A Picture from the Past
"The fact is," said Bennett, "I haven't quite known what to make of Mr.
Farnham since he's been back on this side the herring-pond. Of course he
hasn't been well, but that would hardly be enough to account for the
change in him. Did you see him, may I ask, Mr. Stanton, when he was in
England?"
I informed him that I had done so, not thinking it best to volunteer the
statement that I had only met him once.
"And did he seem like himself?"
This was rather turning the tables upon me. I was not prepared to answer
many questions, but without hesitation I replied to this one, saying
that, in my opinion, Farnham had seemed uncommonly jolly and well.
Bennett looked thoughtful. "He got home here in Denver at night," he
said, "after telegraphing from New York he was coming; I went to call at
his request--another wire--not a letter--and he saw me in bed. Mr.
Farnham is fond of plenty of light and noise as a rule, but in his
bedroom he had refused to have the electricity turned on, and there was
only a lamp on the table, as far as possible from the bed. I called out,
'How do you do?' in my usual tones, but he answered me almost in a
whisper. There were some important papers which had been waiting for him
to sign, and I had taken them with me, thinking he'd be anxious to
attend to them--he was always so keen and prompt in business--but he
seemed quite angry when I suggested it, and said he wasn't to be
bothered about anything of the sort for a week.
"Next evening I saw him again for a few moments, and there was the same
dim light, the same whispering. He was going away again immediately, he
informed me, and when I objected that he didn't seem up to travelling,
he answered that when there was a lady in the case there was no question
of a man being 'up to' things. I might send his letters to the Santa
Anna Hotel, San Francisco, he went on, until further notice, which I
should receive by telegraph in about ten days if his plans went well.
Just as I was going he said, kind of laughing and yet partly in earnest
too, 'Well, Bennett, if you don't hear from me at the end of that time,
you'd better begin to look me up. The game that I mean to try and win is
a dangerous one. There are others who want the lady beside myself.'
"Now, if there was a town on the face of the earth that Mr. Farnham used
to hate, that town was San Francisco. It was because he hated the
journey, and never wanted to take it again, that he sold his mine out in
California to the English gentleman, Mr. Wildred. I wouldn't have
supposed that there was a woman alive would have got him to go to San
Francisco, and I used to think, too, that Mr. Farnham didn't care much
for women; but no doubt the longer one lives the more one learns, and
the more surprises one gets in such matters. I needn't say much about
his being away from Denver for a few days, even at the office, he hinted
to me; and with that we parted. Next morning early he left, and not a
line have I had except a wire, merely announcing his safe arrival at the
Santa Anna Hotel."
I listened in silence. Before Bennett had finished speaking my thoughts
were far away--as far as San Francisco.
"By Jove!" I exclaimed aloud, with a rushing of blood to my brain that
pulsed to bursting in the little veins at my temples. "_The Santa Anna
Hotel!_"
"Do you know it, Mr. Stanton?" enquired Bennett, evidently surprised at
my sudden vehemence.
"I was there once many years ago," I said. "The name has brought back an
old association to my mind which I had thought was lost."
I knew now where I had seen those strange light eyes of Carson
Wildred's, and what was the deed with which they had connected
themselves in my mind. After all, perhaps, I had not come to America for
nothing!
My memory travelled back over a space of ten years. I had then come back
to San Francisco after an expedition into distant wilds with a party of
friends shooting grizzlies in the Rockies. I had stopped at the Santa
Anna Hotel, a small hostelry lately built, having an English landlord,
and therefore greatly frequented by Englishmen.
On the night of my arrival there had been a serious disturbance in the
house. Three men who had been stopping at the place got quarrelling over
a game of cards which they were playing in a private parlour. Two, who
were the hosts, and were entertaining the third, had set upon him with
intent to kill, being accused of cheating. I and several of my friends
had run out from the billiard-room, hearing a yell for help, just in
time to see a man in evening dress stagger, bleeding, from the opposite
door. "I'm killed! That devil has murdered me!" he exclaimed, and fell
forward on his face.
At Bennett's mention of the Santa Anna Hotel the whole scene had come up
before me as vividly as though it had been enacted but yesterday. The
open door, showing a brilliantly-lighted interior; cards scattered on
the carpet; a young man--almost a boy--standing, as if frozen with
horror, by an overset table; a large bowie knife, common to the country,
apparently fallen from his right hand to the floor.
At the door itself an older man, who had followed the victim, no doubt
with the intention of keeping him from making an outcry or escaping into
the hall. But he had been too late, and the expression of his face as he
met our eyes was hideous. Though the knife had to all appearance been
used by his companion, it was at _him_ that the murdered man had
pointed before he fell and died. _He_ was the one apostrophised as
"that devil" by the death-stricken wretch; and though he had had a high,
aquiline nose, red hair, and bristling auburn brows that met across his
forehead, the eyes had been those of Carson Wildred.
