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diff --git a/30096-0.txt b/30096-0.txt index 63b57da..6840a4b 100644 --- a/30096-0.txt +++ b/30096-0.txt @@ -1,8020 +1,8020 @@ -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30096 ***
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-The Camera Fiend
-
-by E.W. Hornung
-
-London
-T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd.
-Adelphi Terrace
-1911
-
-
-Contents
-
- I. A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS
- II. A BOY ABOUT TOWN
- III. HIS PEOPLE
- IV. A GRIM SAMARITAN
- V. THE GLASS EYE
- VI. AN AWAKENING
- VII. BLOOD-GUILTY
- VIII. POINTS OF VIEW
- IX. MR. EUGENE THRUSH
- X. SECOND THOUGHTS
- XI. ON PAROLE
- XII. HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS
- XIII. BOY AND GIRL
- XIV. BEFORE THE STORM
- XV. A LIKELY STORY
- XVI. MALINGERING
- XVII. ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH
- XVIII. A THIRD CASE
- XIX. THE FOURTH CASE
- XX. WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP
- XXI. AFTER THE FAIR
- XXII. THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I.
-A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS
-
-
-Pocket Upton had come down late and panting, in spite of his daily
-exemption from first school, and the postcard on his plate had taken
-away his remaining modicum of breath. He could have wept over it in
-open hall, and would probably have done so in the subsequent seclusion
-of his own study, had not an obvious way out of his difficulty been
-bothering him by that time almost as much as the difficulty itself. For
-it was not a very honest way, and the unfortunate Pocket had been
-called “a conscientious ass” by some of the nicest fellows in his
-house. Perhaps he deserved the epithet for going even as straight as he
-did to his house-master, who was discovered correcting proses with a
-blue pencil and a briar pipe.
-
-“Please, sir, Mr. Coverley can’t have me, sir. He’s got a case of
-chicken-pox, sir.”
-
- The boy produced the actual intimation in a few strokes of an honoured
- but laconic pen. The man poised his pencil and puffed his pipe.
-
-“Then you must come back to-night, and I’m just as glad. It’s all
-nonsense your staying the night whenever you go up to see that doctor
-of yours.”
-
-“He makes a great point of it, sir. He likes to try some fresh stuff on
-me, and then see what sort of night I have.”
-
-“You could go up again to-morrow.”
-
-“Of course I could, sir,” replied Pocket Upton, with a delicate
-emphasis on his penultimate. At the moment he was perhaps neither so
-acutely conscientious nor such an ass as his critics considered him.
-
-“What else do you propose?” inquired Mr. Spearman.
-
-“Well, sir, I have plenty of other friends in town, sir. Either the
-Knaggses or Miss Harbottle would put me up in a minute, sir.”
-
-“Who are the Knaggses?”
-
-“The boys were with me at Mr. Coverley’s, sir; they go to Westminster
-now. One of them stayed with us last holidays. They live in St. John’s
-Wood Park.”
-
-“And the lady you mentioned?”
-
-“Miss Harbottle, sir, an old friend of my mother’s; it was through her
-I went to Mr. Coverley’s, and I’ve often stayed there. She’s in the
-Wellington Road, sir, quite close to Lord’s.”
-
-Mr. Spearman smiled at the gratuitous explanation of an eagerness that
-other lads might have taken more trouble to conceal. But there was no
-guile in any Upton; in that one respect the third and last of them
-resembled the great twin brethren of whom he had been prematurely voted
-a “pocket edition” on his arrival in the school. He had few of their
-other merits, though he took a morbid interest in the games they played
-by light of nature, as well as in things both beyond and beneath his
-brothers and the average boy. You cannot sit up half your nights with
-asthma and be an average boy. This was obvious even to Mr. Spearman,
-who was an average man. He had never disguised his own disappointment
-in the youngest Upton, but had often made him the butt of outspoken and
-disastrous comparisons. Yet in his softer moments he had some sympathy
-with the failure of an otherwise worthy family; this fine June morning
-he seemed even to understand the joy of a jaunt to London for a boy who
-was getting very little out of his school life. He made a note of the
-two names and addresses.
-
-“You’re quite sure they’ll put you up, are you?” “Absolutely certain,
-sir.”
-
-“But you’ll come straight back if they can’t?”
-
-“Rather, sir!”
-
-“Then run away, and don’t miss your train.”
-
-Pocket interpreted the first part of the injunction so literally as to
-arrive very breathless in his study. That diminutive cell was garnished
-with more ambitious pictures than the generality of its order; but the
-best of them was framed in the ivy round the lattice window, and its
-foreground was the nasturtiums in the flower-box. Pocket glanced down
-into the quad, where the fellows were preparing construes for second
-school in sunlit groups on garden seats. At that moment the bell began.
-And by the time Pocket had changed his black tie for a green one with
-red spots, in which he had come back after the Easter holidays, the
-bell had stopped and the quad was empty; before it filled again he
-would be up in town and on his way to Welbeck Street in a hansom.
-
-The very journey was a joy. It was such sport to be flying through a
-world of buttercups and daisies in a train again, so refreshing to feel
-as good as anybody else in the third smoker; for even the grown men in
-the corner seats did not dream of calling the youth an “old ass,” much
-less a young one, to his face. His friends and contemporaries at school
-were in the habit of employing the ameliorating adjective, but there
-were still a few fellows in Pocket’s house who made an insulting point
-of the other. All, however, seemed agreed as to the noun; and it was
-pleasant to cast off friend and foe for a change, to sit comfortably
-unknown and unsuspected of one’s foibles in the train. It made Pocket
-feel a bit of a man; but then he really was almost seventeen, and in
-the Middle Fifth, and allowed to smoke asthma cigarettes in bed. He
-took one out of a cardboard box in his bag, and thought it might do him
-good to smoke it now. But an adult tobacco-smoker looked so curiously
-at the little thin cross between cigar and cigarette, that it was
-transferred to a pocket unlit, and the coward hid himself behind his
-paper, in which there were several items of immediate interest to him.
-Would the match hold out at Lord’s? If not, which was the best of the
-Wednesday matinees? Pocket had received a pound from home for his
-expenses, so that these questions took an adventitious precedence over
-even such attractive topics as an execution and a murder that bade fair
-to lead to one. But the horrors had their turn, and having supped on
-the newspaper supply, he continued the feast in _Henry Dunbar_, the
-novel he had brought with him in his bag. There was something like a
-murder! It was so exciting as to detach Pocket Upton from the flying
-buttercups and daisies, from the reek of the smoking carriage, the real
-crimes in the paper, and all thoughts of London until he found himself
-there too soon.
-
-The asthma specialist was one of those enterprising practitioners whose
-professional standing is never quite on a par with their material
-success. The injurious discrepancy may have spoilt his temper, or it
-may be that his temper was at the root of the prejudice against him. He
-was never very amiable with Pocket Upton, a casual patient in every
-sense; but this morning Dr. Bompas had some call to complain.
-
-“You mean to tell me,” he expostulated, “that you’ve gone back to the
-cigarettes in spite of what I said last time? If you weren’t a stupid
-schoolboy I should throw up your case!”
-
-Pocket did not wish to have his case thrown up; it would mean no more
-days and nights in town. So he accepted his rebuke without visible
-resentment.
-
-“It’s the only way I can stop an attack,” he mumbled.
-
-“Nonsense!” snapped the specialist. “You can make yourself coffee in
-the night, as you’ve done before.”
-
-“I can’t at school. They draw the line at that.”
-
-“Then a public school is no place for you. I’ve said so from the first.
-Your people should have listened to me, and sent you on a long sea
-voyage under the man I recommended, in the ship I told them about. She
-sails the day after to-morrow, and you should have sailed in her.”
-
-The patient made no remark; but he felt as sore as his physician on the
-subject of that long sea voyage. It would have meant a premature end to
-his undistinguished schooldays, and goodbye to all thought of following
-in his brothers’ steps on the field of schoolboy glory. But he might
-have had adventures beyond the pale of that circumscribed arena, he
-might have been shipwrecked on a desert island, and lived to tell a
-tale beyond the dreams of envious athletes, if his people had but taken
-kindly to the scheme. But they had been so very far from taking to it
-at all, with the single exception of his only sister, that the boy had
-not the heart to discuss it now.
-
-“If only there were some medicine one could take to stop an attack!” he
-sighed. “But there doesn’t seem to be any.”
-
-“There are plenty of preventives,” returned the doctor. “That’s what we
-want. Smoking and inhaling all sorts of rubbish is merely a palliative
-that does more harm than good in the long run.”
-
-“But it does you good when the preventives fail. If I could get a good
-night without smoking I should be thankful.”
-
-“If I promise you a good night will you give me your cigarettes to keep
-until to-morrow?”
-
-“If you like.”
-
-The doctor wrote a prescription while the boy produced the cardboard
-box from his bag.
-
-“Thank you,” said Bompas, as they made an exchange. “I don’t want you
-even to be tempted to smoke to-night, because I know what the
-temptation must be when you can’t get your breath. You will get this
-prescription made up in two bottles; take the first before you go to
-bed to-night, and the second if you wake with an attack before five in
-the morning. You say you are staying the night with friends; better
-give me the name and let me see if they’re on the telephone before you
-go. I want you to go to bed early, tell them not to call you in the
-morning, and come back to me the moment you’ve had your breakfast.”
