I sit down to this chapter of my Memoirs with an unwonted relish,
because it exhibits me as an instrument in the hands of Providence.
Doubtless, in our business, we perform that function oftener than the
law recognises, but seldom so directly, so unequivocally, as in the
adventure I shall now relate. And I say this, not because it left
me with a title to one of the neatest little estates in the West of
England, but because I, the one man necessary to the situation, dropped
upon it (so to speak) with my hands in my pockets. I had never before
happened within thirty miles of Tregarrick town: I walked in at one
end purposing only to walk out at the other: and, but for a child's
practical joke, I had done so and forgotten the place. It was touch and
go, in short: the sort of thing to set you speculating on the possible
extent of man's missed opportunities.
I had stepped ashore, after a voyage from Hull (undertaken from
expedience and not for health), upon the Market Strand at Falmouth,
with one shilling and fourpence in my pocket. I have been in lower
water, but never with such a job before me; and I started to tramp
it back to London with little more than a dog's determination to get
there somehow. The third afternoon found me in Tregarrick, wet through,
sullen, and moderately hungry. The time of year was October: all day it
had been raining and blowing chilly from the north-west; and traffic
had deserted the unlovely Fore Street when, as the town-clock chimed a
quarter to five, I passed the windows and open archway of the Red Hart
Hotel. A gust from the archway brought me up staggering and clutching
my hat: I faced round to it, and, in so doing, caught a momentary
glimpse, above the wire blind in a lower window, of a bald-headed man
within standing with his back to the street; and at the same instant
heard a coin drop on the pavement behind me.
A richer man would have halted, turned and scanned the pavement as
I did. But a richer man would probably have taken longer to assure
himself that nothing had been lost from his pocket, and would certainly
have taken longer to suspect that the coin might have been tossed to
him in charity. I flung a glance up at the window overhead, and spied a
penny dangling over the sill by a string.
At once I recognised the secular jest; and stepped across the roadway
to get a look at the performer. As I did so, an elderly man in an
Inverness cape and rusty hat and suit emerged briskly from the archway
of the inn, glanced up at the weather, and passed along the pavement
beneath the window.
Thereupon, I saw the trick played to perfection. A curly-headed
youngster popped into view, leaned out, rang the coin down at the very
heels of the pedestrian, and whisked it as nimbly up. The man whipped
round and, seeing nothing, pulled out a pair of spectacles and began to
adjust them. I heard the youngster chuckle overhead as he stooped and
a deflected gust from the archway, skimming his hat into the gutter,
revealed the same bald head I had observed above the wire blind.
Just then, three other faces appeared; one above the same blind and
two at the upper window behind the child. And a moment later I had
spun right-about on my heel and was apparently in deep study of a damp
placard upon a hoarding opposite.
The two faces at the upper window were interesting, had there been
time to consider them; and one--that of a lady, obviously the child's
mother--struck me as uncommonly beautiful, though pale and desperately
sad. Beside her stood a man, as obviously the father; a handsome
gentleman, with the flushed face and glassy stare of a drunkard. He
stood there chuckling at the trick, and even the lady was smiling
indulgently until she leaned out and caught a glimpse of the victim:
whereupon, with a sudden terrified snatch, she drew the boy back from
the window, and out of sight.
It was then, as I looked at the bald-headed man, seeking some
explanation of her terror, that I caught sight of the face staring over
the wire blind in the lower window, and lost not a second in presenting
my back to it.
It belonged to an old acquaintance of mine. "Acquaintance," I say,
because Robert Leggat and I had never been able to stomach each
other. There was perhaps a trifle too much of the gentleman about
both of us--enough, at any rate, to suggest rivalry, though we hunted
different game. "Buck" Leggat was by gifts and election a sedentary
scoundrel, with a tongue and a presence fatally plausible among women
and clergymen, and a neat adaptable pen. Whence he came, or of what
upbringing, I could never discover. I had heard some hint of an Oxford
education, but he never alluded to that University in my company.