They were eyes not easy to forget, especially as they blazed defiance
into those of the men who sprang forward to lay hands upon him. "There
stands the murderer, gentlemen, as you see," he had said, making a
gesture towards his young companion, a boy of eighteen or nineteen, who
seemed too astonished and horrified to move. Despite the evidence of the
fallen knife, however, not one among the men who witnessed the end of
the scene believed that the youth was guilty. Murder was in the eyes of
the other, and must have betrayed him, even if the last words of the
dead man had not accused him.
California was somewhat wilder in those days than it is at present, and
men were more ready to act upon impulse. So it was that, as two of us
gripped the fierce, red-haired fellow, another of the party flung some
whispered word to the boy, who had only spoken to murmur brokenly, "God
knows I'm innocent!"
What that whispered word was no one knew save he who spoke it and he to
whom it was addressed. But whatever it might have been, it seemed to
rouse the young man to life and a realisation of his position. With a
leap he was at the long window and had sprung out on to a verandah,
which ran round three sides and three stories of the house. The room was
on the first floor, and it was easy enough for an active young fellow to
let himself down by one of the twisted pillars which supported the
verandah of the lower storey.
It could not have been so easy to escape those who half-heartedly
followed; but the boy must have found some safe sanctuary near by, for
not only did he evade his pursuers, but was never found or brought to
trial.
The other, an Australian, calling himself Willis Collins, known as a
gambler, suspected as a card "sharper," was less fortunate. But for the
cry of the dying man he might have cleared himself; but his reputation
was against him to begin with; it was proved that the other was a young
Englishman who had lost his money through Collins, and been duped by
him, and altogether matters went hardly with the elder of the two
confederates. He was tried and condemned (not for murder, as it
happened, but manslaughter), and sentenced to imprisonment for twenty
years.
The incident had passed out my mind until, on a visit to America six
years later (four years previous to my present one), a man who had been
of our bear-shooting party in the Rocky Mountains had chanced to mention
that the fellow had very cleverly succeeded in making his escape from
the prison where he had been confined.
I had had no personal interest in the affair, and though it had made
considerable impression upon me at that time, through being called up at
the trial as a witness, I do not suppose I had summoned it to my
recollection for many a long day until now, at the mention of the Santa
Anna Hotel.
It was no wonder, I told myself, that I had not been able to decide
where and how I had seen Carson Wildred previous to the night when
Farnham had introduced us to each other at the theatre. Unless I could
collect proofs not at present in my possession, it would even now be
useless to instill my conviction into the mind of anyone else.
Carson Wildred had a peculiarly flat nose; Willis Collins had had a
particularly high one. Carson Wildred's hair was inky black; Willis
Collins's had been a bright auburn. Wildred's face was smooth; Collins's
mouth and chin had been concealed by a heavy though close-cropped red
beard. So far as I knew there was but one man living who could have
effected so radical a change, not only in the appearance, but in the
actual conformation of features, in the countenance of any human being,
and that was an old fellow in Paris, who had gained a reputation and a
fortune among men who had reason to cut loose from the moorings of their
past. I had met this famous (or infamous) person in a curious way, and
had heard some strange stories from his lips. If I had made his
acquaintance, why should not Collins or Wildred have done so and
profited by the friendship, as fortunately I had neither the desire nor
need to do? I determined that, unless my present researches were more
successful than I now dared expect them to be, I would, on my return to
the other side, run across to France, and endeavour to piece together
the bits of this old but newly-discovered puzzle.
Meanwhile, however, I had other work, and work closer at hand.
"While you've been talking, Mr. Bennett," said I, "I have been coming to
a conclusion."
He smiled. "I'm glad of that, sir," he returned. "I have risked
betraying Mr. Farnham's confidence that I may ask you what you think of
that last hint of his, which, to tell the truth, has troubled me very
much, coming, as it did, on top of so many queer actions. Although he
was, or pretended to be, half in joke, ought I to let him stay away
without taking any measures to find out whether his life really was
threatened in California, and trying to help him out of a scrape if
necessary? Of course, if it was all straight he'd be furious to have a
watch set on his actions, and would never forgive me the indiscretion.
Still, I haven't heard from him, as I said, since the day of his
arrival, and neither my mind nor my conscience is very easy, Mr.
Stanton. The question is, What would you do if you were in my place?"
I was delighted at this, and turned half away, that he might not see my
change of countenance.
"It's rather a difficult position," I said, slowly, "for _you_. But
there's a simple way out of it, without the necessity for you to run any
risk of losing Mr. Farnham's favour. I've been to the Santa Anna Hotel
before. There's no reason why I shouldn't go again if I choose, and no
reason why I should mention having spoken with you at all if I meet my
old friend. I'm something of a nomad, you know, and if I'm in England
one month, and turn up in Kamtchatka the next, nobody is ever in the
least surprised."
"But have you been thinking of going to California?" asked Bennett, half
relieved and half dubious as to the course proposed.
"Oh, yes, I've been thinking of it," I promptly answered. But I
neglected to add that it had only been during the past five minutes.