MY FRIEND PASQUALE
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
JAMES SELWIN TAIT
AUTHOR OF
“WHO IS THE MAN?” “THE NEAPOLITAN BANKER,” ETC., ETC.
NEW YORK
TAIT, SONS & COMPANY
UNION SQUARE
COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY
J. SELWIN TAIT
[_All rights reserved_]
TO THE DEAR MEMORY OF HER,
WHO FIRST INSPIRED MY PEN,
I DEDICATE THESE PAGES.
MY FRIEND PASQUALE.
CHAPTER I.
The events narrated in the following story happened a score and more of
years ago. They have never before been made public, and I make them
known now with pain and misgiving, but impelled by a sense of duty which
I can no longer disregard.
During their occurrence they changed the current of my life, once from
grave to gay, and then and finally, from gaiety to unspeakable gloom.
Although time has to some extent dulled the edge of my grief at the loss
of my friend Pasquale, his memory will remain with me while life lasts
as a cherished and sacred thing.
When the reader ends this simple narration this eulogy of the dead may
surprise and shock him, and, in reply and explanation, I have only to
say in advance that I pity him if the faithful, unvarnished record
leaves that impression on his mind--he did not know Pasquale.
* * * * *
I was wending my way homeward from Hampstead Heath one Saturday
afternoon in the early summer time, when I found myself, on recovering
from a lengthened reverie, midway on the Old North Road at a point now
occupied by the Midland Railway Terminus at Saint Pancras.
My day’s work at the bank was finished and with it all the duties of the
week, and I felt that sense of relief and buoyancy which, perhaps, comes
to all, young and old alike, at the completion of tedious work honestly
performed.
I was still--at the period of which I write--a good deal of a
day-dreamer, living in a world of my own for many hours of the
twenty-four, and when the heavy bank doors clanged behind me, with all
business cares and anxieties doubly barred within the impregnable vault,
my mind would soar away from business thoughts as an imprisoned lark
leaps to freedom from its narrow cage.
The road I was traveling was not one which I would have taken
intentionally, but in my fit of absent-mindedness I had unconsciously
followed the trend of the highway with the result that I was committed
to one of the most uninviting thoroughfares in the city of London.
As a highway this road was but little used; it had already been secured
by the railway company, and with the exception of one public-house of
low character there were no dwellings fronting it, but only the wreck of
the torn down structures demolished to make way for the company’s
projected improvements; and this wreckage was walled, or penned in, by a
high and closely boarded fence running the full length of the road.
The Old North Road was nearly a mile in length between these wooden
walls, and it was a street to be shunned not only by females but by
solitary travelers of even the stronger sex, for it afforded no means of
escape from an unpleasant encounter.
When I had traveled about one third of its length my attention was
attracted to an excited group of men some three hundred yards distant.
These men I found, on nearing them, to be coal-heavers employed by the
railway company, and already a good deal exhilarated by their wages-day
libations.
They were broad-shouldered, powerful men--a collection of sooty
giants--and the sport which they were enjoying was an impromptu
dog-fight, an amusement entirely after their own heart.
As I approached the group on the one side, a young man of about my own
age neared it from the other, and we both stopped to ascertain the cause
of the excitement.
The sight of one dog apparently killing the other was to me a revolting
spectacle, and I was turning away in disgust when I saw the other
arrival elbow his way fiercely through the men and attempt to drag off
the dog which seemed to be gaining the victory; in doing which he
certainly risked his life.
“O, you great, black cowards!” he shouted, his voice ringing in the air
like a trumpet, “to allow two poor creatures to worry each other in such
a way!”
His movements were so sudden that he had actually grasped one of the
dogs before his intention could be frustrated, but as soon as he touched
the animal a burly coal-heaver seized him round the waist, and lifting
him high in air, carried him out of the crush into the middle of the
road, where he planted him on the ground and released his hold. Not
ill-naturedly altogether, but yet with a warning look in his grimy face
he placed his bulky body in front of the disturber of the fight, saying
as he did so, “Master, we are not molesting you, leave us alone, or----”
the threat in his eyes supplied the rest.
The stranger whose face was pale as death, and whose eyes literally
flamed with rage, said not a word, but, quick as lightning, his right
hand shot out and struck his opponent straight between the eyes. The
amazing fury of the blow, the skill with which it was given, and the
smallness of the hand which struck it, had, to some extent, the same
effect on the dense skull of the coal-heaver as the pole axe has on the
head of the ox. He fell, not backward, but forward, on his knees, as a
bullock falls when struck.
The group around the two dogs had given no more thought to the intruder
after their companion had removed him, but now one looked around and
seeing his friend on the ground and probably concluding that the
foreign-looking stranger had stabbed him, he rushed to secure the
intruder.
The latter, however, seemed possessed with an ungovernable fury and flew
at his new assailant as if he would rend him to pieces. Even a blow
from the ponderous fist, though it landed him three yards away flat on
his back in the dusty road, in nowise discouraged him. In a moment he
was on his feet flying like a tiger-cat at his antagonist’s throat, his
dark eyes gleaming anew with electric fire. In the midst of the _mêlée_
a hansom cab drove up, and the driver stopped to witness the double
event.
Others of the group now gathered around, and I feared, not for the
safety of the stranger’s limbs, but for his life. It was an “ugly” group
for any single man to attack. These men, although easygoing enough up to
a certain point, were incarnate fiends when roused, and they were
already disposed to be quarrelsome.
At length the coal-heaver tore the other from his throat, and getting
him at arm’s length promptly felled him to the ground.
No movement this time--was he dead? That sledge-hammer blow might well
have fractured the skull of a delicate man!
Such men don’t always stop at knock-down blows, and when one, the worse
for liquor, shouted “Kill the fellow,” I called to the cabman, “For
Heaven’s sake get the injured man out of this.” “You get him inside
here,” promptly replied the driver. “Stand back!” I yelled to the men
with a horrified air, which was only half-assumed; “you have killed
him,” and stooping down I raised the slender figure in my arms. As I did
so the cabman turned his horse as if to drive off, but in reality in
order to put his vehicle between the men and myself. This he did with
much adroitness and without obstruction, as the others thought he was
simply preparing to leave.
His movement enabled me to place the slowly recovering figure in the
hansom cab without interference.
“Drive on!” I shouted, but, alas! a smoke-colored Hercules had seen my
movements and had grasped the horse’s head with a grip of iron. It was
the brute who had yelled “Kill him.”
Knowing remonstrance to be entirely useless I struck the wretch with my
stick with all the force I could muster. He staggered under the blow and
released his hold. A moment more and the horse sprang forward, and as
the cab passed me I caught at the driver’s seat, and with one hand on
that and a foot on the powerful spring which supported the body of the
carriage on that side, I managed to hold on until we were clear of the
dangers which threatened us.
When I joined my fellow-traveler inside the cab, I found him crouching
on his knees with his head buried in the cushion of the seat. He had
recovered consciousness and was moaning softly.
“Are you hurt?” I inquired as I entered the cab, alarmed lest the
merciless blow of the laborer should have done the stranger some serious
injury.
The face which was upturned to my gaze was ghastly pale, and a wide
semi-circle of sombre shadow under the dark weird-looking eyes lent to
the latter a strange unnatural brilliancy.
“No, I am not hurt,” he replied; “but it always upsets me very much to
witness cruelty of any kind: did you see the dogs?”
As he made the inquiry a shudder ran through his frame as if the
recollection of the sickening spectacle had revolted him anew.
The rest of the journey to my quarters was performed in silence, while
I, mindful of the mad fury of my companion’s attack on the coal-giant,
labored mentally to discover where the consistency lay in trying to
seriously injure a human being because he objected to the stoppage of a
dog-fight. I had, indeed, no love for the brutal coal-heaver, but I was
nevertheless sensible of a spirit of incongruity about my companion’s
actions, and I was still puzzling over the problem when the cab reached
its destination--my own rooms.
After I had assisted my fellow-traveler to alight, and had discharged my
obligations to the cabman, the latter, addressing my new friend, told
him that he had undoubtedly had a narrow escape. “Had those men got hold
of you at the last, a squad of police could not have saved you; you have
to thank that gentleman that you are not now lying battered out of shape
on the Old North Road; and I know both the men and the place.”