-
-They parted amicably after all, and Pocket went off only wondering
-whether he ought to have said positively that he was staying with
-friends when he might be going back to school. But Dr. Bompas had been
-so short with him at first as to discourage unnecessary explanations;
-besides, there could be no question of his going back that night. And
-the difficulty of the morning, which he had quite forgotten in the
-train, was not allowed to mar a moment of his day in town.
-
- The time-table of that boy’s day must speak for itself. It was already
- one o’clock, and he was naturally hungry, especially after the way his
- breakfast had been spoilt by Coverley’s card. At 1.15 he was munching
- a sausage roll and sipping chocolate at a pastry-cook’s in Oxford
- Street. The sausage roll, like the cup of chocolate, was soon followed
- by another; and a big Bath bun completed a debauch of which Dr. Bompas
- would undoubtedly have disapproved.
-
-At 1.45, from the top of an Atlas omnibus in Baker Street, he espied a
-placard with “Collapse of Middlesex” in appalling capitals. And at the
-station he got down to learn the worst before going on to Lord’s for
-nothing.
-
-The worst was so hopelessly bad that Pocket wished himself nearer the
-theatres, and then it was that the terra-cotta pile of Madame Tussaud’s
-thrust itself seductively upon his vision. He had not been there for
-years. He had often wanted to go again, and go alone. He remembered
-being taken by his sister when a little boy at Coverley’s, but she had
-refused to go into the Chamber of Horrors, and he had been relieved at
-the time but sorry ever afterwards, because so many of the boys of
-those days had seen everything and seemed none the worse for the
-adventure. It was one of the things he had always wanted not so much to
- do as to have done. The very name of the Chamber of Horrors had frozen
-his infant blood when he first heard it on the lips of a criminological
-governess. On the brink of seventeen there was something of the budding
-criminologist about Pocket Upton himself; had not a real murder and
-_Henry Dunbar_ formed his staple reading in the train? And yet the boy
-had other sensibilities which made him hesitate outside the building,
-and enter eventually with quite a nutter under the waistcoat.
-
-A band in fantastic livery was playing away in the marble hall; but
-Pocket had no ear for their music, though he was fond enough of a band.
-And though history was one of his few strong points at school, the
-glittering galaxy of kings and queens appealed to him no more than the
-great writers at their little desks and the great cricketers in their
-unconvincing flannels. They were waxworks one and all. But when the
-extra sixpence had been paid at the inner turnstile, and he had passed
-down a dungeon stair into the dim vaults below, his imagination was at
-work upon the dreadful faces in the docks before he had brought his
-catalogue to bear on one of them.
-
-Here were wretches whose vile deeds had long been familiar to the
-schoolboy through a work on his father’s shelves called _Annals of Our
-Time_. He recalled bad nights when certain of those annals had kept
-him awake long after his attack; and here were the actual monsters, not
-scowling and ferocious as he had always pictured them, but far more
-horribly demure and plump. Here were immortal malefactors like the
-Mannings; here were Rush and Greenacre cheek by jowl, looking as though
-they had stepped out of Dickens in their obsolete raiment, looking
-anything but what they had been. Some wore the very clothes their quick
-bodies had filled; here and there were authentic tools of death, rusty
-pistols, phials of poison with the seals still bright, and a smug face
-smirking over all in self-conscious infamy. There was not enough of the
-waxwork about these creatures; in the poor light, and their own
-clothes, and the veritable dock in which many of them had heard their
-doom, they looked hideously human and alive. One, a little old man, sat
-not in the dock but on the drop itself, the noose dangling in front of
-him; and the schoolboy felt sorry for him, for his silver bristles, for
-the broad arrows on his poor legs, until he found out who it was. Then
-he shuddered. It was Charles Peace. He had first heard of Charles Peace
-from the nice governess aforesaid; and here under his nose were the old
-ruffian’s revolver, and the strap that strapped it to his wrist, with
-the very spectacles he had wiped and worn. The hobbledehoy was almost
-as timorously entranced as he had been in infancy by untimely tale of
-crime. He stood gloating over the gruesome relics, over ropes which had
-hanged men whose trials he had read for himself in later days, and yet
-wondering with it all whether he would ever get these things out of his
-mind again. They filled it to overflowing. He might have had the horrid
-place to himself. Yet he had entered it with much amusement at the
-heels of a whole family in deep mourning, a bereaved family drowning
-their sorrow in a sea of gore, their pilot through the catalogue a
-conscientious orphan with a monotonous voice and a genius for
-mis-pronunciation. Pocket had soon ceased to see or hear him or any
-other being not made of wax. And it was only when he was trying to
-place a nice-looking murderer in a straw hat, who suddenly moved into a
-real sightseer like himself, that the unwholesome spell was broken.
-
-Pocket was not sorry to be back in the adulterated sunshine and the
-comparatively fresh air of the Marylebone Road. He was ashamed to find
-that it was after four o’clock. Guy and Vivian Knaggs would be home
-from Westminster in another hour. Still it was no use getting there
-before them, and he might as well walk as not; it was pleasant to rub
-shoulders with flesh and blood once more, and to look in faces not made
-of wax in the devil’s image. His way, which he knew of old, would
-naturally have led him past Miss Harbottle’s door; but, as she was only
-to be his second string for the night, he preferred not to be seen by
-that old lady yet. Such was the tiny spring of an important action; it
-led the wanderer into Circus Road and a quite unforeseen temptation.
-
-In the Circus Road there happens to be a highly respectable
-pawnbroker’s shop; in the pawnbroker’s window the chances are that you
-might still find a motley collection of umbrellas, mandolines, family
-Bibles, ornaments and clocks, strings of watches, trays of purses,
-opera-glasses, biscuit-boxes, photograph frames and cheap jewellery,
-all of which could not tempt you less than they did Pocket Upton the
-other June. There were only two things in the window that interested
-him at all, and they were not both temptations. One was an old rosewood
-camera, and Pocket was interested in cameras old and new; but the thing
-that tempted him was a little revolver at five-and-six, with what
-looked like a box of cartridges beside it, apparently thrown in for the
-price. A revolver to take back to school! A revolver to fire in picked
-places on the slow walks with a slow companion which were all the
-exercise this unfortunate fellow could take! A revolver and cartridges
-complete, so that one could try it now, in no time, with Guy and Vivian
-at the end of their garden in St. John’s Wood Park! And all very
-likely for five bob if one bargained a bit!
-
-Pocket took out his purse and saw what a hole the expenditure of any
-such sum would make. But what was that if it filled a gap in his life?
-Of coure it would have been breaking a school rule, but he was prepared
-to take the consequences if found out; it need not involve his notion
-of dishonour. Still, it must be recorded that the young or old as was
-conscientious enough to hesitate before making his fatal plunge into
-the pawnbroker’s shop.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II.
-A BOY ABOUT TOWN
-
-
-The young Westminsters had not come in when Pocket finally cast up in
-St. John’s Wood Park. But their mother was at home, and she gave the
-boy a cup of tepid tea out of a silver tea-pot in the drawing-room.
-Mrs. Knaggs was a large lady who spoke her mind with much freedom, at
-all events to the young. She remarked how much Upton (so she addressed
-him) had altered; but her tone left Pocket in doubt as to whether any
-improvement was implied. She for one did not approve of his luncheon in
-Oxford Street, much less of the way he had spent a summer’s afternoon;
-indeed, she rather wondered at his being allowed alone in London at
-all. Pocket, who could sometimes shine in conversation with his elders,
-at once reminded Mrs. Knaggs that her own Westminster boys were allowed
-alone in London every day of their lives. But Mrs. Knaggs said that was
-a very different thing, and that she thought Pocket’s public school
-must be very different from Westminster. Pocket bridled, but behaved
-himself; he knew where he wanted to stay the night, and got as far
-towards inviting himself as to enlarge upon Mr. Coverley’s misfortune
-and his own disappointment. Mrs. Knaggs in her turn did ask him where
-he meant to and even the conscientious Pocket caught himself declaring
-he had no idea. Then the boys were heard returning, and Mrs. Knaggs
-said of course he would stop to schoolroom supper, and Pocket thanked
-her as properly as though it were the invitation he made sure must
-follow. After all, Vivian Knaggs had stayed at Pocket’s three weeks one
-Christmas, and Guy a fortnight at Easter; the boys themselves would
-think of that; it was not a matter to broach to them, or one to worry
-about, prematurely.
-
-Vivian and Guy were respectively rather older and rather younger than
-Pocket, and they came in looking very spruce, the one in his Eton
-jacket, the other in tails, but both in shiny toppers that excited an
-unworthy prejudice in the wearer of the green tie with red spots. They
-seemed very glad to see him, however, and the stiffness was wearing off
-even before Pocket produced his revolver in the basement room where the
-two Westminsters prepared their lessons and had their evening meal.
-
-The revolver melted the last particle of ice, though Vivian Knaggs
-pronounced it an old pin-firer, and Guy said he would not fire it for a
-thousand pounds. This only made Pocket the more eager to show what he
-and his revolver were made of, then and there in the garden, and the
-more confident that it never would be heard in the house.
