant character must resent
being absolutely alone in the world, and I felt terribly alone. I
suppose those who have listened amazed to the story of what they are
pleased to call my crimes would scarcely believe that I have a craving
for sympathy. True, it must be sympathy on my own terms, but I crave
for it. Personally I do not at present ask for pity, but were the
comfortable classes given to psychological analysis—which they are
not—it might astonish them to discover in how little they differ from
the practised enemy of society, the criminal. Many a highly respected
member of society whom prosperity has prevented from feeling the
incentive of crime is a criminal in embryo. For myself, I have
achieved my object; I shall die Earl Gascoyne, and my child will bear
the title after me. My descendants will belong to the ruling classes,
and I shall be handed down to posterity as an interesting study. The
British snob never wholly deserts a lord, and will consider the
scaffold to be not a little honoured by my patronage. I am sure that
there are thousands of worthy people who would sooner the whole matter
had been hushed up; I for one am of their opinion. I could have
dispensed with a niche in history between Gille de Rais and Madame de
Brinvilliers. The fame of posterity always asks too heavy a penalty in
this life.
I realised that I should have to do the work of the house at Clapham
myself, so I decided to lock up all the rooms except the sitting-room,
a bedroom, and the kitchen.
I engaged a woman to come in for the first few days and light fires
and clean up. Then, handing her the key, I returned to town.
I owed over sixty pounds at my lodgings which I had not the least
prospect of paying. I had my landlord’s word for it that he would not
allow a thing of mine to be moved out until my debt was discharged. I
had no mind to lose my stock of wearing apparel, which constituted a
very valuable asset. Removing my things during the night would be a
very difficult business, and the slightest noise would rouse the
people of the house and prevent my ever getting them out at all. I
walked about the whole afternoon thinking the matter over and evolving
one scheme after another, only to throw them all aside as
impracticable. My chambers were on the second floor, which increased
the difficulty. The only possible thing was to bring my clothes down
loose and put them in a four-wheeled cab and then to remove my
travelling bags empty. To carry down heavy luggage would have been
impossible. I secured a four-wheeler and conceived the idea of telling
the driver exactly what I was about to do, promising him a sovereign
if he would help me. Never was money better spent.
I told my landlord to call me early as I had a certainty of obtaining
a hundred pounds in the morning. So cheerful and optimistic was my
manner that I am sure he was deceived, for he executed my order for a
chop with alacrity. At about eleven I went to bed and, ringing my
bell, asked for some whisky and hot water. This was in order that the
servant might report that I had retired for the night. Three o’clock
was the time my cabman was to make his appearance, and at half-past
two I rose, dressed, and looked out of the window. There he was, and
the street was clear of policemen.
I put on my fur coat and, carrying as many things as possible, crept
downstairs. In an incredibly short space of time I had placed my first
instalment in the cab. Half a dozen times I crept upstairs and down
again, with my heart in my mouth, till my belongings were bursting
from both windows of the cab. To my infinite delight, I rescued
everything, down to my boot-trees. There was hardly room for me in the
cab, but I managed to squeeze in and we drove away. Robinson Crusoe
returning to the island with his raft covered with useful articles
from the wreck was not half so elated. We trundled away to Clapham,
and at about four in the morning I had my belongings safe and sound in
my own house. Their loss would have been a terrible blow, and as I
retired to rest I breathed a sigh of gratitude. My landlord would, I
suppose, declare that he is revenged, now that he has had the felicity
of reading how an unfeeling judge gave me certain details as to the
way in which the law proposed to deal with me. The death sentence has
always sounded to me a most undignified and vindictive snarl. I have
most certainly never been impressed by it, and never less so than when
I was directly interested in its pronouncement.
It was very clear that I was now called upon to earn my own living. I
did not doubt my ability to earn enough to keep me, but I shuddered at
the prospect of days of hopeless drudgery in the City that other men
might grow rich. For eighteen months I had lived in comparative
luxury. I was spoilt for playing the part of a slave. Five times the
salary I was ever likely to obtain seemed to me mere poverty. I
strolled about the City day after day for some weeks without any
definite result, and the very few pounds I had managed to scrape
together were disappearing fast.
Grahame Hallward was now in the City and as friendly to me as ever. He
would, I was sure, lend me money if I asked him, but a very natural
feeling prevented my exposing my parlous condition to Sibella’s
brother. In fact, I did everything possible to give him the impression
that I was prosperous. Sometimes he would come in during the evening
and smoke with me, and I invariably kept from him the truth that I did
the housework myself, complaining bitterly of the incompetence of the
imaginary female who came in to cook and put things straight for me.
There was only one person from whom I could borrow money, and I felt a
very natural diffidence in writing to Godfrey after the way I had
treated him. Shipwreck, however, was too imminent for such scruples to
prevail, and in reply to my request the kind-hearted fellow sent me
twenty-five pounds, saying that I was on no account to allow pride to
stand in the way of asking for more. As to my not having fallen in
with his views, surely I had a right to manage my affairs my own way.