Flash notes had brought him to the Old Bailey, and then his elegant
deportment and a nice point of circumstantial evidence had saved his
neck. This was about four years ago, and I had supposed him to be
somewhere in the Plantations when his bad handsome face confounded me
across Tregarrick Fore Street. He wore a clergyman's bands, too.
By good luck he had not recognised me, but was occupied with the
bald-headed man who still groped on the pavement. The placard which I
appeared to be studying announced the Sale by Auction of a considerable
country estate, and my eyes roamed among such words as "farms,"
"tenements," "messuages," "acres," while I cast up the possible profit
of my discovery. Here was I, pretty hungry, with barely the coin for a
night's lodging. Here was Leggat, escaped convict, lording it in the
coffee-room of a hotel, masquerading as a parson; therefore up to some
game--a bold one--by the look of it a paying one. Decidedly I ought,
with a little prudence, to handle a percentage.
I edged away from the hoarding to the shop-front on my left--a
watchmaker's; and so, still presenting my back to the Red Hart, past a
saddler's, a tailor's, the entrance of the County Hall, and the Town
Clerk's office. Here, out of view from Leggat's window, I turned,
stepped across the street into the hotel archway, and walked boldly
into the coffee-room which opened out of it on the left.
Leggat had disappeared. The room in fact was empty.
I rang the bell, and after some minutes it was answered by a waitress,
a decent girl, though somewhat towzled.
"There was a clergyman here a moment since," said I.
"That will be Mr. Addison. Do you wish to see him?" She eyed me with
no great favour, and indeed my clothes ill agreed with the respectable
dinginess of the coffee-room.
"So Addison's the name!" thought I, "and a pretty good one too. I
wonder if Leggat has the face to claim descent from the essayist. He's
capable of it." I pulled out my only shilling. "Well, yes, I want to
have a talk with him: but I'll sit down and wait till he comes, and
meanwhile you might bring me a glass of rum hot, with one slice of
lemon. Mr. Addison is staying the night here, I suppose?"
"I don't know," she answered. "Anyhow, he won't be riding home to
Welland till late. But hadn't you better come to the bar for your rum?"
"Well," said I, "if it's all the same to you, I'll stay where I am. To
tell the truth, my dear, I've come to see Mr. Addison about putting up
my banns: and that's a delicate matter, eh!"
Upon this she began to eye me more favourably, as I expected. There's
an _esprit de corps_ among women--or an _esprit de sexe_, if you
will--which softens them towards the marrying man. Surrender to one,
surrender to all. "But you don't belong to Welland parish," said she.
"Quite right. It takes two to make a wedding, and the young woman
belongs to Welland."
"Who is she?"
"Aha!" I winked at her knowingly.
"I come from Welland parish myself," she went on, her curiosity fairly
piqued.
"Then if you happen to be going home to church next Sunday keep your
ears open after the second lesson."
She tossed her chin and went off on her errand, but returning in three
minutes with the grog, must needs have another try. "I reckon it's
Susie Martin," she declared, and nodded at me with conviction in her
eye.
"Well, now, supposing it's Susie--and, mind you, I'm not admitting
it--you won't forbid the banns, I hope?"
"La, no! And I'll wager Mr. Addison won't, either," she tittered.
Plainly, here was an answer worth pondering. "You seem to be pretty
full in the bar, to-night?" I observed, casually, to gain time; and,
indeed, a hubbub of voices from across the archway smote on our ears
through the double baize doors.
"The auctioneer is standing treat."
"Oh!--ah, yes--the auctioneer, to be sure," I murmured.
"The sale won't begin in the Long Room before six: he has half-an-hour
for wetting their whistles. Seeming to me, you'll be lucky if you
get Mr. Addison to attend to _your_ business before it's over. But,
perhaps," she added archly, "you'll like to have a word with Susie,
to fill up the time? Shall I send her word that you are here? I dare
say she'll find a chance to slip down to you; that is, if her mistress
attends the auction."