When the stranger heard this he turned towards me with eyes suffused
with tears, and raised my hand to his lips.
“I thank you for saving my life,” he murmured, “and I will never forget
the debt I owe you.”
I replied, somewhat ashamed at the novel attention I was receiving, that
but for the cabman the incident on the road would probably have proved
fatal to both of us.
When the cabman left he carried with him a _pour-boir_ which made the
compensation paid by myself mean and contemptible in comparison.
“Thank’ee, sir, and God bless’ee. If ever either of ye want a friend I
hope Will Owen may be on hand to take the office;” saying which he
wheeled his cab as on a pivot, saluted with the handle of his whip,
touched his horse with the lash, and drove off.
When I turned to my companion I found him staring confusedly at the
houses.
“Why--where are we?” he inquired with considerable astonishment in his
voice.
“In Russell Square, and this is where I live,” pointing to No. 12, where
the hansom had stopped.
“Well, that is certainly very remarkable,” he observed with a low laugh
of astonishment. “Why, I live next door to you.” Saying this he handed
me his card, on which I found engraved, Amidio Pasquale, 13 Russell
Square, London. “I chose No. 13 for a residence to see whether there
were any ill-luck in the number.” This last remark was the result of my
having somewhat unconsciously repeated the word “thirteen;” but I was
thinking only of the extraordinary coincidence that we who had been
brought together under such circumstances that day as would almost
certainly tend to bind us to each other in future, should find ourselves
already next-door neighbors.
Was it a coincidence--or was it only the first distinct move made by the
finger of fate on the chess-board of our lives?
Now, in these later years, when I recall the terrible ending to our
brief friendship begun that afternoon, it seems to my embittered and
discouraged soul that there was naught of coincidence in the
circumstance at all but, that, the time having come, Destiny began her
grim and blood-stained task in that kindly work of mercy attempted on
the Old North Road that day, reckless whether the blows which fell so
unrelentingly from her hand were struck by means of the crosier of the
Churchman or by the bludgeon of the assassin; or whether it was the
pinion of an angel or the hoof of a demon which she had seized to speed
her in her dire inscrutable work.
Is it because Man’s best deeds fall so far short of the approval of the
Immortal Gods that ofttimes they appear to be used--in sheer satire--as
instruments of untold misery and tragedy?
My friend accompanied me to my rooms, and for a time he sat in silence,
crouching over the fire in the grate, and every now and then shivering
as if from the sight of another horror.
“Did the appearance of the dogs impress you so very painfully?” I
inquired, anxious to find some solution for my new friend’s state of
semi-hysteria.
“O don’t speak of it!” he exclaimed, his voice quivering with emotion,
and the tears welling in his eyes, “One dog was literally being worried
to death!”
“O yes,” I replied, “it looks like that, but there are many ups and
downs even in a dog fight; probably the under dog had its turn after a
while, and it is surprising how much chewing they can stand from each
other and be but little the worse.”
Pasquale turned upon me speechless for the moment with horror. Then, ere
his glance had lengthened to a stony glare, he said with an apparent
effort at restraint, “But I forgot you did not see the animals, and
cannot therefore know how terrible it all was.”
“Well, be content,” I hastened to say by way of encouragement. “You did
your best; you knocked one coal-heaver almost senseless, and you tore
the other’s neck-tie to pieces, besides lacerating his face, and----”
“Do you know,” he interrupted, striding up to me with his eyes aflame
and the veins standing out round and black on his forehead, “do you
know, sir, that I would have liked to tear those men limb from limb for
stopping me, and I almost think I would have done so, if I had not been
prevented.”
And I thought so too, as I gazed at him standing there almost suffocated
with the fury of passion.
This strange anomaly--this combination of dove-like tenderness, and
tigerish ferocity was a complete mystery to me, and I felt bewildered at
the contemplation of it.
After a time my friend’s mood changed, and he apologized humbly for his
outbreak. “I am entirely unhinged by the events of the day,” he said
gently. “I am not usually like this, I can assure you”--a statement
fully borne out by my after-experience of him, for a brighter, gentler,
more delightful companion I shall never again meet in this world.
His last words as he left me were: “I am not feeling well, and shall go
away for a week, but when I return you and I must see much of each
other.”
CHAPTER II.
Life in London had great attractions for me during the first year of my
residence in that wonderful city. Not because of the gaieties of the
metropolis, for of those I knew nothing, while of its more solid
attractions my ignorance was equally great.
So long as my books retained their charms I had no appetite for other
recreations or attractions.
The busy crowds which in my homeward journey pressed past me on all
sides, callous as to my welfare and heedless of my existence, delighted
me because they gave me, with a sensation which thrilled me like a
passion, the enchantment of an isolation and seclusion greater than
those of the unpeopled desert.
When I arrived at home I gave myself up unreservedly to the enjoyment of
my library.
My rooms were comfortably and even richly furnished, and the apartments
themselves were of imposing dimensions. Before the tide of fashion had
rolled westward from Russell Square, the house in which I lived had been
a mansion of considerable pretensions; and this, to suit the more modest
requirements of the new class of tenants now occupying the square, had
been divided into two good-sized houses.
The cutting of the house in two had resulted oddly at some points, and
in my rooms signs of new walls, foreign to the original design of the
building, were discernible; as were also two massive oaken doorways
which had apparently at one time communicated with the opposite house,
but had since been closed up.
Of these two doors more hereafter.
The bright fire, the softly-shaded light, the dainty surroundings and
the book I loved, suggested something of a Sybaritish existence during
my evenings, and sometimes my conscience pricked me about yielding so
unreservedly to what certainly was a most pleasant enjoyment.
I need not, however, have fretted at the slender dissipation, since the
hour was already on the wing which was to shatter the repose of my life
into fragments, and to tarnish for evermore the gold with which these
earlier days were being perhaps over-gilded.
Life, however pleasant, had seemed tame beside the dramas of Literature;
soon Fiction was to pale before the tragedies of Fact.
Pasquale called upon me immediately on his return, and as I found him
then he continued without change until the end. Bright, cheery,
brilliant and debonair, his sun suffered no eclipse until it sank
forever.
Our acquaintance soon ripened into the warmest friendship, and ere long
the wonderful charm of his manner began to wean me from the books which
had hitherto enslaved me.
When at no lengthy intervals he came to “rout me out” and carry me off
for a long walk through the crowded streets I closed my volume with ever
lessening regret.
His powers of perception, naturally great, had been trained until they
had all the acuteness of the most delicate sense, and allied to a mind
accustomed to reason inductively they filled his brain with scenes lost
to the ordinary observer.
At the first glance he seemed to penetrate the mask which disguised the
true character of those he was brought in contact with. The various
hand-writings which mark the human visage, as well as the influences
which mould the actions of the body, seemed alike familiar to him, and
when the pros and cons were duly weighed in his logical brain the real
character of the individual, and not the outward pretence, lay mapped
out before him with wonderful accuracy and promptness considering the
inexactness of the science which he cultivated.
Hence it was that, to myself, wrapped up in my books and blind to the
outer world, his analysis of the individuals who passed us in our
nightly walks, seemed marvelous in the extreme.
Occasionally we went to the music halls, but I think that, catching the
infection from my friend, I studied the onlookers rather than the
somewhat offensive and vulgar display on the boards.
Truth to tell, I relished Pasquale’s company a great deal more without
such tawdry surroundings. It was at that time a source of considerable
wonder to me what attraction my brilliant friend could find in my dull
society, and I sometimes endured the passing and humiliating reflection
that he simply used me as a species of human target into which he could
shoot the sharp arrows of his fancy, or may be, as a very rough
commonplace file against which to edge them.
Occasionally I called upon my friend by way of acknowledgment of his
many visits to myself, but I must have been very unfortunate, for the
answer given unhesitatingly was invariably: “Mr. Pasquale has gone out.”
Once indeed his landlady, who was an American by birth, told the servant
to go up to the third floor and see whether her lodger was in, but the
answer received was the same--“He is not at home.”
Strange to say, my friend, who was so communicative on impersonal
topics, was so reticent about his own affairs, that this was the first
intimation I had received as to the floor on which he lived.
