THE FIGHT
It was almost dark by the time they reached the lodge gates. Brett, moved
by impulse, stopped the carriage in the main road. The others alighted
after him. Mrs. Crowe, the lodge-keeper's wife, opened the gates, and
evidently wondered why the carriage did not enter.
"Good evening, Mrs. Crowe," said Brett, advancing. "Have you seen a
telegraph messenger recently?"
"Lawk, sir," she cried, "I didn't recognise you in the gloom! No, sir,
there's been no messenger, only--"
Then she uttered a startled exclamation.
"Why, there's Mr. David an' Mr. Robert! I could ha' sworn one of you
gentlemen walked up to the house five minutes ago, an' I wunnered you
never took no notice of me. Well, of all the strange things!"
"It was a natural mistake," said the barrister quietly.
Then he told the coachman to wait where he was until a message reached him
from the house.
He did not want to disturb the visitor who had caused Mrs. Crowe to
"wunner," nor was there any use in sending the carriage back to
Stowmarket. Somehow, he felt that Capella would not come to Beechcroft
that night.
The five men went rapidly and silently up the avenue. As they approached
the lighted library, they could see a servant parleying with the Japanese.
A motion of Brett's hand brought the party into the shade of the sombre
yews.
"You and Holden," he said to Hume, "go round to the main entrance, proceed
at once to the library door, enter the room, and lock the door behind you.
Be ready with your stick, and do not hesitate to lunge hard if Ooma
attacks you. You, Holden, keep the revolver handy. It must only be used to
save life. The moment you appear at the door we will rush to the window,
which is open. Ooma must have entered that way. You both understand?"
They nodded and walked off, clinging to the line of the trees. The others
closed up. Timing their approach with perfect judgment, they crept over
the gravelled road at the bend, and gained the turf in front of the
window.
Ooma's back was towards them. They could hear his voice--a queer,
high-pitched, yet strident voice--whilst he questioned a somewhat scared
footman as to the whereabouts of his mistress.
The man had evidently perceived the remarkable resemblance borne by this
uncanny stranger to the Frazer family. His replies were respectful, but
stuttering. He was alarmed by those fierce eyes, more especially because
his inability to give satisfactory information seemed to anger the
new-comer.
"You are not a child," they heard Ooma say, with menace in his tone. "You
must have heard, from her maid or some other source, where Mrs. Capella
has gone to?"
"N--no, sir," stammered the man. "I really 'aven't I t--t--thought Mrs.
C--Capella was in London. The b--butler says we are all to 'ave a 'oliday
next week."
"Is there no way in which I can find out where your mistress is at this
moment? I must see her. My business is important. It cannot wait. It is of
the utmost importance to her."
Brett, straining without like a hound in the leash, could note a slight
accentuation in the perfect English spoken by Ooma. There was just a
suspicion of the liquid "r" so strongly marked in Jiro's utterance. What
an uncanny thing is heredity! It even alters the shape of the roof of the
mouth. The Japanese of English descent could necessarily pronounce English
better than the pure-born native.
The servant within seemed to rack his brains for a favourable reply.
"You might ask Mr. Capella, sir," he said at length, with some degree of
returning confidence. "He was expected here by the last train, but missed
it in London, I expect. He is sure to come to-night, and he will tell you,
if you care to wait."
"Mr. Capella! Coming by the last train! What is he like?"
"Do you mean in appearance, sir? He is a small, dark-complexioned
gentleman, with wavy black hair and a very pale face. He--"
But Ooma turned away from the man, and looked through the window, with the
lambent glare of a wild animal in his eyes. He instantly saw the three
motionless figures, Brett, Winter, and Robert Hume-Frazer.
They sprang forward. Robert was quickest, and reached the open window
first. The Japanese jumped back and made for the door, but it opened in
his face, and David entered the room. Behind him was Holden, who made no
secret of the fact that he carried a revolver.
Ooma caught the astounded man-servant by the waist, lifted him as though
he were a truss of straw, and threw him bodily at Robert Frazer and
Winter, bringing both to the ground by this singular weapon.
It was a fatal mistake to attack the readiest means of exit. Had he used
his human battering ram against Holden and David he might have escaped.
But now he looked into the muzzle of another revolver, and heard Brett's
stern demand:
"Hands up, Ooma! If you move you are a dead man?"
Nevertheless, he did move. He seemed to have the agility as well as the
semblance of a carnivorous animal. He bounded sideways towards the wall of
the library, picked up the writing-desk, and barricaded himself behind it.