"But will she?" I asked, doing my best to look wise.
She nodded sagely. "I shouldn't wonder. She'll want to look after the
squire; he's more than half drunk already."
"It's plain you're a clever girl," I said; "but we'll let Susie wait
for a while. And my business can wait on Mr. Addison. If his is an
auction, mine is notoriously a lottery."
"There's one thing to console you," she answered smartly and (in the
light of later knowledge I am bound to add) wittily; "you aren't
drawing a blank." And with this shaft she left me.
Now the girl's talk was nothing short of heathen Greek to me, as
doubtless it is to the reader, and I sat for ten minutes at least
digesting it with the aid of my grog. Here was Leggat, my quarry,
identified with a Mr. Addison, incumbent or curate of a country
parish within riding distance of Tregarrick. He was here to attend an
auction. My thoughts flew to the bill I had been pretending to study
half-an-hour before; but unfortunately I had given it no particular
attention, and could only remember now that it advertised an estate of
good acreage. The name "Welland," indeed, struck me as familiar, but I
could not refer it to the bill, and must pull up for the moment and try
a cast upon a fresh scent--Susie Martin. Mr. Addison, _alias_ Leggat,
is not likely to forbid her banns, whoever she may be; in other
words, won't be sorry to see her married. And Susie is a servant--of
a mistress who will probably be attending this auction--to look after
a drunken husband, who presumably, therefore, is also concerned in
the auction. I recalled the two faces at the upper window, the one
tipsy and the other sad, and felt pretty sure of having fixed Susie's
employers. I recalled the lady's start of terror as she had caught
sight of the bald-headed man below, and that I had first seen the
bald head behind the window out of which Leggat had looked a minute
later. If the bald-headed man had been talking with Leggat, this might
connect her terror with Leggat. And both she and Leggat were to attend
the auction. But what was this auction? And who the dickens was the
bald-headed man?
The tangle--as the reader will admit--was a complicated one. But so far
fortune had served me fairly; and considering the adventure as a game,
in my knowledge of Leggat and his ignorance of my being anywhere in
the neighborhood, I still held the two best trumps. In speculating on
the possible strength of these two cards a new opening occurred to me.
I had come with the purpose of forcing Leggat to buy me off or admit
me into his game. But might there not be more profit, as there would
certainly be less risk, in taking a hand against him? I had no fancy
for him as a partner. I knew him for an unhealthy villain, with an
instinct for preying on the weak, a born enemy of widows and orphans.
If only I could discover what the stakes were, and what cards the other
side held! Well, but I could have a try for this, even. I could, for
instance, apply to the squire for a job, and this might throw me in the
way of Susie Martin.
I stepped to the baize door, and passed out upon the archway. Six yards
to the right, the Boots, with his back to me, was fixing a ladder to
climb it and light the great lantern over the entrance. To my left a
broad staircase ran up into the darkness. I tip-toed towards it, gained
the stairs, and mounted them swiftly, but without noise, guiding myself
by the handrail.
The stairs ran up to the first floor in two flights, with a bend about
half-way. At the top of the second flight I found myself facing a
pitch-dark corridor. The rooms facing the street must (I knew) be on my
right; but as I groped along, my palm found the recess of a doorway on
my left, and pressed open the door which stood just ajar. I drew back
and listened: then, hearing no sound, poked my head cautiously within.
The room was dark, but the glow of a dying fire at the farther end
gave me some idea of its dimensions. A faint reflection of this glow
fell upon the polished surface of something which I guessed to be a
mahogany table-leg, and, after a second or two, I perceived, or thought
I perceived, two heavily-curtained windows, reaching almost to the top
of the wall opposite.
I was reconnoitring so, in the recess of the doorway, when I heard a
low tapping far up the corridor, and withdrew my head in time to see
a door open and the faint ray of a candle fall upon a figure standing
there, about twenty yards from my hiding-place; the black-coated figure
of Mark Leggat.