“You live on the third floor, I live on the second,” I remarked on the
occasion of his next visit, anxious to furnish something new to the
conversation.
“Indeed!” he remarked by way of reply, giving me, I fancied, a sharp
glance and adding quickly, “How did you discover that, Wyndham?”
When I told him he smiled, and then added, “I go out a great deal. I
love long walks and am quite unable to bury myself in books as you do,
my friend; I wish you would come with me more frequently.”
This implied-craving for my society was entirely unintelligible to me,
for Pasquale’s marvelous brightness and gaiety rendered my own stolidity
more apparent to myself day by day. No discouragement seemed to daunt
him, no business cares worried him. From the first moment that he joined
me till he left, his language and his expression were radiant with humor
and buoyant light-heartedness.
Of money troubles he had, or appeared to have, none, and he explained to
me in a moment of exceptional confidence that his father, who was an
Italian wine-grower, had sent him to London to learn the wine-business
there, in order that he might eventually open a branch establishment in
the English metropolis.
“I have no extravagant tastes,” he added, “and my father is wealthy and
generous, so that I am usually well in funds; so, Wyndham, if ever you
are hard up, you must make me your banker.”
Little by little this strange, bright creature woke me from my old-world
dreams, until at length, for the first time since my arrival in London,
I felt the evenings drag when he failed to put in an appearance. His
sunny nature had become to me a panacea for all the dull and oppressive
cares of my own life, and I craved for his company, in which nothing
sordid or gloomy could live.
Pasquale, in spite of his apparently volatile nature, was a great reader
of a certain class of books, as well as a close student of human nature,
and now and again he would astonish me by his information on all
questions touching the phenomena of mind and matter.
“My friend,” he remarked one day, “you traverse all roads at intervals,
and therefore cross the same parallels of thought again and again; I
only travel one for the most part untrodden, and on that lonely and
fearsome path I am leagues beyond your utmost thought and that of, I
think, every other human being. In fact I imagine that I must be close
to the pole of human search; anyhow,” he broke off merrily, “I feel cold
enough for such a northern latitude, and am glad to warm myself by your
beautiful fire.”
Shortly after this I felt a great inclination for a moonlight sail on
the Thames, and having received an invitation to join a boating party I
asked permission to bring my friend.
“You have never seen the Thames by moonlight,” I remarked to him, “and I
am told that it is lovely beyond description. On Thursday next it will
be full-moon; will you come?”
I had spoken warmly in my anxiety to secure his company, but he answered
me coldly, “I cannot accompany you--I am full of sympathies and
antipathies; I love you, Wyndham, as much, I think, as life itself, but
I hate and loathe the moonlight worse than death. Don’t stare at me,
dear boy, it is constitutional and cannot be helped.”
Rather than go alone or leave my friend I gave up the intended trip on
the river, but for the next week I, nevertheless, saw nothing of him. He
was reported “not at home.” When he returned he informed me, in reply to
my inquiry as to his absence, that he had been called out of town. He
had often been absent in a similar way before and the occurrence
occasioned me no surprise.
Shortly after this I was sent to the United States by the firm I
represented, to deliver certain papers of importance to a client in
Chicago.
As I was about to leave, my friend Pasquale somewhat surprised me by
saying, “Wyndham, I can’t stand this place without you, so I think I
shall go off for a time too; my father has been urging me for a long
while to take a two months’ holiday, and has recommended Norway
salmon-fishing as a soothing and pleasant recreation. Sport of the kind
would be worse than death to me with my hatred of seeing suffering: so,
as he leaves the choice to me, I am thinking of going over to Paris. I
happen to know the Chief of Police there, and I want to master their
wonderful detective system and to see whether I am right in supposing
that I know more than others do about the peculiarities of the human
mind, more especially in its relation to the perpetration of crime; and,
so, dear old friend,” he concluded, “if you hear of any wonderful
captures during your absence, look out for my name!”
And so we parted with, on my side, many a yearning heartache for the
friend I was leaving behind me.
As the stately Cunarder carrying me on board steamed out from Liverpool,
the same day a channel boat bore Pasquale from Dover to Calais.
CHAPTER III.
When I arrived in New York I had not much opportunity of reading up back
numbers of the daily papers, but I was startled to see that the Chief
Commissioner of the London Police, Sir Charles Pendreth, had been found
dead in his bed by his own hand, and that, immediately following upon
his suicide, had occurred that of two of the leading police magistrates
of the metropolis.
These occurrences, dire enough in themselves, were rendered still more
terrible by the fact that each had killed himself in the same way--by
severing his jugular vein with his razor,--and had left behind him a
letter in his well-known handwriting explaining why he had committed
self-destruction.
In the case of the first suicide the coroner’s jury had found
considerable difficulty in avoiding a verdict of _felo-de-se_, as the
letter left behind displayed so manifest a purpose; but in the other
cases the deaths were unhesitatingly attributed to the spreading of an
epidemic of suicide, and the verdict of temporary insanity rendered in
both instances threw a merciful veil over the intentions of the
self-slain.
On my return to New York from Chicago I found a letter awaiting me. It
was from my friend Pasquale, and the sight of his handwriting thrilled
me with joy. Heaven alone knew how dry and barren my life had seemed
without him all these long weeks spent in dreary, uninteresting travel.
Pasquale stated in his letter that he had found his stay in Paris very
agreeable (I winced jealously at the thought) and instructive, and that
while there he had seen no reason to moderate his views as to his
ability to unravel any criminal plot, or to account for any mental
obliquity; and in virtue of this additional confidence in himself, and
of the further experience which he had gained, he proposed to go to
London shortly to endeavor to solve the mystery of the terrible mania
for self-destruction in that city.
Pasquale’s letter was dated the 1st of October; he hoped to arrive in
London on the 31st. So did I. Thank God, my old friend and I would soon
meet.
On the 1st of November the good ship “Saragossa” landed me safely in
Liverpool, and at 7. P.M. the same evening my cab drove up to the door
of No. 12 Russell Square.
As I descended from my cumbersome four-wheeler I noticed a hansom cab
dash up to the adjoining house, and words would fail me to express the
rapture with which I saw my friend alight.
His welcome was like a bath of electrified sunshine, so gay, so bright
and thrilling was it in its _empressement_, and as soon as he had seen
his portmanteau safely housed he turned to me, his whole voice vibrating
with pleasure.
“Wyndham, I can’t ask you into my dull quarters, but you and I must see
much of each other to-night to make up for our long separation, so as
soon as we have taken our baths and a chop I will run in to spend a
couple of hours with you, and I’ve got some lovely French cognac which
the occasion will absolve us for using,--dear, dear Wyndham, on my soul
I’m glad to see you--” and before I could retreat, much to my
embarrassment, he had clasped me by the shoulder and imprinted a hearty
kiss, first on one cheek, and then on the other.
“I missed you more than tongue can tell,” he continued, and as he spoke
the tears in his voice made it husky, as the glad mist in my own eyes
made my vision dim.
I noticed that Pasquale had brought back a French valet with him from
Paris, a tall, muscular and rather forbidding man in appearance, with
the stamp of the army or police about his square shoulders, stiff neck
and mechanical step.
“An old army man,” I murmured to myself; “an officer’s servant, most
likely.”
“You are becoming somewhat more fastidious, my friend,” I remarked, in
reference to the valet.
“No, no, Wyndham,” was the reply; “Jacques is supposed to be my valet,
but he is in reality a detective to help me in the work of penetrating
the English mystery. Sometimes one good clue becomes lost while you are
hunting up another, and Jacques’ duty will be to follow the scent before
it grows cold, while I am doing something else; but, pray don’t tell
anyone about him.”
What a delightful couple of hours we spent. As the clock struck eleven
my friend rose to go. By that time he had given me a full history of his
doings in Paris, and it would certainly have been difficult for a less
enterprising individual to have managed to accomplish so much of actual
work and positive enjoyment in so short a time.
“Then you never visited London at all during those two months?” I
inquired.
“Not once,” was the reply; “I should have hated to visit my old haunts
while you were away.”