When alone in the evenings I used to draw out the genealogical tree of
the Gascoynes and study it. Whilst living in London I had made a good
many inquiries and had found out exactly where I stood. That is to
say, I had collected a great deal of information as to the habits,
health, and chances of longevity of the members of the different
branches that stood between me and the succession. The table I have
already given had not altered materially. The Earl at that time was
twenty-three years of age, holding a commission in the Guards, and had
been married some months before to an American heiress. They might
have any number of children, so that it was strange that, though I was
in no way lacking in common sense, I should persist in dreaming of
myself as finally attaining the rank of Earl Gascoyne.
It was at this time I came across a book which interested me
exceedingly. It was a record of most of the celebrated poisoning cases
in history, but the author had the gift of vivifying whatever he
touched with rare qualities of imagination. He was able to fill in the
bare outlines left by mere chroniclers with an atmosphere which
carried singular conviction, and he could weave a tale of interest
from the most meagre details. Given the crime and the historical
characters, he followed them all through the different emotions which
led up to the catastrophe with faultless instinct. He possessed a
breadth of mind in dealing with assassins which was unusual, and
pointed out that great criminals are as a rule so far removed from
other men that it is presumption to measure them by the same standard.
The courage and fortitude with which they almost invariably face
death, he cited as a proof that probably most of them had reached a
philosophic elevation of which they themselves were perhaps
unconscious, and from which death hardly seemed so terrible an event.
He was not interested in the commonplace criminal. The Borgias, Madame
de Brinvilliers, the Earl of Somerset, and Thomas Henry Wainwright,
were the aristocrats in crime who roused his curiosity and seemed to
him worthy of psychological analysis. A criminal in his eyes might be
great, just as any other man might be great who lifted his profession
out of the common rut by the magic of personality. He deprecated, for
instance, the unreflective execration which historians pour out on
those who have removed Kings and Emperors. Most of them, he held, were
men who had everything to lose and nothing to gain by their act. They
could look for no immunity. Ravaillac, torn to pieces by horses,
Gerard, tortured to death for having done what he considered his duty
in removing William the Silent, seemed to him to have missed their
share of commendation. More dignified a hundredfold they seemed to him
than the egotistical apes who sat in a mockery of the judicial mind in
judgment on Charles I. For the latter at least there was every chance
of escape and no personal courage was required.
Not that he had anything to say in actual defence of secret poisoners.
If they chose such a line of conduct, they must not grumble when the
day of reckoning came. At the same time, he paid all deference to
their courage, for the risks of murder are always enormous. I cannot
say when first the book began to exercise an influence over me, and to
turn my mind in a certain direction, but as I grew more and more
depressed with my failure to obtain a means of livelihood, an idea
gradually formed itself which, though I dismissed it with a laugh at
first, returned again and again, assuming more and more of a permanent
character each time.
The loneliness of my life, for with the exception of visits from
Grahame Hallward my days were solitary, encouraged morbid reflections.
At first I entertained the idea as an abstraction. I clothed the
Gascoyne family and myself in fifteenth-century garb, and placed the
scene in a medieval Italian city. I wove plot and counterplot. One by
one I removed them all from my path, and till the end walked
unsuspected, doing my work with caution and precision.
Each day I had a new set of subsidiary characters whom I moved hither
and thither according to the exigencies of my mimic conspiracy. The
game became a mania with me. I read every book I could discover that
had to do with secret crimes.
For a while I walked with the grim shadows of the past and would have
no companion but the shades of murderers. Cæsar Borgia whispered in my
ear as we paced the gardens of the Vatican, and the scarlet bow of his
mouth twisted sardonically when he told me in a low, musical voice of
how Giuseppe died.
Lucrezia intoned as in a trance her secret deeds, telling me how she
had killed her boy husband and taken her brother for a lover.
I bore Nero’s cup of poison to his victims and watched their vain
efforts to grapple with unconquerable agony, or their final look of
terror as the growing paralysis of death crept over them. There was in
the long list of poisoners, ancient and modern, a French abbé who in
particular interested me. His crimes had been uniformly successful,
for he had discovered a drug which left no trace, but a gradual terror
took possession of him and, though unsuspected, he confessed his
guilt.
Recorded poisoners have necessarily been the clumsiest. To be detected
is to confess oneself unskilled. Pretty, dainty Madeline Smith,
sitting imperturbable and charming through the long days of her trial,
must have reflected that the thing could have been better done and
that eighteen is a little young to begin.
Madame de Brinvilliers and the French poisoners in the reign of Louis
XIV. were fascinating. The crime drew a meretricious charm from the
daintiness of the period, even if the punishments were barbaric. It
was certainly unlike the porcelain manners of the time to break a
lady, an aristocrat, on the wheel.