-
-“It would,” answered Vivian, “and seen as well. No, if you want to have
-a shot let’s stick up a target outside this window, and fire from just
-inside.”
-
-The window was a French one leading into the back garden; but,
-unhappily, Mrs. Knaggs’s bedroom was only two floors higher, and it
-also looked out on the back; and Mrs. Knaggs herself was in her room
-and near her window when the report startled her, and not less because
-she little dreamt what it was until she looked out in time to see a
-cloud of smoke escaping from the schoolroom window, and Pocket
-examining the target, weapon in hand.
-
-There was a great scene about it. Mrs. Knaggs shrieked a prohibition
-from aloft, and having pacified an incoherent cook upon the stairs,
-descended to extract a solemn promise which might well have ended the
-matter. Pocket was very contrite, indeed, drew his weapon’s teeth with
-a promptitude that might have been his death, and offered it and them
-to be placed under lock and key until he left. But Mrs. Knaggs
-contented herself with promoting a solemn promise into a Sacred Word of
-Honour—which rather hurt poor Pocket—and with sending him a very
-straight message by Vivian after supper.
-
-“The mater’s awfully sorry,” said Vivian, returning from a mission
-which Pocket had been obliged to instigate after all. “There’s not a
-spare bed in the house.”
-
-Guy incontinently declared there was. A fraternal frown alone prevented
-him from going into particulars.
-
-“A sofa would do me all right,” suggested Pocket, who had long ago lost
-his last train, and would have preferred a bare plank where there were
-boys to fussy old Miss Harbottle’s best bed. But Vivian Knaggs shook
-his head.
-
-“The mater says she couldn’t sleep with firearms in the house.”
-
-“I’ll bury them in the garden if she likes.”
-
-“Then you smoke in the night, and at Coverley’s you once walked in your
-sleep,” pursued Vivian, who certainly seemed to have been urging the
-interloper’s cause. “And the mater’s afraid you might walk out of a
-window or set the house on fire.”
-
-“I shouldn’t do either to-night,” protested Pocket, with a grin. “I’ve
-not got anything to smoke, and I have got something to keep me quiet.”
-
-And with further information on both points the son of the house went
-upstairs again, only to return in quicker time with a more embarrassed
-gravity.
-
-“She’s awfully sorry,” he said unconvincingly, “but she can’t undertake
-the responsibility of putting you up with your asthma.”
-
-Oddly enough, for he was only too sensitive on some points, Pocket was
-not really hurt by his treatment at the hands of these people; he felt
-he had made rather a mistake, but not that he had been most inhumanly
-cast adrift at sixteen among the shoals and quicksands of London. Nor
-was this quite the case as yet; there was still old Miss Harbottle in
-Wellington Road. But to her he was not going until decency compelled
-him; he was going to have another game of bagatelle with Guy Knaggs
-first. It will be seen that with all his sensibilities the youngest
-Upton was a most casual and sanguine youth. He took a great deal for
-granted, prepared only for the best, and although inclined to worry
-over the irrevocable, took no thought for the morrow until he was
-obliged. He was sorry he had been so positive with Spearman on the
-subject of his friend’s hospitality. He was sorry he had asked and been
-refused, rather sorry he had not caught that last train back from St.
-Pancras. Yet he left poor Miss Harbottle the best part of another hour
-to go to bed in; and that was neither the first nor the last of his
-erratic proceedings.
-
-“What about your luggage?” asked the elder Knaggs, as he put on his hat
-to walk round with Pocket.
-
-“Good Lord!” cried that worthy, standing still in the hall.
-
-“Haven’t you got any?”
-
-“I left it at Madame Tussaud’s!”
-
-“Left your luggage there?”
-
-“It was only a handbag. How long are they open?”
-
-Young Knaggs looked in _Whitaker_ and said they closed at ten. There
-was still time to recover the bag with a taxicab, but in that case it
-was not much use his going too. So they said goodbye at the Swiss
-Cottage, and the adventures of Pocket Upton began in earnest.
-
-Old Miss Harbottle, his mother’s great friend, would have none of him
-either! He stopped on the way to Baker Street to make sure. The garden
-gate was one that only opened by a catch and a cable manipulated
-indoors. The downstairs lights were out. The gate opened at last, a
-light shone through the front door, and the door opened a few inches on
-the chain. Pocket confronted a crevice of quilted dressing-gown and
-grey curls; but his mother’s friend’s mastiff was making night so
-hideous within, and trying so hard to get at his mother’s son, that it
-was some time before he could exchange an intelligible word with the
-brute’s mistress. It was not a satisfactory interchange then, for Miss
-Harbottle at first flatly refused to believe that this was Tony Upton,
-whom she had not seen since his preparatory schooldays, and she seemed
-inclined to doubt it to the end. Upton or no Upton, she could not take
-him in. She had no sheets aired, no fire to air them at, and the cook
-had just left. Miss Harbottle’s cook had always just left, except when
-she was just leaving. The rejected visitor got an instant’s fun out of
-the reflection as he returned to his palpitating taxicab.
-
-His position was now quite serious. He had not many shillings in his
-purse. The only thing to do was to put up at Shaw’s Hotel, Trafalgar
-Square; that was where his people always stayed, where every servant
-was supposed to know them all. He pushed on at once through the cool
-June night, and paid away three of his last shillings for the drive.
-Alas! not a bed to be had at Shaw’s; it was the worst time of the year,
-they told him, and he supposed they meant the best. He also supposed
-there had been changes in the staff, for nobody seemed to know his name
-as well as he had been led to expect at home.
-
-They were quite nice about it. They pointed out the big hotels
-opposite, and recommended more than one of the little ones in Craven
-Street. But the big hotels were all full to overflowing; and at the
-only little one he tried the boy lost his temper like a man on being
-requested to deposit six shillings before proceeding to his room.
-Pocket had not got it to deposit, and the galling reflection caused him
-to construe the demand as a deliberate reflection upon his outward
-respectability—as if he could not have borrowed the money from Dr.
-Bompas in the morning!
-
-“I’ll see you blowed,” was his muttered reply, and he caught up his bag
-in a passion.
-
-“All right, little man! I shouldn’t be rude about it,” said the dapper
-cashier. “If I couldn’t pay my shot I should sleep in the Park, on a
-nice fine night like this.”
-
-“I shall!” shouted Pocket through his teeth, as though that would
-prevent the brute of a cashier from sleeping soundly in his bed. And it
-was his own idle and childish threat that set him presently wondering
-what else he was to do. He had the spirit of adventure, as we have
-seen.
-
-He had the timorous, or let us say, the imaginative temperament, which
-lends to adventure its very salt. He wished to have done dangerous or
-heroic things, if not to have to do them. He had so little to boast
-about; his brothers, and so many other fellows of his own age, had so
-much. It would make a great yarn some day, how he had come up from
-school to see a doctor—and slept in the Park!
-
-Meanwhile he had only a vague idea of his way there; he knew hardly
-anything of London except St. John’s Wood and his present landmark of
-the Nelson column and the Landseer lions. He knew them from having
-stayed some time (under another doctor) as a child at Shaw’s Hotel.
-But, I say! What would Bompas say to his sleeping out, and what sort of
-night could he expect in the open air?
-
-He had an overcoat. It had been in his way all day; it would come in
-more than handy for the night. And it suddenly struck Pocket, with all
-the force of a forgotten novelty, that he had a revolver and cartridges
-as well.
-
-That decided him. Not that he seriously thought himself the kind of
-person to use a revolver with resolution or effect; but it made him
-feel doughty and even truculent to find the means of heroic defence all
-ready to his hand. He began to plume himself on his providential
-purchase. He would sell his young life dearly if he fell among London
-thieves; in his death he would not be unhonoured at school or at home.
-Obituary phrases of a laudatory type sprang like tears to a mind still
-healthy enough to dash them away again, as though they had been real
-tears; but it was with all the nervous exaltation of the unsuspected
-desperado that he inquired his way of a colossal constable at the
-corner of Pall Mall and the Haymarket.
-
-The man wanted to know if he meant Hyde Park Corner. “Yes,” said
-Pocket, hastily, because his heart was in his mouth and the policeman
-looked as though he had seen it there. And he overshot the mark in the
-motor omnibus through being ashamed to ask again, only alighting at
-Albert Gate; but here there was quite a little stream of decent people
-to follow without further tremors into the indubitable Park.
-
-He followed them across the drive and across Rotten Row, gaining
-confidence as he went. In a minute it was all delightful; his eyes were
-turned outward by all there was to see; and now his chief fear was lest
-some one or other of the several passers should stand in his path and
-ask what he was doing there. He was still afraid of speaking or being
-spoken to, but no longer unreasonably so. Detection as an escaped
-schoolboy was his one great dread; he felt he was doing something for
-which he might be expelled.