With Pasquale back the old days returned, bringing with them the
sunshine which seemed to crown him like a nimbus, and scatter its
radiance all around.
As I stood by the old carved mantelpiece, winding up my watch after the
door closed on him that evening, my heart was full of an exhilarating
gaiety to which it had long been a stranger.
If I--a man by nature harsh and cold--regarded Pasquale with such tender
feelings, what emotions must he arouse in the gentler sex, and what
unutterable havoc must he work with their tender susceptibilities!
While this thought was exercising my brain, and as I turned into the
inner room, I became conscious of a deep groan uttered on the opposite
side of the blind doorway which stood between my bedroom and the room on
the same floor in the adjoining house.
I recollected that Pasquale had informed me that the floor under him,
that is, the one adjoining my rooms, was occupied by a troublesome old
Frenchman whose peculiar ways gave the people of the house a good deal
of trouble.
I waited for a time in silence, but the groan was not repeated, and,
eventually, I retired to rest, and to enjoy an unbroken and dreamless
sleep.
I awoke somewhat late the following morning, and as I was not obliged to
report myself at the office at the usual hour on that occasion, and as I
was, moreover, somewhat fatigued, I proposed to enjoy my breakfast in
bed and my morning’s newspaper as well--- to me an unprecedented luxury.
If I had anticipated that my morning meal should be enjoyed in comfort I
was doomed to be disappointed, for I had scarcely tasted my food before
a thundering knock at the door announced my friend Pasquale, who burst
into my room newspaper in hand, and with outstretched finger pointed to
the giant head lines on the newspaper, “Another Suicide--- Death of
Inspector Reynolds by his own hand.”
“Now, my friend, you will see whether my boasted skill is of any use. If
I do not prove to your satisfaction that there is something more in
these suicides than meets the eye, I will agree to forfeit everything in
life.”
I was thunderstruck and horrified. I pushed the paper away from me with
the first trace of genuine impatience which I think I had ever displayed
towards my friend.
“Take your horrid sheet away, Pasquale,” I exclaimed, “I don’t
understand your ghoulish glee----,” but my voice failed me when I saw
the look of pain and remorse which crossed his face.
“Wyndham, I swear to you before God,” he replied with an earnestness
which it is pitiful to remember, “that I would not injure a hair of
anyone’s head whom the Good Lord has made, no, not for life itself, if I
knew it.”
My friend left shortly afterwards, cast down, it seemed to me, in spite
of my reiterated assurance that I had spoken hastily and tetchily,
having only just been waked out of my sleep.
When I returned to my apartments that evening there had been up to that
time no indication of any clue to the cause of the suicide, beyond the
strange, unsatisfactory letter which, as in the other cases of suicide,
had been left behind him by the dead man; and the condition of the
public mind was, in consequence, one of profound horror and anxiety.
I had hardly dared to hope that my friend Pasquale would forget the
hastiness of my morning’s greeting so far as to call upon me, and I was
accordingly relieved beyond measure when I heard the old familiar knock.
He came in--with at first a glance askance--almost of timidity, such a
glance as a loving, warm-hearted woman might give to an offended and
over-sensitive friend. When he noticed my shamefacedness he advanced
gracefully towards me with outstretched hands, looking altogether too
pretty a picture to waste on a cold-blooded stiff-mannered Briton, and
added hugely to my embarrassment by kissing me softly on either cheek.
That terrible foreign fashion--would I ever get accustomed to it! “Thank
God! Wyndham, you and I are all right! If we were to quarrel I should
give everything up in despair.”
The evening passed as a hundred others had gone before it; in
controversy, brilliant and conclusive on the one side, and stupid and
dogmatic on the other.
“Your obstinacy almost converts me, it is so magnificent, in its
contempt of law and fact.”
Such was the Parthian shaft which Pasquale launched as he bowed himself
out, genial and smiling, as if our every sentence had been a harmonious
duet; but the parting words rankled in my sensitive breast, and as the
door closed behind my friend, I sat still and silent in a cold defiant
mood.
“Good-night, old friend,” said a soft and musical voice at my elbow.
“Forgive my banter; I won’t sleep a wink if you don’t shake hands with
me.”
Pasquale had softly re-entered the room and stood gazing at me with a
tender wistful look.
I gave him my hand somewhat grudgingly,--it pains me to remember,--and
after one glance at the pathetic eyes I resumed my stare at the dying
embers.
Oh, memory! Oh, days and years that have been! how much more bitter than
death itself are your whisperings of lost opportunities, of loving
deeds undone, loving words unsaid, of loving glances withheld!
After Pasquale had gone I sat for a while reflecting on what he had told
me about the result of his preliminary investigations into the cause of
the epidemic of suicide which was paralyzing the entire city.
One peculiar feature of these horrors he had especially dwelt
upon--namely, the fact that in each case the suicide had left a letter
stating that he had determined to take his own life. As to the
authenticity of these letters the authorities appeared to have no doubt
whatever. On comparison with other specimens of the dead men’s
handwriting they could not, it was declared, be called in question.
Then, too, there was the extraordinary similarity as to method. Each man
had, with great deliberation, severed his jugular vein, using for the
purpose his own razor, which, in every instance, had been found firmly
clasped in the right hand of the suicide.
“The Press call it a contagion of suicide,” Pasquale had said, with a
smile of contempt which had roused my easily stirred ire, “now I say it
is nothing of the kind. It is murder and not suicide, and I will prove
it so.”
Yes, that had been the absurdly egotistical remark which had finally
exhausted my forbearance. I had no patience with such hair-brained
ideas.
During the next week I saw nothing of my volatile friend, and when he
finally made his appearance he looked pale and, I imagined, thinner.
“I have been called away,” he explained to me during this visit, “and I
must now redouble my efforts to work out my theory as to those so-called
suicides.”
On the next occasion when he visited my rooms he told me with great
exultation that he had at length received from a prominent expert in
handwriting the assurance, after a searching examination, that the
letters purporting to have been written by the poor suicides had all
been penned by the same hand; and that on careful comparison, although
wonderful forgeries, they were all essentially different in character
from the handwritings of the dead men.
“Such is the opinion of the expert I employed,” continued Pasquale, “but
looking to the gravity of the subject and the responsibility of making
so serious a statement, before handing his written report to me he has
taken the precaution to obtain the opinion of two other experts on the
subject. These opinions,” continued my friend with something of the
exultation which had previously repelled me, “entirely endorse the views
of the expert which I employed.”
When Pasquale produced the letter received from his expert, I found that
his statement had in nowise been exaggerated. The original view and the
opinions endorsing it, written in cold and well-weighed language, rested
in my hand for a moment; then I dropped the dread papers on the table as
I would have thrown from my grasp a cluster of poisonous reptiles.
I was horrified, and expressed myself so. I had never before, it seemed
to me, been in such proximity to crime, and I shuddered at the contact
with this terrible link.
“And that is not all,” resumed my friend, “the death wounds were not
made by the razors grasped in the hands of the dead men, or at least not
in the case of the last victim, for, unfortunately, the bodies of the
others have been interred and I have not been able to examine them.
“A razor cuts with a slash or gash, but it does not and cannot make a
stab, whereas in the last case there was, first of all, a stab
penetrating far into the neck, and that was followed by a long cut which
severed the great artery and all the surrounding flesh. That is to say,
the murderer thrust the knife into the neck, then drew it towards
himself, and then the deed was complete.”
As my friend spoke, carried away by his subject apparently and
insensible to its revolting character, I grew dumb, petrified with the
horror of his revelations. His eyes, always brilliant, shone large and
clear and seemed to stand out from the pale ivory features. There was in
his appearance the force and pride of elucidation which a successful
counsel might show in entangling the criminal in the noose destined to
terminate his existence; but there was more than that: there was the
physical and mental ardor of the chase, and the flash of eye and teeth
which the Zulu Caffre shows when he poises his willing spear to flesh it
in his human victims.