"Hullo!" I said to myself. "Now for Susie!"
It was not Susie, however, who stepped out and, closing the door behind
her, confronted Leggat, candle in hand. It was the pale lady I had seen
at the window.
They stood for a moment conversing--so their attitude told me--in short
whispers; and then came slowly down the passage towards me, the lady
appearing to protest whilst Leggat persuaded and reassured her. At
first I took it for granted they would enter one of the doors opposite;
but, as they still came on, I saw that I must either retreat or be
discovered.
I backed, therefore, around the half-open door and into the room. Then,
as their voices drew near, it flashed on me that this might be the room
they were seeking. I took three breathless paces across it, and found
the table's edge. Guiding myself by this, and guided by the mercy of
Heaven, which kept my feet from striking against the furniture, I found
myself within three yards of the window nearest to the fireplace, with
just time enough to make a dash for cover, and whip behind the curtain
before Leggat pushed the door wide, and the pair entered the room.
"You _must_ give me five minutes!" Leggat was saying. "I tell you it's
not for my sake, but for yours; it's your last chance!" Then, as the
lady made no answer--"You did not believe you had another chance?" he
asked.
"There can be none!" she answered now. "You have ruined me; you have
ruined us all: and it was my fault for not warning Harry in time."
"My dear Ethel," he began; but a gesture of hers must have interrupted
him, for he checked himself, and went on--"Very well, then, my dear
Mrs. Carthew, if you prefer it; you are at once too weak and too
scrupulous. A fatal defect, although you make it charming! Until
too late, you hid from yourself that you loved me. When that became
impossible you ran for shelter behind your vows and a theory--which you
know in your heart to be impossible--that I, who had ventured so much
for you, did not love you."
"Love!" she echoed hoarsely. "What love could it have been that sought
this way?"
"Well, as it happens, it _was_ a way. Harry? Tut-tut, with Harry I was
merely the handiest excuse for going to the devil. Suppose you had
never set eyes on me. You know well enough he was bound to gamble away
Welland sooner or later, just as he will sooner or later drink himself
dead. I am sorry for the child; but, look you, I am going to be frank.
It was just through the child I hoped to get you. To save Welland for
_him_ I believed you would follow your heart and take my help with
my love. You wouldn't. You couldn't help loving me, but--as you put
it--you are a good woman: and even now, with the sale but an hour away
and a sot of a husband to lead off with poverty, you won't."
She had set down the candle on the table; and now, having made a
peephole between the two curtains, I saw her lift her head proudly.
"No," she said, "to my shame I loved you; but you would buy me, and I
am not to be bought."
"I know it," he answered, and let out a grim laugh. "But on one point
I am going to prove you mistaken. You believe that because I tried
bribery I did not love you. You win by that error; but it is an error
nevertheless, as I am going to prove."
While her eyes questioned him he drew a roll of notes from his pocket.
"Your fond brother-in-law intends to buy Welland," said he.
"James?"
"To be sure," he nodded while he ran through the notes with finger and
thumb. "As the eldest brother, James Carthew wants Welland, to add
it to the entailed estates. He has always wanted it: but these eight
months, since that infant was born to him, he has wanted it ten times
more. To-night he bids for it: and for decency's sake he bids through
me--which is precisely where he comes to grief."
"I don't understand."
Leggat went on silently counting the notes. "Three thousand, five
hundred," he answered; "the deposit money and a trifle over, in case
of accidents. James Carthew is a rich man. I should reckon him up at a
hundred and twenty thousand, and be within the mark."
"But why should he employ you?"
"In the first place, I suppose, because I've played the game for him
throughout, and played it pretty successfully."
"_You?_"
He nodded. "You don't suppose Harry was playing against _me_ all this
while? My dear lady, you cannot ruin a man at the cards without some
capital of your own; that is, supposing you play straight, as I beg to
observe that I did. No, no: I had a backer, and that backer was your
amiable brother-in-law."