-
-But nobody took any notice of him; this gradually encouraged him to
-take more notice of other people, when he found, not altogether to his
-surprise, that the majority of those passing through the Park at that
-late hour were hardly of his own class. So much the more infinitesimal
-were the chances of his being recognised or even suspected for what he
-was. There were young men in straw hats, there were red-coated
-soldiers, and there were girls. They all filled the schoolboy with
-their fascinating possibilities. They were Life. The boy’s heart beat
-at what he heard and saw. The couples were hilarious and unrefined. One
-wench, almost under his nose, gave her soldier a slap with such a
-remark as Pocket had never heard from a woman’s lips before. He turned
-away, tingling, and leant upon the parapet of a bridge he had been in
-the act of crossing, and thought of school and home and Mr. Coverley.
-
-It was not really a bridge at all. It was only the eastern extremity of
-the Serpentine; but as the boy leant over the stone balustrade, and
-gazed upon the artificial flood, broadening out indefinitely in the
-darkness, it might have been the noblest river in the world. Its banks
-were muffled in a feather boa of trees, bedizened by a chain of many
-lights; the lights of a real bridge made a diadem in the distance; and
-between these sped the lamps of invisible vehicles, like fretful
-fireflies. And the still water gave back every glimmer with its own
-brilliance, unchallenged and undimmed by moon or star, for not a trace
-of either was in the sky; and yet it was the most wonderful sky the boy
-had ever seen—a black sky tinged with sullen rose, or a red sky seen
-through smoked glasses, he hardly knew which he would have called it.
-But he did know that warm and angry glow for the reflection of London’s
-light and life; he could not forget he was in London for a moment. Her
-mighty machinery with its million wheels throbbed perpetually in his
-ears; and yet between the beats would come the quack of a wild duck
-near at hand, the splash of a leaping fish, the plaintive whistle of
-water-fowl: altogether such a chorus of incongruities as was not lost
-upon our very impressionable young vagabond. The booming strokes of
-eleven recalled him to a sense of time and his immediate needs. His
-great adventure was still before him; he pushed on, bag in hand, to
-select its scene. Another road he crossed, alive with the lamps of
-cyclists, and came presently upon a wide space intersected with broad
-footpaths from which he shrank; it was altogether too public here; he
-was approaching an exposed corner in an angle of lighted streets, with
-the Marble Arch at its apex, as a signboard made quite clear. He had
-come right across the Park; back over the grass, keeping rather more to
-the right, in the direction of those trees, was the best thing now.
-
-It was here that he found the grass distinctly damp; this really was
-enough to deter an asthmatic, already beginning to feel asthmatical.
-Pocket Upton, however, belonged to the large class of people, weak and
-strong alike, who are more than loth to abandon a course of action once
-taken. It would have required a very severe attack to baulk him of his
-night out and its subsequent description to electrified ears. But when
-bad steering had brought him up at the bandstand, the deserted chairs
-seemed an ordained compromise between prudence and audacity, and he had
-climbed into the fenced enclosure when another enormous policeman rose
-up horribly in its midst.
-
-“What are you doing here?” inquired this policeman, striding upon
-Pocket with inexorable tread.
-
-“No harm, I hope,” replied our hero humbly, but with unusual readiness.
-
-“Nor no good either, I’ll be bound!” said the policeman, standing over
-him.
-
-“I was only going to sit down,” protested Pocket, having satisfied his
-conscience that in the first place that was all he really had been
-going to do.
-
-“There are plenty of places to sit down,” rejoined the policeman.
-“You’re not allowed in here. And unless you look sharp about it you
-won’t have time to sit down at all.”
-
-“Why not?”
-
-“The Park closes at twelve.”
-
-“Closes?”
-
-“At twelve o’clock, and it’s half-past eleven now.” The boy’s heart
-sank into his wet boots. Here was an end of all his dashing plans. He
-was certain he had heard or read of people sleeping in the Park; he had
-looked upon it as a vast dormitory of the houseless; that was the only
-reason he was there. The offensive clerk in the hotel had evidently
-entertained the same belief. This idiot of a policeman must be wrong.
-But he seemed quite clear about it.
-
-“Did you think we were open all night?” he inquired with a grin.
-
-“I did,” said Pocket; and he was inspired to add, “I even thought a lot
-of loafers used to sleep here all night!”
-
-The policeman chuckled aloud.
-
-“They may if they get up the trees; that’s about their only chance,”
-said he.
-
-“You search the whole place so thoroughly?”
-
-“We keeps our eyes open,” said the policeman significantly, and Pocket
-asked no more questions; he scaled the forbidden fence and made off
-with the alacrity of one who meant to go out before he was put out.
-Such was his then sincere and sound intention. But where next to turn,
-to what seat on the Embankment, or what arch in the slums, in his
-ignorance of London he had no idea.
-
-Meanwhile, to increase the irony of his dilemma, now that he was bent
-on quitting the Park he found himself striking deeper and deeper into
-its heart. He skirted a building, left it behind and out of sight, and
-drifted before the wind of destiny between an upright iron fence on one
-hand and a restricted open space upon the other. He could no longer see
-a single light; but the ground rose abruptly across the fence, and was
-thick with shrubs. Men might have been lying behind those shrubs, and
-Pocket could not possibly have seen them from the path. Did the
-policeman mean to tell him that he or his comrades were going to climb
-every fence and look behind every bush in Hyde Park?
-
-Pocket came to anchor with a new flutter at his heart. This upright
-fence was not meant for scaling; it was like a lot of area palings, as
-obvious and intentional an obstacle. And the whole place closed at
-twelve, did it? The flutter became a serious agitation as Pocket saw
-himself breaking the laws of the land as well as those of school, saw
-himself not only expelled but put in prison! Well, so much the better
-for his story so long as those penalties were not incurred; even if
-they were, so much the greater hero he!
-
-No wonder his best friends called him disparaging names; he was living
-up to the hardest of them now, and he with asthma on him as it was! But
-the will was on him too, the obstinate and reckless will, and the way
-lay handy in the shape of a row of Park chairs which Pocket had just
-passed against the iron palings. He went back to them, mounted on the
-first chair, wedged his bag between two of the spikes, set foot on the
-back of the chair, and somehow found himself on the other side without
-rent or scratch. Then he listened; but not a step could he hear. So
-then the cunning dog put his handkerchief through the palings and wiped
-the grit from the chair on which he had stood. And they called him a
-conscientious ass at school!
-
-But then none of these desperate deeds were against his conscience, and
-they had all been thrust on Pocket Upton by circumstances over which he
-had lost control when the last train went without him from St. Pancras.
-They did not prevent him from kneeling down behind the biggest bush
-that I he could find, before curling up underneath it; neither did his
-prayers prevent him from thinking—even on his knees—of his revolver,
-nor yet—by the force of untimely association—of the other revolvers in
-the Chamber of Horrors. He saw those waxen wretches huddled together
-in ghastly groups, but the thought of them haunted him less than it
-might have done in a feather bed; he had his own perils and adventures
-to consider now. One thing, however, did come of the remembrance; he
-detached the leather strap he wore as a watch-guard. And used it to
-strap a pin-fire revolver, loaded in every chamber, to his wrist
-instead.
-
-That was the last but one of the silly boy’s proceedings under the
-bush; the last of all was to drain the number-one draught prescribed by
-Bompas in the morning, and to fling away the phial. The stuff was sweet
-and sticky in the mouth, and Pocket felt a singular and most grateful
-warmth at his extremities as he curled up in his overcoat. It was
-precisely then that he heard a measured tread approaching, and held his
-breath until it had passed without a pause. Yet the danger was still
-audible when the boy dropped off, thinking no more about it, but of Mr.
-Coverley and Charles Peace and his own people down in Leicestershire.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III.
-HIS PEOPLE
-
-
-It so happened that his people in Leicestershire were thinking of him.
-They had been talking about him at the very time of the boy’s
-inconceivable meanderings in Hyde Park. And two of them were at it
-still.
-
-On a terrace outside lighted windows a powerful young fellow, in a
-butterfly collar and a corded smoking jacket, was walking up and down
-with a tall girl not unlike him in the face; but their faces were only
-to be seen in glimpses as they passed the drawing-room windows, and at
-not less regular intervals when a red light in the sky, the source of
-which was concealed by the garden foliage, became positively brilliant.
-The air was sweet with the scent of honeysuckle and musk-roses and mown
-grass; midges fretted in and out of the open windows. But for the lurid
-lighting of the sky, with its Cyclopean suggestion of some mammoth
-forge, you were in the heart of England undefiled.
-
-“It’s no use our talking about Tony,” the tall girl said. “I think
-you’re frightfully down on him; we shall never agree.”
-
-“Not as long as you make a fool of the fellow,” said the blunt young
-man.
-
-“Tony’s no fool,” remarked Lettice Upton, irrelevantly enough.
-
-“You know what I mean,” snapped her brother Horace. “He’s being
-absolutely spoilt, and you’re at the bottom of it.”
-
-“I didn’t give him asthma!”
-
-“Don’t be childish, Letty.”
-
-“But that’s what’s spoiling his life.”
-
-“I wasn’t talking about his life. I don’t believe it, either.”
-
-“You think he enjoys his bad nights?”
-
-“I think he scores by them. He’d tell you himself that he never even
-thinks of getting up to first school now.”
-
-“Would you if you’d been sitting up half the night with asthma?”
-
-“Perhaps not; but I don’t believe that happens so often as you think.”
-
-“It happens often enough to justify him in making one good night pay
-for two or three bad ones.”