“And do you know,” he went on, while I grew sick and giddy beneath the
horror of his narration, and the uncanny mesmerism of his eyes, “the
murderer, whoever he was, must, after all, have been a bungler, for,
just think of it, would any man who had killed himself with the cold
premeditation shown by those letters, have done so without first
removing the linen from his neck and otherwise preparing himself? When
facing the scaffold the murderer dresses in his best, and however brutal
and even brutish he may have been in life, he gives much and careful
thought to looking decent after death. It seems absurd of course--this
anxiety as to how one will look after death, more especially where, as
in the case of the murderer, the body will be given up to the tender
mercies of quick lime in an hour or two--and yet that this feeling does
exist is admitted by every person. Does not one of your great English
poets in ‘The Ruling Passion Strong in Death’ put these words into the
mouth of the dying coquette?
‘One would not, sure, be frightful when one’s dead
And, Betty, give this cheek a little red!’
“Now these men died in each instance without the slightest regard for
the _convenances_ of life or death, if I may be permitted to speak
deprecatingly of the dead. They had not an atom of regard for after
appearances, and glaringly belied human experience. But, unfortunate
men, that was no fault of theirs. They were in fact surprised in the
seclusion of their own rooms, where all busy and wearied men, thinking
themselves secure from intrusion, avail themselves to the utmost of the
few opportunities they have of being comfortably _en deshabille_.
“Moreover, they died without leaving behind them the faintest trace of
any preparation beyond these formal letters announcing their intentions;
such letters as, by the way, are rarely written by intending suicides.
“There is probably not one man amongst the millions on this globe who,
if calmly contemplating suicide, would not leave behind him some
evidence of preparation for the event; some last duty done, some last
message of love or upbraiding to be delivered; yet I have been informed
on good authority that there was, in every instance, an absolute
omission of any such farewell message, as well as of all sign of
preparation.
“On the contrary, there is considerable confusion in the business and
also in the domestic affairs of the dead men, such as, from their
well-known methodical habits, they would have been certain to provide
against had they foreseen their end even thirty minutes.
“So looking to the utter absence in this case of that studied decorum in
death observed by all men who do not slay themselves in the heat of
passion, and also to the total lack of arrangement in the deceaseds’
affairs, these facts alone would go far to prove that the dead men did
not kill themselves, but, taking them in conjunction with the revealed
forgeries, why, then, I say that the verdict of suicide is not to be
maintained for a moment.
“But even that is not yet all”--and as my friend resumed he rose to his
feet with a fire and force in his whole aspect which, together with his
marvelous theory, affected me so powerfully that I, too, rose in
sympathy, and we faced each other pale as death on the hearthrug. “No!”
and the words came almost hissing from his lips, “these men were not
_killed_ by the wounds in their throats; they were killed--or at least
the last one was killed--by the previous perforation of the base of the
skull by a powerful needle or bodkin! I found a small bluish colored
puncture at that point on the head of the last victim, and, on following
it up by my directions, the surgeon discovered embedded in the brain,
and penetrating half way through its entire depth, the needle-like blade
of a small dagger.
“Stay!” protested my friend as I was about to speak, “that is not all!
The blade had not been broken off; it had been released or discharged
from its handle by a powerful spring at the moment of the stab with the
intent that it should remain in the skull just beneath the surface and
so stop all hemorrhage, and every trace of it be removed by the closing
of the skin over it and by the natural covering of the hair.
“And even if the wound should bleed a little, the result would naturally
be attributed to the greater wound in the throat.
“And now, my friend, can you conceive a more hideous plot, or one more
fiendish in its ingenuity?”
When Pasquale had finished I felt benumbed with the force and fervor of
his presentment of the case. To me he was no longer the gay, and
brilliant friend, but the fierce and beautiful avenging angel of the
murdered men, and repelled though I was by the horror which surrounded
the series of crimes, I felt eager to aid him in his work of discovery.
“Have you taken any steps to find out whether the previous deaths were
caused in the same way?”
As I put this question there was a knock at the door and Pasquale’s
austere valet handed his master a letter which had just arrived, and
which being marked “immediate,” he explained, he had taken the liberty
of delivering at once.
In silence Pasquale handed me the letter, which stated briefly that in
deference to his request an order had been obtained to exhume the bodies
of the supposed suicides, with the result that in each case the same
needle or dagger point had been found in the skulls of the deceased.
The writer, in conclusion, intimated that the bodies would be held until
noon the following day in case Mr. Pasquale should wish to make any
further inspection himself.
As I handed back the letter Pasquale dashed off a few lines by way of
courteous acknowledgment, and stating that he would avail himself of the
offer and call and examine the bodies the following day.
That night was one of the most agitated and unrestful in my hitherto
placid life. For hours after Pasquale left I paced the floor of my room
possessed with a fever of unrest and a frenzy of excitement which tore
through my soul as a cyclone sweeps unresistingly through a bed of
reeds. By the morning every thought and aspiration of my life lay
prostrate before the one consuming desire to bring the murderer to
justice.
At nine o’clock I arrived at my office pale and haggard, and a few
minutes later I left to accompany my friend, excused from duty on the
plea of urgent business.
When Pasquale and I entered the Mortuary Chamber, where the bodies
awaited us, I shuddered for a moment and drew back. I had never seen a
dead body and my whole soul shrunk from the sight of a murderer’s
victims, in the various stages of decay. But after a time my courage
returned; or it were, perhaps, more correct to say, a new impulse
possessed me, and I went through the ordeal of the morning without
further display of weakness.
There was little additional evidence gleaned; but when the four dagger
points, which had been the means used to kill the murdered men, lay
side by side on the table, they were found to be exact in size and
shape, thereby proving beyond all doubt that the same hand had wrought
all the murders.
My friend, who was examining the weapons carefully under the microscope,
murmured to himself, “Antonio Seratzzi, Venice,” and in response to the
inquiry of my eyes he replied, “As nearly as I can decipher it for the
rust, that is the name of the maker of these daggers. It seems to me
that I have heard of them before, though for my life I can’t recollect
where or in what connection,” and he put his hand to his forehead as if
he were trying to recollect.
CHAPTER IV.
The publication of the discovery that the supposed suicides were, in
reality, murders committed by the same individual, filled London with
horror, which was intensified a hundred-fold by the knowledge that the
murderer was still at large.
The Metropolitan police, even when put upon the right track, failed to
discover any clue of the murderer, and at the end of a fortnight all
they could say in the way of elucidation was, that an aged man with long
white hair had been seen near the scene of each of the murders at the
time of the occurrence and prior to it.
There was nothing especially suspicious in his actions or appearance,
and the fact that he was in the neighborhood at the time might simply be
a coincidence, or the various testimony might not even refer to the same
individual, for white-haired elderly men are not at all uncommon in
London.
That the police should attach any importance to so faint a clue was
perhaps the best evidence of their admission how completely they were
baffled; so at least the public considered and the newspapers jeered the
officials for their inefficiency.
Meantime my friend continued his investigation with unabated ardor, and,
night after night, in the quiet of my bachelor rooms, we discussed each
point of evidence, however slight, and classified or dismissed it
according to its value.
Pasquale surrendered everything to the discovery of the dreadful
mystery, and he grew thin and anxious-looking as the days passed by
without throwing any further light upon it.
These were days ill-suited to hilarity, and much of the gaiety of
Pasquale’s sunny ways faded before their chilling influences; still if
the efflorescence of his light-hearted disposition seemed shed for the
time, the fact only served to reveal the true beauty of soul which was
the foundation of all I loved so much.
Save when crossed by the sight of suffering uselessly inflicted upon the
lower animals, I think he was the sweetest, gentlest creature God ever
made; and the most lovable.
“And yet so inexorable in hunting down the assassin!” the reader will
say--and I answer yes. Of the secret of that involved mechanism which
formed Pasquale’s soul I had no key; I only know that to me my friend
was like the fascinating page of some dearly-loved book--blurred and
unintelligible here and maybe there, but still sweeter in its occasional
illegibility than all the other volumes on earth combined.
At the end of the third week of search Pasquale’s valet called to
explain that his master had suddenly been summoned abroad to a family
council, but that his absence would probably not extend beyond a week.
If I could ever have found it in my heart to be vexed with Pasquale it
would have been over his habit of obeying those calls so promptly as not
even to allow himself time to bid me good-bye.
“Did your master leave no message, Jacques?” I inquired, puzzled to
account for the absence of any further explanation.