In the same second he produced a small, shining article from his waistcoat
pocket, and shouted, in a voice now cracked with rage:
"Stand back, all of you. You may shoot me! I will not be arrested!"
Winter, swearing, scrambled from the floor. Robert, too, threw off the
yelling servant, and rose to his feet. Alarmed not only by the curious
entry made by David Hume and Holden, but also by the racket in the
library, other servants were now clamouring at the locked door, for Holden
had slipped his left hand behind him and turned the key. Brett similarly
closed the window. They were five to one, but the one seemed to defy them.
"That be blowed for a tale!" roared the infuriated detective, whose blood
was fired by the manner in which he had been floored. "I arrest you in the
King's name for the murder of Sir Alan Hume-Frazer, and I warn you--"
Robert Hume-Frazer waited for no preliminary explanation of an official
character. He wanted to feel that man's bones crack under his grasp. He
had the strong man's ambition to close with an opponent worthy of his
thews and sinews. Without any warning, he made for the Japanese, who
seemed to await his oncoming with singular equanimity, though otherwise
quivering with baulked hate.
But Brett had seen something that aroused a lightning-like suspicion.
Twice had the Japanese looked at a small, shining thing in his hand, as
though to make sure it was there. So the barrister was just in time to
grasp Robert's shoulder and hold him back.
"No," he cried, "you must not touch him. I command it. He cannot escape."
"Then let me have a go at him first," growled Frazer, whose face was pale
with passion.
"No, no. Leave him to me. Winter, do you hear me? Stand back, I say."
Brett's imperative tone brooked no disobedience. Thus, in a segment of a
circle, the five enclosed the one against the wall--Ooma barricaded by the
table, the others ready to defeat any stratagem he might endeavour to put
in force.
"Now listen to me, Ooma," said the barrister sternly. "You must drop that
thing you have in your right hand. You must hold both your hands high
above your head. If you move either of them again I will shoot you. If you
do not obey me before I count five I will shoot you. One! Two! Three!--"
The Japanese, gasping a horrible sort of sob, three times plunged the
instrument he held into his left arm. Then he flung it straight at Robert.
One would have thought his vengeance would be directed against Brett, whom
he must have credited by this time with his capture.
No; he singled out a Hume-Frazer for his last attack. The instrument
struck a button on Robert's coat and fell to the floor, where it lay
twisted out of shape by the force of the impact.
It was a hypodermic syringe.
Again Ooma uttered that weird cry.
"This is the end," he said. "You have not beaten me. It is Fate."
He folded his arms and looked at them. A change came over his face. He was
no longer a tiger at bay, but a human being, calm, dignified, almost
impressive.
"I arrest you--" began Winter.
"You fool!" laughed the Japanese, with a quiet contempt in his tone; "I
shall be dead in twenty minutes. That syringe contained snake poison, the
undiluted venom of the karait. Put away your pistols. They are not
wanted."
Quite nonchalantly he leaned back against the bookcase that lined the
wall. He turned his eyes to Robert.
"You have the luck of your race," he said "If that point had reached your
skin no human skill could have saved you. As it is, you are spared, and I
must go. The same blood flows in our veins, yet you are my enemy. I wish I
could once get my fingers round your throat before my strength fails."
"Come from behind that table and try," was the quick rejoinder.
Ooma made to accept the challenge, but Brett intervened.
"If you are telling the truth," he said, "you can spend your brief
remaining span of life to better purpose than in a mad combat with one who
has done you no harm. Where is Capella?"
"I killed him," was the cool reply.
The footman, who had slowly regained his senses, uttered a groan of
horror. By this time several men, not alone house servants, but gardeners,
grooms, and others, had gathered on the lawn.
"Send away that slave," cried Ooma impatiently, "and tell those others to
go to their kennels. This is no place for such."
Brett knew that the Japanese was in truth about to die. Afterwards Winter
and Holden confessed that they thought the pretence of injecting snake
poison was a mere ruse to gain time. Robert and David intuitively agreed
with the barrister. It was in their breed to know when eternity yawned for
one of them. The very calmness of the criminal, his magnificent apathy,
his dislike of vulgar witnesses, foreboded a tragedy.
Brett motioned to Holden to open the door, and the footman gladly made his
escape. In response to a wave of the barrister's arm the other servants
disappeared from view, though they probably only retreated to a greater
distance, and could see well enough all that happened.