-
-“I don’t call that playing the game. I call it shamming.”
-
-“Well, if it is, he makes up for it. They were doing Ancient Greek
-Geography in his form at early school last term. Tony tackled it in his
-spare time, and got most marks in the exam.”
-
-“Beastly young swot!” quoth his elder brother. “I’m glad he didn’t
-buck to me about that.”
-
-“I don’t think there’s much danger of his bucking to you,” said
-Lettice, smiling in the red light. She did not add as her obvious
-reason that Horace, like many another athletic young man, was quite
-incapable of sympathising with the non-athletic type. But he guessed
-that she meant something of the sort, and having sensibilities of his
-own, and a good heart somewhere in his mesh of muscles, he felt hurt.
-“I looked after him all right,” said Horace, “the one term we were
-there together. So did Fred for the next year. But it’s rather rough on
-Fred and myself, who were both something in the school at his age, to
-hear and see for ourselves that Tony’s nobody even in the house!”
-
-Lettice slipped a sly hand under the great biceps of her eldest
-brother.
-
-“But don’t you see, old boy, that it makes it the worse for Tony that
-you and Fred were what you were at school? They measure him by the
-standard you two set up; it’s natural enough, but it isn’t fair.”
-
-“He needn’t be a flyer at games,” said Horace, duly softened by a
-little flattery. “But he might be a tryer!”
-
-“Wait till we get a little more breath into his body.”
-
-“A bag of oxygen wouldn’t make him a cricketer.”
-
-“Yet he’s so keen on cricket!”
-
-“I wish he wasn’t so keen; he thinks and talks more about it than Fred
-or I did when we were in the eleven, yet he never looked like making a
-player.”
-
-“I should say he thinks and talks more about most things; it’s his
-nature, just as it’s Fred’s and yours to be men of action.”
-
-“Well, I’m glad he’s not allowed to cumber the crease this season,”
-said Horace, bowling his cigarette-end into the darkness with a
-distinct swerve in the air. “To have him called our ‘pocket edition,’
-on the cricket-field of all places, is a bit too thick.”
-
-Lettice withdrew her sympathetic hand.
-
-“He’s as good a sportsman as either of you, at heart,” she said warmly.
-“And I hope he may make you see it before this doctor’s done with him!”
-
-“This doctor!” jeered Horace, quick to echo her change of tone as well.
-“You mean the fool who wanted to send that kid round the world on his
-own?”
-
-“He’s no fool, Horace, and you know nothing whatever about him.”
-
-“No; but I know something about our Tony! If he took the least care of
-himself at home, there might be something to be said for letting him
-go; but he’s the most casual young hound I ever struck.”
-
-“I know he’s casual.”
-
-Lettice made the admission with reluctance; next moment she was sorry
-her sense of fairness had so misled her.
-
-“Besides,” said Horace, “he wouldn’t be cured if he could. Think what
-he’d miss!”
-
-“Oh, if you’re coming back to that, there’s no more to be said.”
-
-And the girl halted at the lighted windows.
-
-“But I do come back to it. Isn’t he up in town at this moment under
-this very doctor of yours?”
-
-“He’s not my doctor.”
-
-“But you first heard about him; you’re the innovator of the family,
-Letty, so it’s no use trying to score off me. Isn’t Tony up in London
-to-night?”
-
-“I believe he is.”
-
-“Then I’ll tell you what he’s doing at this moment,” cried Horace, with
-egregious confidence, as he held his watch to the windows. “It’s after
-eleven; he’s in the act of struggling out of some theatre, where the
-atmosphere’s so good for asthma!” Lettice left the gibe unanswered. It
-was founded on recent fact which she had been the first to deplore when
-Tony made no secret of it in the holidays; indeed, she was by no means
-blind to his many and obvious failings; but they interested her more
-than the equally obvious virtues of her other brothers, whose
-unmeasured objurgations drove her to the opposite extreme in special
-pleading. She tried to believe that there was more in her younger
-brother than in any of them, and would often speak up for him as though
-she had succeeded. It may have been merely a woman’s weakness for the
-weak, but Lettice had taught herself to believe in Tony. And perhaps of
-all his people she was the only one who could have followed his
-vagaries of that night without thinking the worse of him.
-
-But she had no more to say to Horace about the matter, and would have
-gone indoors without another word if Mr. Upton had not come out hastily
-at that moment. He had been looking for her everywhere, he declared
-with some asperity. Her mother could not sleep, and wished to see her;
-otherwise it was time they were all in bed, and what there was to talk
-about till all hours was more than he could fathom. So he saw the pair
-before him through the lighted rooms, a heavy man with a flaming neck
-and a smouldering eye. Horace would be heavy, too, when his bowling
-days were over. The girl was on finer lines; but she looked like a
-woman at her worst; tired, exasperated, and clearly older than her
-brother, but of other clay.
-
-That young man smoked a last cigarette in his father’s library, and
-unhesitatingly admitted the subject of dissension and dissent upon the
-terrace.
-
-“I said he wasn’t doing much good there,” he added, “and I don’t think
-he is. Letty stood up for him, as she always does.”
-
-“Do you mean that he’s doing any harm?” asked Mr. Upton plainly.
-
-“Not for a moment. I never said there was any harm in Tony. I—I
-sometimes wish there was more!”
-
-“More manhood, I suppose you’d call it?”
-
-Mr. Upton spoke with a disconcerting grimness.
-
-“More go about him,” said Horace. He could not say as much to his
-father as he had to Letty. That was evident. But he was not the boy to
-bolt from his guns.
-
-“Yet you know how much he has to take all that out of him?” continued
-Mr. Upton, with severity.
-
-“I know,” said Horace hastily, “and of course that’s really why he’s
-doing no good; but I must say that doctor of his doesn’t seem to be
-doing him any either.”
-
-Mr. Upton got excitedly to his feet, and Horace made up his mind to the
-downright snub that he deserved. But by a lucky accident Horace had
-turned the wrath that had been gathering against himself into quite
-another quarter.
-
-“I agree with you there!” cried his father vehemently. “I don’t believe
-in the man myself; but he was recommended by the surgeon who has done
-so much for your poor mother, so what could one do but give him a
-trial? The lad wasn’t having a fair chance at school. This looked like
-one. But I dislike his going up to town so often, and I dislike the
-letters the man writes me about him. He’d have me take him away from
-school altogether, and pack him off to Australia in a sailing ship. But
-what’s to be done with a boy like that when we get him back again? He’d
-be too old to go to another school, and too young for the University:
-no use at the works, and only another worry to us all.”
-
-Mr. Upton spoke from the full heart of an already worried man, not with
-intentional unkindness, but yet with that unimaginative want of
-sympathy which is often the instinctive attitude of the sound towards
-the unsound. He hated sickness, and seemed at present surrounded by it.
-His wife had taken ill the year before, had undergone a grave operation
-in the winter, and was still a great anxiety to him. But that was
-another and a far more serious matter; he had patience and sympathy
-enough with his wife. The case of the boy was very different. Himself a
-man of much bodily and mental vigour, Mr. Upton expected his own
-qualities of his own children; he had always resented their apparent
-absence in his youngest born. The others were good specimens; why
-should Tony be a weakling? Was he such a weakling as was made out? Mr.
-Upton was often sceptical on the point; but then he had always heard
-more about the asthma than he had seen for himself. If the boy was not
-down to breakfast in the holidays, he was supposed to have had a bad
-night; yet later in the day he would be as bright as anybody, at times
-indeed the brightest of the party. That, however, was usually when
-Lettice drew him out in the absence of the two athletes; he was another
-creature then, excitable, hilarious, and more capable of taking the
-busy man out of himself than any of his other children. But Lettice
-overdid matters; she made far too much of the boy and his complaint,
-and was inclined to encourage him in random remedies. Cigarettes at his
-age, even if said to be cigarettes for asthma, suggested a juvenile
-pose to the man who had never studied that disorder. The specialist in
-London seemed another mistake on the part of that managing Lettice, who
-had quite assumed the family lead of late. And altogether Mr. Upton,
-though he saw the matter from a different point of view, was not far
-from agreeing with his eldest son about his youngest.
-
-And what chance was there for a boy whose own father thought he posed,
-whose brothers considered him a bit of a malingerer, and his
-schoolfellows “a conscientious ass,” while his sister spoilt him for
-_un enfant incompris?_ You may say it would have taken a miracle to
-make an ordinary decent fellow of him. Well, it was a night of strange
-happenings to the boy and his people; perhaps it was the one authentic
-type of miracle that capped all in the morning.
-
-The father had gone to bed at midnight, after an extra allowance of
-whisky-and-water to take the extra worry off his mind; it did so for a
-few hours only to stretch him tragically awake in the early morning.
-The birds were singing down in Leicestershire as in Hyde Park. The
-morning sun was slanting over town and country, and the father’s
-thoughts were with his tiresome son in town. Suddenly a shrill cry came
-from the adjoining room.
-
-In a trice the wakeful man was at his sick wife’s side, supporting her
-in bed as she sat up wildly staring, trembling in his arms.
-
-“Tony!” she gasped. “My Tony!”
-
-“I was just thinking of him!” he cried. “What about him, dear?”