“No, sir; he left in haste and ordered me to present his apologies to
you for his omission to call and say good-bye.”
I looked at the speaker and endeavored to read his expression, but the
deep-set eyes dropped the moment they encountered my gaze, and the
clear-cut cruel lips and formidable jaw, together with the down-cast
eyes made one of the most unpleasing masks it had ever been my evil
fortune to gaze upon.
I thought of the masks of murderers in Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of
Horrors, and began to regard my visitor with a curious interest.
“Will you have a glass of brandy, Jacques?” I inquired, piqued by the
man’s impenetrability, and trusting to the liquor to thaw it.
“Thank you, sir.”
But the potent liquor served only to harden the deep lines which guarded
the reticent lips, and after I had measured the implacable face and
found no encouragement there, I said, “Jacques, that is all,” and, with
a low bow the inscrutable valet, or detective, left.
After he had closed the door, I amused myself by sketching his head in
profile upon the blotting pad. As the sketch lay before me it certainly
did not represent, according to either phrenologists or physiognomists,
a bad or wicked head. It was simply the side face of a self-contained,
determined man, and one possessed of considerable possibility of lofty
purpose.
I tossed the paper from me--disappointed in the sketch even more than I
had been in the original.
On the fourth day after my friend had left, I was aroused at an early
hour by the valet, who, after apologizing for the intrusion, handed me
the morning paper, and pointed to the announcement of another suicide by
a public functionary, and under circumstances precisely similar to the
cases which had preceded it.
As in the other instances, the victim’s hand grasped a razor, to account
for the deep wound in his throat, while his death was in reality due to
the puncture of the brain by the concealed dagger point.
My instant impulse was to telegraph for my friend to enable him to take
up the scent while it was fresh. I accordingly framed a message for the
valet to send in his own name, and this I--still in bed--requested him
to dispatch.
At four in the afternoon I received a note from the valet to the effect
that he had heard from his master, and that the latter would be with me
the following morning.
“Let me see the cablegram you received, Jacques.” “Sorry that I have
destroyed it,” replied that irritating individual. I thought that in a
gentle and careless way I would hint to my friend that however faithful
a valet or detective Jacques might be, something less like a cast-iron
sphinx would better meet the exigencies of ordinary life. I was
undergoing a childish fit of annoyance.
The evening papers gave full details of the so-called suicide and also
announced the fact that a white-bearded individual--such as the police
had connected with the previous crimes--had been seen in the vicinity of
the suicide, and had been traced.
Such was the condition of affairs when my friend, covered with the dust
of travel, entered my room the following morning.
At his urgent and indeed impassioned request, I obtained leave of
absence from the office that day, in order to aid him in following the
clues left by the murderer while they were still fresh.
As I left my apartments with my friend, I caught sight of his valet
standing at the entrance to the adjoining house. His usually stolid face
seemed to be expressive of anxiety, and once or twice he moved as if
about to speak. He had, however, all his life long cultivated a habit
of silence, and in his present spasm of uncertainty it prevailed. I saw
or appeared to see, a struggle going on in his mind, but I had no clue
to his apprehensions, and the symptoms of his distress were too
indefinite and too fleeting to justify action on my part; and, unwarned,
unchecked by the hand which still, even at the eleventh hour, might have
changed it, my friend Pasquale and I went forward to fulfil our
destinies.
I would fain draw a curtain over the events of the following twenty-four
hours. They have darkened my life, and they will shorten my days.
Pasquale and I examined each detail of the murder, but without throwing
further light upon it. The police, on their part, followed up step by
step the retreat of the white-haired murderer, only, however, to lose
him at King’s Cross. He had been too astute to hail a cab, and the
numerous exits afforded by that teeming centre gave him all the
facilities for escape which he needed.
When we parted for the night it was in disheartened silence. True,
Pasquale looked bright and cheery as usual, but I knew by my own
feelings that he must be as low in spirits as could well be. In vain I
strove to bury myself in an agreeable book; I could not read and I could
not rest.
At length, worn out by the day’s fierce though fruitless emotions, I
threw myself, tired and worn out, on my bed, and after a while I fell
into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Presently I awoke--suddenly and keenly conscious of the near happening
of some event of stupendous importance. The fire in the grate was still
burning brightly, so that I had not slept long. Why had I awoke so soon
and in such a startled and expectant state?
There was no apparent reason within my room--but, hark! what was that?
Clearly and distinctly, as if there were no obstructing walls, I could
hear the noise made by the tenant of the neighboring rooms as he
prepared himself to retire for the night. The sound of each movement
fell on my ear, in my then state of tension, with all the clearness of a
bell. I could even hear his muttered conversation. The latter seemed to
be of so strange and disjointed a character that, my curiosity
overcoming me, I stooped and applied my ear to the keyhole of the oaken
door which divided our rooms, believing that some demented person had
gained wrongful access to the adjoining rooms.
My view was limited to a few seconds, at the end of which the other door
which fronted the one in my own wall was abruptly closed. But in that
limited time my eye had garnered a terrible harvest, for in the
muttering inmate of the adjoining room I had identified--or imagined I
had identified--the white-bearded murderer as described by all who had
seen him; not indeed identified to me by the whiteness of his hair and
his age only, but by the blood-stained hands which he removed from his
gloves and by the weapon which he laid upon his table.
What to do I knew not, and, horrified beyond measure, I lay in my bed,
petrified with apprehension, waiting for the dawn.
With the first glimmer of dawn I sent next door for my friend, and
explained to him my midnight experiences.
“It is very strange,” he murmured. “Very strange. Who do you think lives
opposite to you?” From the glance he gave me it was evident that my
friend thought I had taken leave of my senses. “Only the old Frenchman
you told me of,” I replied. “Old Frenchman?” he returned with an air of
puzzled surprise and interrogation. “Did I say an old Frenchman lived
over against you? You misunderstood me, I think; he occupies the rooms
to the rear.” “Well, it was there that I heard the noise and saw the
man,” I replied.
A look of pain and perplexity had come into my friend’s face, and for a
few minutes he sat in silence, apparently lost in thought. Then he rose
to his feet and turned towards the door, adding as he opened it, “As
soon as you have breakfasted I would like you to accompany me to the
police station. I think you ought to tell the officers what you saw.”
There was still the same look of puzzled uncertainty in my friend’s
face, as well as an anxious glance, as if for my welfare, but there was
also a look of unutterable resolution as he said, as if to himself,
“There must be no hesitation; this thing has to be gone through.”
An hour later Pasquale and I arrived at the police station, and half an
hour afterwards two police officers, two detectives, Pasquale and myself
left for my friend’s house.
On the way thither Pasquale stepped aside to make a small purchase. “Go
straight on; I will follow you in a minute. I have left my pass-key in
another pocket, so you must knock for admittance.”
“Show these gentlemen up to the third floor.” Such was the landlady’s
orders to the servant when we requested to be shown to Mr. Pasquale’s
rooms, where we were to mature our plans.
When the servant reached the second floor she threw open the front
sitting-room door and stood aside to allow us to enter.
“This is not the third floor, my good girl,” exclaimed the senior
constable; “this is the second floor.”
“Well, sir! mistress calls it the third floor,” the servant replied.
At this moment Pasquale, who had joined us, remarked pleasantly, “The
girl is right; her mistress is an American and counts the ground-floor
as the first floor; these are the rooms which I occupy.”
“Yes, sir,” exclaimed the reassured servant, “these are Mr. Pasquale’s
rooms.”
My brain was in a perfect whirl--these my friend’s rooms! I had always
imagined that he lived on the floor above, misled by the American
landlady’s method of reckoning the floors. I glanced at Pasquale, but
he was unconscious of my look.
Turning to the servant he said, “Tell your mistress that the police wish
to inspect M. Goddecourt’s rooms, and bring us the key of his door.”
“M. Leon Goddecourt is the elderly French gentleman I spoke to you about
as occupying the rooms at the rear.” This was Pasquale’s explanation to
me.
When the servant returned with the key Pasquale led the way into the
passage communicating with the rooms at the back.