"But why?"
"Simply because a steady-going man like James, however much he inherits
by entail, resents the choicest portion of the property--which does not
happen to be entailed--being willed away to a loose dog of a younger
brother. And when that younger brother marries and has a son, whereas
he has married a childless woman, he resents it yet more bitterly.
He cannot digest the grievance that, when he dies, the whole must go
to the son of the brother who sits and drinks the wine in Naboth's
vineyard. But, as it happens, his childless wife dies, and presto! he
marries again. At a decent interval a child is born, and now is his
time to play a tit-for-tat."
"He always hated us, I know," she murmured. "But _you_----"
"But I," he answered gaily, "am about to spoil that pretty game--and
for your sake. Yes, and although you don't know how, and will never
know how, I am going to risk my neck for it." He tossed the bundle of
notes across the table towards her. She put out a hand as it rolled off
the table's edge and dropped at her feet. "Count them: because I have
to use them to-night to buy Welland back for you." And now there was
a real thrill in his voice. "Count them," he insisted: "they are only
the first-fruits, and after to-night you may never see me again: they
are only the deposit on the price, and after the auction I shall ride
away--not back to Welland Vicarage. But I have a word to leave, or to
send, for Master James Carthew, and if these notes do not buy Welland
back for you I am mistaken. I am what I am, and from what we are such
poor devils as I cannot escape. But at least I have loved you, and in
the end you shall be sure of it. Count them!"
He wheeled about on the words as the door was flung open. On the
threshold stood Squire Harry Carthew.
He was white in the face and more than half-drunk. Under one arm he
carried a leather-covered case and a pair of foils. His gaze wandered
from his wife to Leggat, then back again to his wife.
"I want," said he, addressing her with husky solemnity, "a word with
Mr. Addison in private." She bent her head and moved from the room, and
he bowed as she passed, but somewhat spoiled the effect by shutting the
door upon her train.
"I think," he said, closing the door a second time and locking it upon
her--and his tone grew suddenly sharp, though he remained none the less
drunk--"I think, Mr. Addison, we need waste no time. My wife's maid,
Susie, has told me all that is necessary. You will choose one of those
pistols, and we can settle the matter here and now. No!"--for Leggat
had begun to edge towards the packet of notes lying on the floor--"you
are not to stir, please, until we understand one another." He laid the
foils on the table and held out the case. Leggat took the pistol next
to his hand.
"You are drunk, Carthew."
"Am I? Well, that is likely enough, and as a sportsman you won't object
to allow for it in our arrangements." He slipped the door-key into
his breeches pocket and, still holding the pistol in his right hand,
leaned forward and laid his left on the base of the candlestick. "You
start from that end of the room, and I from this by the fireplace. Are
you ready? Here, take one of the foils too. After I have blown the
candle out you will remain at your end and count twenty, in silence, of
course. I will do the same at my end, and then we begin."
"Don't be a fool, man! This is no duel; it is murder, and foolish
murder."
Squire Carthew puffed out the candle. Then the guard of the foil
rattled softly upon the mahogany as he closed his hand upon it. "Count
twenty, please."
I leave the reader to picture my situation. There, in the silence and
the darkness with these two--one of them drunk--prowling to kill. In
all my experience I can recall nothing so entirely discomfortable. I
had no defence but the folds of a window curtain. I could not stir
without inviting a thrust or a pistol shot, or both. And I may remark
here, that there is a degree of terror which resembles physical
sickness. _Experto credite._
I heard the men kick off their shoes; and after that for many
seconds--though I strained my ears, you may be sure--I heard nothing.
Then a hand brushed upon the woodwork of the recess and even rested
for a moment against the curtain, within six inches of my nose. It was
Leggat I could be sworn. I drew back as his fingers felt the stuff of
the curtain and passed on groping; I even heard the soft crack of his
elbow-joint as he gripped the foil again, which for the moment he must
have tucked under his armpit.