-
-“I saw him,” she quavered. “I saw him plainer than I see you now. And
-I’m almost positive I heard—a shot!”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV.
-A GRIM SAMARITAN
-
-
-Though he afterwards remembered a shout as well, it actually was the
-sound of a shot that brought the boy to his senses in Hyde Park. He
-opened his eyes on a dazzle of broad daylight and sparkling grass. The
-air was strangely keen for the amount of sunshine, the sunshine
-curiously rarefied, and the grass swept grey where it did not sparkle.
-
-Pocket’s first sensation was an empty stomach, and his next a heavy
-head into which the puzzle of his position entered by laborious steps.
-He was not in bed. He was not at school. He was not even under the
-shrub he now remembered in a mental flash which lit up all his
-adventures overnight. He was wandering ankle deep in the dew, towards a
-belt of poplars like birch-rods on the skyline, and a row of spiked
-palings right in front of his nose. He had walked in his sleep for the
-first time for years, and some one had fired a shot to wake him.
-
-Slow as these automatic discoveries had seemed, they had been in
-reality so swift that the report was still ringing in his ears when he
-who must have made it sprang hideously into being across the palings. A
-hand darted through them and caught Pocket’s wrist as in a vice. And
-he looked up over the spikes into a gnarled face tinged with fear and
-fury, and working spasmodically at the suppression of some
-incomprehensible emotion.
-
-“Do you know what you did?” the man demanded in the end. The question
-seemed an odd one, but a very slight foreign accent, not to be
-reproduced phonetically, corresponded with the peculiarity of tense,
-reminding Pocket of the music-masters at his school. It was less easy
-to account for the tone employed, which was low in pitch and tremulous
-with passion. And the man stood tall and dominant, with a silver
-stubble on an iron jaw, and a weird cloak and hat that helped to invest
-him with the goblin dignity of a Spanish inquisitor; no wonder his eyes
-were like cold steel in quivering flesh.
-
-“I must have been walking in my sleep,” began Pocket, shakily; further
-explanations were cut very short.
-
-“Sleep!” echoed the other, in bitter unbelief.
-
-Pocket felt his prime quality impugned.
-
-“Well? I can’t help it! I’ve done it before to-day; you needn’t believe
-me if you don’t like! Do you mind letting go of my hand?”
-
-“With that in it!”
-
-The scornful tone made the boy look down, and there was the pistol he
-had strapped to his wrist, not only firm in his unconscious clasp, but
-his finger actually on the trigger.
-
-“You don’t mean to say I let it off?” cried Pocket, horrified.
-
-“Feel the barrel.”
-
-The tall man had done so first. Pocket touched it with his left hand.
-The barrel was still warm.
-
-“It was in my sleep,” protested Pocket, in a wheezy murmur.
-
-“I’m glad to hear it.”
-
-“I tell you it was!”
-
-The tall man opened his lips impulsively, but shut them on a second
-impulse. The daggers in his eyes probed deeper into those of the boy,
-picking his brains, transfixing the secrets of his soul. No master’s
-eye had ever delved so deep into his life; he felt as though the very
-worst of him at school was known in an instant to this dreadful
-stranger in the wilds of London. He writhed under the ordeal of that
-protracted scrutiny. He tugged to free his imprisoned wrist. His captor
-was meanwhile fumbling with a penknife in his unoccupied hand. A blade
-was slowly opened; the leather watch-guard was sliced through in a
-second; the revolver dropped harmlessly into the dew. The man swooped
-down and whipped it through the railings with a snarl of satisfaction.
-
-“And now,” said he, releasing Pocket, but standing by with his weapon,
-“I suppose you know that, apart from everything else, you had no right
-to spend the night in here at all?”
-
-The boy, already suffering from his humiliating exertions, gasped out,
-“I’m not the only one!” He had just espied a recumbent figure through
-the palings; it was that of a dilapidated creature lying prone, a
-battered hat beside him, on the open grass beyond the path. The tall
-man merely redoubled his scrutiny of the face in front of, him, without
-so much as a glance behind.
-
-“That,” said he, “is the sort that staggers in as soon as the gates are
-open, and spends the day sleeping itself sober. But you are not that
-sort at all, and you have spent the night here contrary to the rules.
-Who are you, and what’s the matter with you?”
-
-“Asthma,” wheezed Pocket, clinging to the palings in dire distress.
-
-“So I thought. Yet you spend your night on the wet grass!”
-
-“I had nowhere else to go.”
-
-“Have you come up from the country?”
-
-“To see a doctor about it!” cried Pocket bitterly, and told the whole
-truth about himself in a series of stertorous exclamations. It scarcely
-lessened the austerity of the eyes that still ran him through and
-through; but the hard mouth did relax a little; the lined face looked
-less deeply slashed and furrowed, and it was a less inhuman voice that
-uttered the next words.
-
-“Well, we must get you out of this, my young fellow! Come to these
-chairs.”
-
-Pocket crept along the palings towards the chairs by which he had
-climbed them. His breathing was pitiful now. The stranger accompanied
-him on the other side.
-
-“If I lift one over, and lend you a hand, do you think you can manage
-it?”
-
-“I did last night.”
-
-“Here, then. Wait a bit! Can you tell me where you slept?”
-
-Pocket looked round and pointed.
-
-“Behind that bush.”
-
-“Have you left nothing there?”
-
-“Yes; my bag and hat!”
-
-In his state it took him some time to go and fetch them; he was nearly
-suffocating when he came creeping back, his shoulders up to his ears.
-
-“Stop! I see something else. Is that medicine-bottle yours?
-There—catching the sun.”
-
-“It was.”
-
-“Bring it.”
-
-“It’s empty.”
-
-“Bring it!”
-
-Pocket obeyed. The strange man was standing on a chair behind the
-palings, waiting to help him over, with a wary eye upon the path. But
-no third creature was in sight except the insensate sprawler in the
-dew. Pocket surmounted the obstacle, he knew not how; he was almost
-beside himself in the throes of his attack. Later, he feared he must
-have been lifted down like a child; but this was when he was getting
-his breath upon a seat. They had come some little distance very slowly,
-and Pocket had received such support from so muscular an arm as to lend
-colour to his humiliating suspicion.
-
-His grim companion spoke first.
-
-“Well, I’m sorry for you. But I feel for your doctor too. I am one
-myself.”
-
-Pocket ignored the somewhat pointed statement.
-
-“I’ll never forgive the brute!” he panted.
-
-“Come, come! He didn’t send you to sleep in the Park.”
-
-“But he took away the only thing that does me any good.”
-
-“What’s that?”
-
-“Cigarettes d’Auvergne.”
-
-“I never heard of them.”
-
-“They’re the only thing to stop it, and he took away every one I had.”
-
-But even as he spoke Pocket remembered the cigarette he had produced
-from his bag, but lacked the moral courage to light, in the train. He
-had slipped it into one of his pockets, not back into the box. He felt
-for it feverishly. He gave a husky cheer as his fingers closed upon the
-palpable thing, and he drew forth a flattened cylinder the size of a
-cigarette and the colour of a cigar. The boy had to bite off both ends;
-the man was ready with the match. Pocket drank the crude smoke down
-like water, coughed horribly, drank deeper, coughed the tears into his
-eyes, and was comparatively cured.
-
-“And your doctor forbids a sovereign remedy!” said his companion. “I
-cannot understand him, and I’m a doctor myself.” His voice and look
-were deliberate even for him. “My name is Baumgartner,” he added, and
-made a pause. “I don’t suppose you know it?”
-
-“I’m not sure I don’t,” replied Pocket, swelling with breath and
-gratitude; but in truth the name seemed vaguely familiar to him.
-
-“A schoolboy in the country,” observed Dr. Baumgartner, “is scarcely
-likely to have heard of me; but if you inquire here in London you will
-find that I am not unknown. I propose to carry you off to my house for
-breakfast, and a little rest. That is,” added the doctor, with his
-first smile, “if you will trust yourself to me first and make your
-inquiries later.”
-
-Pocket scouted the notion of inquiries in an impulsive outburst; but
-even as he proceeded to mumble out his thanks he could not help feeling
-it would have been less embarrassing to know more exactly whom he was
-thanking and must needs accompany now. Dr. Baumgartner? Where was it he
-had come across that name? And when and where had anybody ever seen
-such a doctor as this unshaven old fellow in the cloak and hat of a
-conspirator by limelight?
-
-But the schoolboy had still to learn the lesson of naked personality as
-the one human force; and he learnt it now unknown to himself. The gaunt
-grey man stood up in his absurd and rusty raiment, and Pocket thought,
-“How the chaps would rag him at school!” because the dreadful old hat
-and cloak suggested a caricature of a master’s cap and gown. But there
-was no master at Pocket’s school whom he would not sooner have
-disobeyed than this shabby stranger with the iron-bound jaw and the
-wintry smile; there was no eye on the staff that had ever made him
-quail as he had quailed that morning before these penetrating eyes of
-steel. Baumgartner said they must hurry, and Pocket had his asthma back
-in the first few yards. Baumgartner said they could buy more cigarettes
-on the way, and Pocket kept up, panting, at his side.