"Yes," continued Ooma, "I killed Capella. It was a mistake. Everything is
a mistake. It was foolish on my part to kill Alan Hume-Frazer, even though
he was my enemy. I should have let him live, and tortured him by fear. You
English dread these scandals worse than death. We Japanese fear neither.
For I am a Japanese, and I am proud of it, although my ancestor was David
Hume of Glen Tochan, who fought and killed the man who robbed his father."
"But how and why did you kill Capella?" asked Brett.
"I saw him in the station at London. He followed me. I puzzled him, I
suppose. He perceived the likeness between me and my dear cousins. We are
like one another, are we not, we Hume-Frazers?"
He laughed mirthlessly, and stared at David and Robert alternately. Winter
broke in with a hasty question:
"If he is speaking the truth about the snake poison, shouldn't we send for
a doctor?"
No one had thought of this previously. Brett reproached himself for his
forgetfulness. So strange are our civilised notions that we strive to save
a man's life in order to hang him by due process at law.
It was Ooma who answered.
"Doctor!" he cried. "Bring him! Bring the whole College of Surgeons. They
can watch me die, and tell you learnedly why the blood curdles and the
heart refuses to act, but not all their science can beat the venom of the
little karait. It is an Indian snake, more deadly than the cobra, with
mightier tooth than the tiger. I meant to use that syringe on the whole
cursed brood of Frazers in this country. No one would have known what
happened to them. But look you, Fate is too powerful. The karait stored
his poison for me only. I killed only one of the race, and him I stabbed
with a Ko-Katana of my own house."
Holden left the room to send a messenger post-haste for the village
doctor.
"About Capella?" persisted Brett.
"Ah, Capella. He sought his own death. He looked at me so oddly that I
thought him a spy. I was alone in a carriage when, half-way here, he ran
along the platform at a small station and joined me. He began to question
me. I looked out of the window and saw that we were coming to a viaduct
over a stream between deep cliffs, so I took the little man and cracked
his neck. Then I flung him over the bridge. It was a mistake. He should
have left me alone."
He described this cold-blooded murder of the unfortunate Italian with the
weary air of one who recites a tedious episode. The lids drooped heavily
over his eyes.
"I am tired," he said. "That was a good little snake. He knew his
business. He could make the best of poison."
"Surely," said the barrister solemnly, "you are not so utterly inhuman
that at the very point of death you still maintain the attitude of a
disappointed avenger. What wrong had all these people done you to demand
your murderous hate?"
Ooma seemed for a moment to rouse himself from lethargy. Once again the
black eyes sparkled with their menacing gleam.
"It is you," he cried, "you, the thinker, who question me. I never gave a
thought to you, or I would not now be slowly sinking into death. I might
have guessed that a higher intelligence was at work than that which saw
the Ko-Katana with its motto, and yet failed to read its story. You ask my
motives. Can a man explain heredity? Here"--and he threw a packet of
papers on the writing-desk--"are the proofs of my identity. It is not long
ago, only one hundred and fifty years, since David Hume was robbed of his
birthright, and what is such a period to the old families of England and
Japan? There are men living in Japan to-day who saw his son in the flesh.
I am his lawful descendant. I came to England and resolved to be an
Englishman. But I needed money. Do you remember our motto, 'A new field
gives a small crop'? The first Japanese Hume did not prosper. He was a
good fighter, but he saved no yen. So I applied to my family. I came here
on the New Year's Eve, and Sir Alan Hume-Frazer saw me walking up the
avenue. He stepped out through that window to meet me. He was surprised at
my appearance, and thought I was his cousin Robert, whom he had not seen
for years."
At this remarkable statement the four listeners chiefly concerned looked
wonderingly at each other. The main incidents of the family feud were
repeating themselves in a ghostly manner.
Ooma paid no heed to their amazement. He staggered unsteadily to a chair
and sank into it limply. It was the chair which David Hume occupied when
he slept, and dreamed. Not even Winter saw cause for suspicion in the act.
Ooma was dying. His yellow skin was now green. His lips were white. His
whole frame was sinking. At this phase he became a Japanese, and lost all
likeness to the Frazers.
He continued, with an odd cackle:
"I kept up the error. I demanded money as my right, and from his words I
gathered that the Frazers had been at their old tricks and defrauded
another relative."
Robert started.
"Do you hear?" he murmured to Brett. "That accounts for Alan's strange
reception of me the same day."