And with that it flashed on me what he was after--the roll of notes
lying on the floor, between the table and the fireplace, barely a foot
beyond the table's edge and perhaps four yards from my hiding place.
I knew the spot exactly. Squire Carthew had almost touched the packet
with his foot as he stooped to blow out the candle.
I dropped on hands and knees behind my curtain, pushed it softly aside
and began to crawl. I could hear nothing now but my own heart drumming.
For the next few moments, if I made no sound, it was unlikely either
that Leggat would steal back upon me or that the squire could reach me
without encountering Leggat. My hand touched the table-leg, and the
touch of it, coming unexpectedly, almost made me cry out. A moment
later I felt more easy. Once beneath the table I was comparatively
safe. But I must get my hand on these notes, and after pausing a
second I steered towards the fireplace, poked out my head and shoulders
beyond the table, and smoothed my palm across the floor until my
fingers touched the packet and closed upon it.
At that moment, in the darkness, to the left, a foil rattled against
a chair. The sound was a slight one, but it betrayed Leggat's
whereabouts, and, with a gasp of triumph, Carthew came running upon him
from the right.
I ducked my head, but before I could slip back he had blundered right
across my shoulders, which reached, perhaps, to his knees. He went over
me with an oath and a crash, and as he struck the floor his pistol
exploded.
I drew back with the smoke of it in my mouth and nostrils--and
listened. Not a sound came from Leggat's corner, not a groan from the
body stretched within reach. The man was dead, for certain; and we
others had no time to lose.
A thud in the corridor outside called me to my senses. "Robert Leggat,"
I cried, "this is a black night's job for you! Lay down that pistol,
find your shoes, and run!"
At this distance of time I would give something to know how it took
him--this voice calling his true name out of the darkness and across
Carthew's body.
"My God! Who is that?" he asked, and I could hear his teeth chattering.
Before I had need to answer, he broke from his corner and flung up the
window, but recollected himself, and ran for his shoes. He had scarcely
found them when there came that rush upon the stairs for which I had
been listening, and a woman's voice screamed, "The Mistress! They've
murdered the mistress!"
In my heart I blessed Mrs. Carthew--poor soul--for having swooned so
conveniently outside the door. By this time Leggat was clambering
across the window sill. What sort of drop lay below it? I saw the black
mass of his body framed there for a moment against a sky almost as
black, and watched as he lowered himself, and disappeared. I listened
for the thud of a fall; but none came, and running to see what had
befallen him, I caught another glimpse of him as he stole past a lit
skylight in a long flat roof scarcely six feet below.
Here was luck beyond my hoping. The crowd in the passage was still
occupied with Mrs. Carthew, but at length someone tried the handle
of the door. This was my cue. I clambered out after Leggat--who by
this time had disappeared--drew down the window-sash cautiously and
wriggled across the leads of the roof, pausing only at the skylight
to peer down into an empty room, where a score of wooden-seated
chairs stood in disarray by a long table--the deserted auction-room,
doubtless. At the far end of this roof a chimney-stack rose gaunt
against the night; and flattening myself against the side of it, I
waited for the dull crash which told that the crowd had broken in the
door.
I had made better speed, you understand, but for the risk of overtaking
Leggat and being recognised. As it was, I had set the worst of all
terrors barking at his heels, and by and by--it may have been after
three minutes' wait--I chuckled at the sound of a horse's hoofs in the
stable-yard below me. It was too dark for me to catch sight of the
rider as he mounted; but he made for the lower gate of the yard and,
once past it, broke into a gallop. As its echoes died away, I began my
search for the ladder by which Leggat had descended; found it, as I had
expected, in the form of a stout water-pipe; and having reached the
ground without mishap, brushed and smoothed my clothes and sauntered up
the stable-yard to the hotel archway.
At the foot of the stairs there, I was almost bowled over by the Boots,
who came flying down three stairs at a stride. "The Doctor!" he
shouted: "the Doctor!" He tore past me and out into the street.