-
-In the cab Baumgartner said, “Try sitting with your head between your
-knees.” Pocket tried it like a lamb. They had encountered a young man
-or so hurrying into the Park with towels round the neck but no collar,
-an early cavalcade who never looked at them, and that was about all
-until the hansom had been hailed outside. During the drive, which
-seemed to Pocket interminable, his extraordinary attitude prevented him
-from seeing anything but his own boots, and those only dimly owing to
-the apron being shut and indeed pressing uncomfortably against his
-head. Yet when Dr. Baumgartner inquired whether that did not make him
-easier, he said it did. It was not all imagination either; the posture
-did relieve him; but it was none the less disagreeable to be driven
-through London by an utter stranger, and not to see the names of the
-streets or a single landmark. Pocket had not even heard the cabman’s
-instructions where to drive; they had been given after he got in. His
-ear was more alert now. He noted the change from wood-paving to rough
-metal. Then more wood, and an indubitable omnibus blundering by; then
-more metal, in better repair; quieter streets, the tinkle of cans, the
-milkman’s queer cry; and finally, “Next to the right and the fifth
-house on your left,” in the voice with the almost imperceptibly foreign
-accent.
-
-The fifth house on the left was exactly like the fourth and the sixth
-from the little Pocket saw of any of them. He was hurried up a tiled
-path, none too clean between swarthy and lack-lustre laurels; the steps
-had not been “done”; the door wore the nondescript complexion of
-prehistoric paint debased by the caprices of the London climate. One
-touch of colour the lad saw before this unpromising portal opened and
-shut upon him: he had already passed through a rank of pollard trees,
-sprouting emeralds in the morning sun, that seemed common to this side
-of the road, and effectually hid the other.
-
-Within the doctor held up a finger and they both trod gently. The
-passage was dark and short. The stairs began abruptly on the right.
-Baumgartner led the way past a closed door on the left, into an
-unexpectedly bright and large room beyond it. “Sit down,” said he, and
-shut the door softly behind him.
-
-Pocket took observations from the edge of his chair. The room was full
-of walnut trivialities that looked aggressively obsolete in the
-sunshine that filled it and flooded a green little garden at the back
-of the house. Dr. Baumgartner had pulled up a blind and opened a
-window, and he stood looking out in thought while Pocket hurriedly
-completed his optical round. A set of walnut chairs were dreadfully
-upholstered in faded tapestry; but a deep, worn one looked comfortable
-enough, and a still more redeeming feature was the semi-grand piano.
-There were books, too, and in the far corner by the bow-window a glass
-door leading into a conservatory as minute as Pocket’s study at school,
-and filled with geraniums. On the walls hung a series of battle
-engravings, one representing a bloody advance over ridged fields in
-murderously close formation, others the storming of heights and
-villages.
-
-Baumgartner met his visitor’s eyes with the faint cold smile that
-scarcely softened the hoary harshness of his visage.
-
-“I was present at some of those engagements,” said he. “They were not
-worse than disarming a man who has just fired a revolver in his sleep!”
-
-He flung his cloak upon one of the walnut chairs, and Pocket heard the
-pistol inside it rattle against the back; but his attention was
-distracted before he had time to resent the forgotten fact of its
-forcible confiscation. Under his cloak the doctor had been carrying all
-this time, slung by a strap which the boy had noticed across his chest,
-a stereoscopic camera without a case. Pocket exclaimed upon it with the
-instructed interest of a keen photographer.
-
-“Do you take photographs?” asked Baumgartner, a reciprocal note in his
-unemotional voice.
-
-“Rather!” cried the schoolboy, with considerable enthusiasm. “It’s the
-only thing I have to do instead of playing games. But I haven’t got an
-instantaneous camera like that. I only wish I had!”
-
-And he looked with longing eyes at the substantial oblong of wood and
-black morocco, and duplicate lenses like a pair of spectacles, which
-the doctor had set between them on one of the fussy little walnut
-tables.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V.
-THE GLASS EYE
-
-
-Dr. Baumgartner produced a seasoned meerschaum, carved in the likeness
-of a most ferocious face, and put a pinch of dark tobacco through the
-turban into the bowl. “You see,” said he, “I must have my smoke like
-you! I can’t do without it either, though what is your misfortune is my
-own fault. So you are also a photographer!” he added, as the fumes of a
-mixture containing latakia spiced the morning air.
-
-“I am only a beginner,” responded Pocket, “but a very keen one.”
-
-“You don’t merely press the button and let them do the rest?”
-suggested the doctor, smiling less coldly under the influence of his
-pipe.
-
-“Rather not! I develop, print, tone, and all the rest of it; that’s
-half the fun.”
-
-“Plates or films?” inquired Baumgartner, with an approving nod.
-
-“Only plates, I’m afraid; you see, the apparatus is an old one of my
-father’s.”
-
-And honest Pocket was beginning to blush for it, when the other made a
-gesture more eloquent and far more foreign than his speech.
-
-“It’s none the worse for that,” said he. “So far we have much in
-common, for I always use plates myself. But what we put upon our
-plates, there’s the difference, eh?”
-
-“I should imagine so,” said Pocket, smiling.
-
-Dr. Baumgartner was smiling too, and still less coldly than before, but
-yet darkly to himself, and at the boy rather than with him.
-
-“You take portraits of your friends, perhaps?”
-
-“Yes; often.”
-
-“In the body, I presume?”
-
-Pocket looked nonplussed.
-
-“You only take them in the flesh?”
-
-“Of course.”
-
-“Exactly! I take the spirit,” said the doctor; “that’s the difference.”
-
-Pocket watched the now wonderfully genial countenance of Baumgartner
-follow the brutal features of the meerschaum Turk through a melting
-cloud of smoke. The boy had been taken aback. But his bewilderment was
-of briefer duration than might have been the case with a less ardent
-photographer; for he took a technical interest in his hobby, and read
-the photographic year-books, nearly as ravenously as _Wisden’s
-Almanacke_.
-
-“I see,” he said, lukewarmly. “You go in for psychic photography.”
-
-“Psychic,” said Baumgartner; for the public schoolboy, one regrets to
-report, had pronounced the word to rhyme with sly-chick. The doctor
-added, with more disdain: “And you don’t believe in it?”
-
-“I didn’t say so.”
-
-“But you looked and sounded it!”
-
-“I don’t set myself up as a believer or unbeliever,” said the boy,
-always at his ease on a subject that attracted him. “But I do say I
-don’t believe in the sort of thing I read somewhere last holidays. It
-was in a review of a book on that sort of photography. The chap seemed
-to have said you could get a negative of a spirit without exposing the
-plate at all; hide away your plate, never mind your lens, only conjure
-up your spirit and see what happens. I’ll swear nothing ever happened
-like that! There may be ghosts, you may see them, and so may the
-camera, but not without focusing and exposing like you’ve got to do
-with ordinary flesh and blood!”
-
-The youth had gone further and flown higher than he meant, under the
-stimulus of an encouragement impossible to have foreseen. And the
-doctor had come to his feet, waving eloquently with his pipe; his grey
-face beamed warmly; his eyes were lances tipped with fire.
-
-“Well said, my young fellow!” cried he. “I agree with every syllable
-you have spoken.”
-
-“It’s a question of photography, not of spiritualism,” concluded
-Pocket, rounding off his argument in high excitement.
-
-“I agree, I agree! All that is rubbish, pure moonshine; and you see it
-even at your age! But there’s much more in it than that; you must see
-the rest as well, since you see so far so clearly.” The boy blushed
-with pleasure, determined to see as far as anybody. “You admit there
-may be such things as ghosts, as you call them?” he was asked as by an
-equal.
-
-“Certainly, sir.”
-
-“Visible shapes, in the likeness of man? As visible and yet as tangible
-as that sunbeam?”
-
-“Rather!”
-
-“You allow that the camera can see them if we can?”
-
-Pocket allowed it like the man he was being made to feel; the
-concession gave him a generous glow. Promotion had come to him by giant
-leaps. He felt five years older in fewer minutes.
-
-“Then,” cried the doctor, with further flattery in his air of triumph,
-“then you admit everything! You may not see these images, but I may. I
-may not see them, but my lens may! Think how much that glass eye throws
-already upon the retina of a sensitised film that our living lenses
-fail to throw upon ours; think of all that escapes the eye but the
-camera catches. Take two crystal vases, fill one with one acid and the
-other with another; one comes out like water as we see it; the other,
-though not less limpid in our sight, like ink. The eye sees through it,
-but not the lens. The eye sees emptiness as though the acid itself were
-pure crystal; the lens flings an inky image on the plate. The trouble
-is that, while you can procure that acid at the nearest chemist’s, no
-money and no power on earth can summon or procure at will the spirit
-which once was man.”
-
-His voice was vibrant and earnest as it had been when Pocket heard it
-first an hour earlier in the Park. It was even as passionate, but this
-was the passion of enthusiastic endeavour. If the man had a heart at
-all, it was in this wild question without a doubt. Even the schoolboy
-perceived this dimly. There was something else which had become clearer
-to him with each of these later remarks. Striking as they seemed to
-him, they were not wholly unfamiliar. The ring of novelty was wanting
-to his ear.
-
-Suddenly he exclaimed, “I knew I knew your name!”
-
-“You do know it, do you?”