The occupant of the rooms was absent, and there was no hindrance to an
exhaustive examination. There was no door connecting with the rooms of
the house in which I lived. Nothing was discovered. The police were
turning to go, impressed, I believe, with the idea that I had been
hoaxing them, or else that the excitement of the murder had driven me
crazy for the time, when Pasquale, addressing me, inquired whether I was
certain that these were the rooms into which I was looking when I saw
the supposed murderer. “You can see for yourself, Wyndham,” he remarked,
“that your rooms and mine are not of the same length, and it was very
easy for you to make a mistake by concluding that the dimensions were
the same.”
“I cannot tell with any certainty,” I added falteringly, “for without
thinking very closely about it, I had assumed that the rooms on both
sides the partition were the same depth, but the door on my side is at
the extremity of my bedroom, and when you said that the Frenchman lived
at the rear, I concluded from the appearance of the man I saw that I was
looking into his rooms.”
“Well the matter can be settled very promptly,” remarked Pasquale. “If
you will go with one of these gentlemen, Wyndham, and show him the
doorway through which you saw the old man, we can easily connect with
you here.”
This seemed the most natural thing to do, and we prepared to carry out
Pasquale’s suggestion. As I was leaving the room the police sergeant
inquired whether Pasquale had the key of the door connecting my rooms
with his through the wall dividing the two houses, and before I passed
out of hearing I heard Pasquale explain that he had never had a key of
that door, and did not believe that there was one in existence.
When the policeman and I entered my apartments the former remarked that
he thought that the door which I pointed out to him would, if opened, be
found to lead into Mr. Pasquale’s rooms--“at least I judge so from the
relative length of the rooms,” he added.
Our loud knockings at the door through which I had seen the midnight
spectacle produced no result for a minute; evidently our friends were
still in the rear rooms. Then we could hear voices indistinctly, and
presently the sound of blows opposite to us showed that our friends had
at last “located” us.
After a short interval of heavy blows on the opposite door the latter
was burst open--that much we could hear by the volume of sound which
reached us--there was a shout of excitement, and presently the door
which had been forced was shut, and we could see and hear no more.
Something very amazing had happened; what was it?
* * * * *
How can I relate the story of the events which followed? Even now, at
this lapse of time, the recital of them chills my inmost soul. When we
returned to the other house, we found Pasquale, my friend and more than
brother, in the custody of the police. The space between the double
doors dividing his room and mine had revealed all the paraphernalia of
the supposed murderer, and that it belonged to Pasquale was apparently
beyond doubt.
The wig and beard; the clothes, the boots, the blood-stained gloves; and
even the hare’s-foot with which the face had been painted to the
semblance of age, all belonged to him and all were there; and worse and
still more damning evidence was found in an oblong ivory box of antique
pattern. Within this lay a stiletto handle, the ivory of which was
yellow with extreme age. The weapon had no blade, but imbedded in the
faded velvet of the lid were seven dagger points identical in every
respect with those found in the heads of the dead men.
As we came forward the police sergeant removed a handkerchief from the
pocket of the coat found in the recess.
It, too, was slightly stained with blood, and on the corner it bore the
embroidered monogram of my ill-fated friend.
Horror-stricken, I stared at the face of Pasquale, who was now securely
held by the police. Still the same puzzled expression in it; that and
nothing more. He was evidently unable to understand the situation.
After a time he heaved a deep sigh, and, stretching out his manacled
hands, he took up the ivory dagger, as if casually and disinterestedly.
“Yes, that must have been what he used,” he murmured; “I have read of
such stilettos.”
At that moment I caught the gaze of the valet, Jacques, who had silently
stolen into the room. I had, up to this time, well-nigh hated his
homely, reticent face for the way it resisted me, but now and
henceforward I loved it for the expression it bore on that fateful
morning.
It was the appeal of a hero prepared to sacrifice his life on the mere
fraction of a chance, and what his glance entreated was that I should
create a diversion so that he should carry out his intentions. The hard
lines on his inflexible face seemed to shiver and break in his terrible
anxiety, and his fears, although they added to my own dread, inspired
me.
“Stay!” I said to the officer, “I have a confession to make. This
gentleman,” pointing to Pasquale, “has done nothing; a child could see
by his face that he is innocent. I am the guilty person; my room also
opens on to that cupboard; I placed all the material of my make-up
there, and raised the alarm to disguise my own guilt,” and I held out my
wrists as if to feel the clasp of the handcuffs.
At the conclusion of my remarks Jacques sprang forward like a tiger,
hurled one detective to the floor, thrust the policemen swiftly on one
side, and, seizing his master by the arm, was hurrying him away when a
violent blow from the powerful and cool-headed sergeant disabled him.
“Arrest him,” the sergeant said briefly, to his subordinates, indicating
poor Jacques; then turning to myself, he pointed with his hand to the
door opening into my room, of which the bolts were still shot in their
sockets.
“I admire your efforts, sir, but you could not have entered that space
between the two doors from your room, for it was bolted against you!”
Meantime, Pasquale appeared unconscious of the turmoil. He seemed still
to be examining the stilettos.
Only once did he look up--when he heard me endeavoring to incriminate
myself--then a soft beautiful smile crept over his face, but he
nevertheless shook his head with inflexible determination.
“You must accompany me, sir,” said the sergeant to Pasquale.
“To jail?” inquired the other. “A Pasquale to jail!” and he laughed
softly, as if the thought amused him.
“Good-bye, Wyndham, dear old friend, faithful to the last; Heaven send
you the best of luck,” and he kissed me fondly and even passionately on
both cheeks. “God bless you twice over, once for yourself and once for
me, who never had a blessing;” and as he spoke a tremor shook his frame
and he was barely able to steady himself.
“And, Jacques, my faithful friend and guardian, God bless you too--pray
for me.”
Then his gaze grew dim with tears and he turned again to the strange
weapon still lying on the table.
“Who would have thought that these little bodkins could have wrought
such fearful havoc?” As he spoke he took up one of the steel points and
fitted it mechanically into its socket.
It was all over in a moment. With a rapid movement Pasquale directed the
point towards himself, his wrist turned slightly, the hand tightened
fiercely and then opened, and the ivory handle of the stiletto rolled on
the floor as Pasquale reeled and fell into the arms of those behind
him. His eyes opened wide, smiled the old smile into mine just for one
brief instant, then the darkness of death blotted out their light, and
the lids drooped slowly as if from overwhelming fatigue. Pasquale had
entered into the rest which knows no waking.
They thought that he had fainted, but I knew differently. The deadly
stiletto had done its last work faithfully and fatally. The quick turn
of the wrist and the fierce grasp of the weapon had released the
powerful spring concealed in the ivory handle, and the dagger point was
now imbedded in Pasquale’s heart.
* * * * *
A week later two visitors entered my rooms. They were my dead friend’s
father and the valet, Jacques. From the former I learned that his son
had, for some years, been subject to fits of dementia. These usually
occurred during the full moon. Mr. Pasquale’s reason for sending his son
to London was a hope expressed by the family doctor that an entire
change of scene might strengthen his mind and his body, and be the means
of creating a break in those periodic attacks.
Jacques, the valet, was in reality a faithful servant of the family,
employed from the first to take care of his young master. He had
occupied the adjoining room with Pasquale from the date of his first
arrival, but he kept himself very much in the background, as Pasquale
was extremely sensitive lest his condition should become known; a fact
which explained his, to me, unaccountable objection to receiving me in
his rooms.
After the return from Paris, Jacques, as the reader is aware, took a
more prominent part in his master’s daily life, for it was then that I
saw him for the first time. This greater prominence was due to the fact
that Jacques had reported to Mr. Amidio Pasquale, senior, that the
attacks instead of becoming more feeble, were growing more marked month
by month.
Jacques explained that the sudden alleged departure of his young master
was due to the fact, that, feeling the approach of the mental disorder,
he would without delay place himself in his valet’s hands. He was in
nowise a prisoner, for from the first to the last there had not been, on
the part either of his family or of his so-called valet, the faintest
suspicion of a homicidal mania; the only objects of the secrecy being a
general watchfulness in case of fresh developments, and to keep his
infirmity from the knowledge of his friends.
There were days when Pasquale felt out of sorts and indisposed, and
since it was the orders of his medical man that he should be soothed and
not opposed at such periods, the valet made no intrusion on his privacy
then.