Brett held up a warning hand. Ooma was still talking.
"I taunted him with thriving on the plunder of his own people. That made
him furious. He raved about the world being in league against him. The
only relative he loved, one who was more than brother, had stolen the
woman he wished to marry; his sister was a living lie; his cousin a
blackmailer. I laughed. 'Do you disown your sister, then?' I asked. He
took from his breast-pocket some papers--you will find them there, on the
table--and told me, in great anger, that he possessed proof that she was
not his sister. I was cooler than he, and saw the value of this admission.
I pretended to go away, but hid among the trees and saw him walk about the
library for nearly an hour. I meant to enter the house if an opportunity
presented itself, and, trusting to my appearance, go to his bedroom, if he
changed his clothes and went out. But he helped me by placing the papers
in the drawer which I afterwards broke open. I saw him meet you"--he
feebly pointed to Robert. "I saw you arrive in the carriage," and he
indicated David. "Then I determined to wait until the night. I went back to
Stowmarket, where I left a portmanteau at a small hotel"--Brett knew that
Winter stole a look at him, but he ignored the fact--"and changed my
clothes. In England, at night, a man in evening dress can enter almost any
house. When I returned I carried my bag with me, as I did not know how I
might wish to get away subsequently. I saw the preparations for the ball.
They helped me. David Hume's unexpected appearance at midnight upset my
plans. Waiting near the gate, I witnessed Alan's meeting with a girl in a
white dress. Whilst they were talking, I ran up to the house and found
David asleep in the library. I resolved to act boldly. Even he would not
know what to do if he suddenly discovered another Frazer in the room. To
force open the drawer I picked up the Japanese sword, and knew it as
belonging to my house by the device on the handle of the Ko-Katana. The
thing inspired me. I obtained the papers, and was going out when I met
Alan. He had seen what I was doing. He called me a cur, and the memory of
my ancestor's vengeance rushed on me, so I struck him with the knife, and
left it resting in his heart as he fell. Afterwards it was easy. No one
knew me. Those who had seen me thought that I was either David or Robert
Hume-Frazer. I depended on the police and the servants to complete the
mystery. They did. I saw David meet the same girl in a white dress near
the lodge, so I sent the post-card which I made Jiro write for me. He
wrote it badly, which was all the better for my purpose. I meant David to
be hanged by the law; then I would marry Margaret. That is all. Give me
some brandy. I am dreaming now. I can see curling shapes. Ah!"
He gulped down half a tumblerful of raw spirits hastily procured by Brett.
Again he attempted to shake off the torpid state that was slowly mastering
him. He lifted his eyes feebly to Brett's face, and his face contorted in
a ghastly smile.
"You!" he croaked. "I should have killed you! You carried my stick that
night in Middle Street. Why was I not warned? Did you follow the girl from
the hotel? I was a fool. I tried to stop the inquiry by getting rid of
David Hume-Frazer. As if he had brains enough to get on my track! About
that girl! She believes in me. She does not know anything of my past. Do
not tell her. Try to help her. She is coarse, one of the people, as you
say here, but she has courage and is faithful. Help her!"
His head drooped. The action of the brandy, whilst momentarily stimulating
the heart, helped the stupefaction of the brain. It was a question of a
minute, perhaps two.
"Why did you come here to-day?" asked Brett quickly.
"To see Margaret. She would give me money. I was going away. That man--I
threw from the train--was her husband? He was not--a proper mate--for a
Frazer--or a Hume. We are--an old race--of soldiers. We know--how to die.
Four of us--fell fighting--in Japan. I am dying! What a pity!"
His head sank lower. His breath grew faint. His voice died away in
unintelligible words. After a brief silence he spoke again.
The words he used were Japanese. In his weakened consciousness all he
could recollect was the language he learnt from his Japanese mother--the
mother he despised when he became a man and knew his history.
Winter and Brett were now holding him. The others drew apart. They
afterwards confessed that the death of this murderer, this tiger-cub of
their race, affected them greatly. He was fearless to the end. The way in
which he quitted life became him more than the manner in which he lived.
There was a bustle without, and the local doctor entered. He looked wise,
profound, even ventured on a sceptical remark when the barrister explained
that Ooma had injected snake-poison into his arm. But he lifted the
eyelids of the figure in the chair and glanced at the pupils.
"Whatever the cause of death may be, he is undoubtedly dead!" was his
verdict.