It was undoubtedly at such periods that my friend’s most serious attacks
had culminated in the atrocities already recorded, for of his connection
with these, subsequent investigations removed every shadow of doubt.
As for the apparent difficulty in crossing the Channel to England, and
committing a murder, without his absence being discovered by his friends
that was readily explained. He had never while in Paris been under
strict surveillance, and he was frequently absent for a few days at a
time at a friend’s house.
It was evident that plans conceived during one period of lunacy were
perfected during the next, or following periods. This was especially
evident in connection with the dead man’s efforts to obtain specimens of
the hand-writing of the men whom he had resolved to kill, and had
afterwards killed.
In the closet where the disguise was found--in which I had seen my
friend arrayed, in that awful midnight glance,--were discovered letters
from six well-known justices of the peace, five of whom, including the
chief of the police, had undoubtedly died by Pasquale’s hand. These
letters were evidently in reply to cunningly worded inquiries, such as
would be likely to induce the recipients to answer with their own hands.
This had been done in every case but one (the sixth letter had been
dictated); and the lengthy epistles which the unsuspecting justices had
written afforded Pasquale, then in the fulness of his madness, ample
opportunity of making himself acquainted with their handwritings, and so
enabled him to forge the farewell letters by each supposed suicide,
without fear of detection.
If further proof of my demented friend’s guilt had been wanted, it was
readily forthcoming in the drafts of the letters to the justices found
in his handwriting in the same recess.
The horrible feeling, akin to remorse, which I experienced on
recognizing that it was my evidence as to the aged figure which I had
seen at midnight in the adjoining room, that had resulted in my
friend’s arrest and suicide, was somewhat mitigated when I learned that
on the morning of the discovery the superintendent of police at Scotland
Yard had received by the first post a communication from the expert
employed by my dead friend to examine the letters left by the supposed
suicides, to the effect that having detected a certain resemblance in
the handwriting in Pasquale’s letter to that in the forgeries, he had
made a crucial examination, with the result of satisfying himself that
the two were identical.
On the strength of that evidence a warrant would have been obtained
against Pasquale that day had not events rendered it unnecessary.
Nor was that all. On the superintendent’s desk I saw the five letters
which had elicited the replies found in the recess. These a keen
detective had discovered among the papers of the dead man, when in
search of some trace as to the methods employed to obtain specimens of
their handwriting. These letters requested a reply to Amidio Pasquale,
P. O. Box No. 2034, presumably to avoid their delivery at the house at
unseasonable times, and indicating that Pasquale, mad, was on his guard
against Pasquale, sane. So that on all sides the net had been closing
in around my dear demented friend.
Why, then, did Fate so gratuitously add to my lot the painful reflection
that I had, by my ill-timed discovery, precipitated my friend’s death?
These additional links proved how boundless the resources of Destiny are
when her time has arrived; surely, then, she might have spared me that
last bitter drop which she had added to my brimming cup.
* * * * *
My task is done. With Pasquale’s tragic ending a shadow settled upon me,
and it has never wholly lifted. Our friendship lives in my memory as the
one green and sunny oasis in my desert life, and here, far away from the
home of my youth, I sit and muse on the gladsome hours we spent
together--my only grounds for belief that there is a happier world
beyond.
The man I knew--the friend I loved so passionately, the gentle-hearted
creature to whom the pain of any creature which God had made was
torture--was unconscious of the acts and ignorant of the identity of
Pasquale the insane murderer. That much, wise physicians, versed in the
mysteries of the human brain, have told me; and that I at least never
for an instant doubted.
It may be that Pasquale’s disorder was mentally contagious, and that my
open and receptive mind imbibed some of the fatal theories which at
times overbalanced his brilliant intellect. I almost hope that it is so,
for it will extenuate the wicked rebellious thoughts which still surge
through my brain when I recall the steps, one by one, which led to the
final ending.
The thought of the loving and gentle Pasquale, fierce only in the
pursuit of wrong, bringing all the marvelous resources of his wonderful
brain to the discovery of that terrible London mystery, and unraveling
it thread by thread only to weave it anew into a noose for himself,
paralyzes my brain. Did ever human being before lead justice step by
step through such a labyrinth of crime, and so unweariedly, until he
brought her to the very threshold of murder, and face to face with
himself the unconscious murderer!
* * * * *
I left my rooms hastily, and in disorder, as if invaded by the plague.
Once only I unintentionally passed the house, and through the doorway
of my cab I saw the dull, dusty windows of an empty residence, with the
legend “To be let” placarded on the ill-fated No. 13.
THE LOST WEDDING-RING.
CHAPTER I.
“Do you think it unlucky, then, to take off one’s wedding-ring?”
The inquiry sprang with a half-startled air of surprise and alarm from a
pair of pretty half-parted lips, and still more eagerly from two
heavily-fringed and expressive gray eyes.
“Yes, dear, very unlucky; you ought to leave it where your husband
placed it; it is like undoing the ceremony to take it off.”
This most depressing reply was made with an air of conviction which
greatly disturbed the fair questioner--the bride of a month--who had in
a childish fit of restlessness removed her wedding-ring and was engaged
testing the stupendousness of its avoirdupois on the coral tips of her
dainty fingers.
Slowly, and as if it were something uncanny, the truant hoop was slipped
back to its place, as the delicate flush on the young wife’s cheek
deepened with the dawning consciousness of a hitherto unknown crime.
“I wish you would tell me why you think so, grandma,” was the somewhat
timid rejoinder.
The elder lady’s busy hands had dropped on her knees, and her face wore
the absent-minded expression which told that “her eyes were with her
heart, and that was far away.”
The question was evidently unheard, and it was presently amended.
“Grandma, dear, has your wedding-ring never been off your finger since
grandpa placed it there?”
The second question recalled the old lady’s wandering thoughts, and she
replied with a falter in her voice which heightened the look of alarm on
her grand-daughter’s face.
“Yes, dear, once.”
“Oh! did anything happen?”
“Yes, love, something which I will never forget as long as I live.”
As the elder lady spoke, the color faded slowly from the cheeks of the
youthful bride, leaving the glowing eyes doubly dark by contrast with
their pallor.
“Don’t you think that it is growing cold, grandma?”
This was said with a little shiver, and looking up, the latter
recognized for the first time that her remarks had startled and alarmed
her grand-daughter.
“Mind you, Alice,” she added hastily, “I do not mean to say that
misfortune _always_ follows, for of course a very great many people take
off their wedding-rings sooner or later, apparently without any serious
consequences, and I don’t think that anything really threatens the
happiness of a married couple unless the ring is actually lost; still,
my dear----”
The sound of a rapid, manly tread advancing on the arbor where the two
were seated caused the bride to spring to her feet with a glad cry.
For a moment the husband caught a glimpse of a pair of swimming gray
eyes with a world of woe reflected in their shadowy depths; the next a
trembling pliant figure was nestling in his arms, and trying to explain
amid tearful sobs about the bad luck coming to them both through the
removal of the wedding-ring.
As soon as the astonished husband could frame an intelligible meaning
out of the story, told with many interruptions of sobs and kisses and
passionate hugs, he burst into a merry laugh.
“Why, you little silly!” he began, but his voice melted to a tenderness
inarticulate in words, although mutually intelligible in love’s rich
vocabulary.
“Dear, _dear_, _dear_! to think what a sweet little goose it is after
all,” commenced the husband, after love’s exactions had been religiously
complied with. “Why, I know ladies who are continually losing their
wedding-rings. There is Mrs. North for instance----”
“O, George!!”
“Well,” resumed the husband a little confusedly, “I know, of course,
that she and her husband do not get on very well together, but there are
others. There is--let me see--but never mind--I’ll tell you what I’ll
do. I will take the ring off your finger myself and put it on again,
_then_ that will make everything just as it was,” and with this
pleasing little sophistry both bride and groom were made happy once
more.
As the youthful pair left the arbor, the old lady, whose loving heart
was wont to grow young again as she contemplated the happiness of the
others, softly rubbed the mists from her glasses as she said with a
sigh, “O, I wish Alice had not taken off her wedding-ring!”