-
-Baumgartner spoke ungraciously, as though the announcement was
-discounted by the interruption it entailed.
-
-“It was in connection with the very book I mentioned. I knew I had come
-across it somewhere.”
-
-“You read the correspondence that followed the review?”
-
-“Some of it.”
-
-“My letter among others?”
-
-“Yes! I remember every word of it now.”
-
-“Then you recall my view as to the alleged necessity of a medium’s
-co-operation in these spirit-photographs?”
-
-“You said it wasn’t necessary, if I remember,” replied Pocket somewhat
-tentatively, despite his boast.
-
-“It was the pith and point of my contention! I mentioned the two
-moments at which I hold that a man’s soul may be caught apart, may be
-cut off from his body by no other medium than a good sound lens in a
-light-tight camera. You cannot have forgotten them if you read my
-letter.”
-
-“One,” said the boy, “was the moment of death.”
-
-“The moment of dissolution,” the doctor corrected him. “But there is a
-far commoner moment than that, one that occurs constantly to us all,
-whereas dissolution comes but once.”
-
-Pocket believed he remembered the other instance too, but was not sure
-about it, the fact being that the whole momentous letter had struck him
-as too fantastic for serious consideration. That, however, he could not
-and dared not say; and he was not the less frightened of making a
-mistake with those inspired eyes burning fanatically into his.
-
-“The other moment,” the doctor said at last, with a pitying smile, “is
-when the soul returns to its prison after one of those flights which
-men call dreams. You know that theory of the dream?” Baumgartner asked
-abruptly. The answer was a nod as hasty, but the doctor seemed
-unconvinced, for he went on didactically: “You visit far countries in
-your dreams; your soul is the traveller. You speak to the absent or the
-dead; it is your soul again; and we dismiss the miracle as a dream! I
-fix the moment as that of the soul’s return because its departure on
-these errands is imperceptible, but with its return we awake. The
-theory is that in the moment of waking the whole experience happens
-like the flash of an electric spark.”
-
-The boy murmured very earnestly that he saw; but he was more troubled
-than enlightened, and what he did see was that he had picked up a very
-eccentric acquaintance indeed. He was not a little scared by the man’s
-hard face and molten eyes; but there was a fascination also that could
-not be lost upon an impressionable temperament, besides that force of
-will or character which had dominated the young mind from the first. He
-began to wish the interview at an end—to be able to talk about it as
-the extraordinary sequel of an extraordinary adventure—yet he would not
-have cut it short at this point if he could.
-
-“I grant you,” continued the doctor, “that the final flight of soul
-from body is infinitely the more precious from my point of view. But
-how is one to be in a position to intercept that? When beloved spirits
-pass it would be cold-blooded desecration; and public opinion has still
-to be educated up to psychical vivisection! I have myself tried in vain
-to initiate such education. I have applied for perfectly private
-admission to hospital deathbeds, even to the execution-shed in prisons.
-My applications have been peremptorily refused.”
-
-Pocket’s thoughts went off at a gruesome tangent.
-
-“You could see a man hanged!” he shuddered, and himself saw the little
-old effigy on the model drop in Marylebone Road.
-
-“Why not?” asked the other in wide wonder. “But as I am not allowed,”
-he continued in lighter key, “I have to do the best I can. If I cannot
-be in at the death, I may still by luck be in at a dream or two! And
-now you may guess why I wander with my camera where men come in to
-sleep in broad daylight. I prowl among them; a word awakens them; and
-then I take my chance.”
-
-“They’re not all like that man this morning, then,” remarked Pocket,
-looking back on the inanimate clod reclining in the dew.
-
-The doctor deliberated with half-shut eyes that seemed to burn the
-brighter for their partial eclipse.
-
-“This morning,” he rejoined, “was like no other. I owe you some
-confidence in the matter. I had the chance of a lifetime this
-morning—thanks to you!”
-
-“Thanks to me?” repeated Pocket. A flash enlightened him. “Do you mean
-to say I—you took me—walking——?”
-
-“You shall see my meaning,” replied Baumgartner, rising. “Wait one
-minute.”
-
-He was not gone longer. Pocket heard him on the other side of double
-doors in an alcove; but he had gone out into the passage to get there.
-Running water and the chink of porcelain were specially audible in his
-absence, but the boy was thinking of another sound. The doctor before
-leaving had discarded a black alpaca jacket, light as a pocket
-handkerchief, which had fallen so softly as to recall by contrast the
-noise made by the revolver in the pocket of the cloak. The lad was
-promptly seized with a strong desire to recover his property; he was
-within an ace of doing so, the cloak containing it being actually in
-his hands and only dropped as Baumgartner returned to announce that all
-was ready.
-
-Sharp to the left, at the end of the passage, was a door which would
-simply have been a second way into the drawing-room had the double
-doors within been is use; these being shut, the space behind made a
-separate chamber which again reminded the schoolboy of his study, that
-smallest of small rooms. This one was as narrow, only twice the length.
-One end was monopolised by the door that admitted them, the other by a
-window from floor to ceiling. And this window was in two great sheets
-of ruby glass, so that Pocket looked down red-hot iron steps into a
-crimson garden, and therefrom to his companion dyed from head to foot
-like Mephistopheles.
-
-“This is something like a dark-room!” exclaimed the lad as the door was
-shut and locked behind him. The folding doors were permanently barred
-by shelves and lockers; opposite was a long porcelain trough, pink as
-the doctor’s shirt-sleeves in the strong red light; racks of negatives
-and stoppered bottles glimmered over brass taps stained to an angry
-copper.
-
-Everything was perfection from a photographer’s standpoint; the boy
-felt instantaneously spoilt for his darkened study and his jugs of
-water. All he had ever sighed for in the prosecution of his hobby was
-here in this little paradise of order and equipment. The actual work,
-he felt, would be a secondary consideration in such a workshop; the
-mere manipulation of such stoppered bottles as his host was handling
-now, the choice of graduated phials, the wealth of trays and dishes,
-would have been joy enough for him. He watched the favoured operator
-with a watering mouth. A crimson blind had been lowered to reduce the
-light; the doctor had turned up his shirt-cuffs; his wrists were
-muscular and furry, as it now seemed with a fiery fur, yet they
-trembled with excitement as he produced his plate. And Pocket
-remembered how extravagant an image was expected on that plain pink
-surface.
-
-He did not know whether to expect it or not himself. It was difficult
-to believe in that sort of thing, difficult to disbelieve in this sort
-of man, who entertained no shadow of doubt himself, whose excitement
-and suspense were as infectious as everything else about him. Pocket
-had come into the dark-room wheezing almost as much as ever; he was not
-to be heard breathing as the plate was rocked to and fro as in
-raspberry-juice, and gradually the sky showed sharp and black. But the
-sky it was that puzzled Pocket first. It was broken by perpendicular
-objects like white torpedoes. He was photographer enough to know what
-these were almost at once; they were those poplars in the park. But how
-could Baumgartner have photographed Pocket with those poplars behind
-him when they had been behind Baumgartner all the time?
-
-Pocket said to himself, “Where am I, by the way?” and bent lower to
-see. His ear touched the doctor’s; it heard the doctor breathing as
-though he were the asthmatic; and now a human shape was visible, but
-not walking in its sleep, lying in it like the man in the wet grass.
-“When did you get me?” asked Pocket aloud. But the tense crimson face
-paid no attention; in the ruby light it was glistening as though with
-beads of blood.
-
-“There! there! there!” croaked a voice, husky and yet staccato. Pocket
-could scarcely believe it was the voice of his host—the one gentle
-thing about him. “You saw the figure? Surely you saw something else,
-hovering over it? I did, I swear I did! But now we shall have to wait.”
-
-The plate had blackened all over, as though the uncanny thing had
-choked out its life. It was meticulously held under a tap, between
-fingers that most distinctly trembled now. Then he plunged it in the
-hyposulphite, and pulled up the blind. The sun shone again through the
-tall window, blood-red as before; grass and sky were as richly
-incarnadined. Baumgartner babbled while he waited for the fixing-bath
-to clear the plate. The chance of his life, he still pronounced it.
-“And I owe it to you, my young fellow!” This he said again and again,
-aloud but chiefly to himself. He picked up the plate at last and held
-it to the flaming window. He cried out in German to himself, a cry the
-schoolboy never forgot.
-
-“Open the window!” he ordered. “It opens like a door.”
-
-Pocket did as he was told. The pure white sunlight struck him
-momentarily blind. Baumgartner had the plate under the tap again.
-Pocket thought him careless with it, thought the tap on too full; it
-was held up an instant to the naked sun, and then dashed to a hundred
-fragments in the porcelain trough.
-
-Pocket knew better than to ask a question. He followed his leader back
-into the drawing-room, and watched him pick up his coat. It might have
-been a minute before their eyes met again; the doctor’s were calm and
-cold and critical as in the earlier morning. It was another failure, he
-said, and nothing more. Breakfast would be ready soon; they would go
-upstairs; and if his young fellow felt equal to a warm bath, he thought
-as a physician it might do him good.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI.
-AN AWAKENING
-
-
-It was a normal elderly gentleman, with certain simple habits, but no
-little distinction of address, who welcomed the schoolboy at his
-breakfast-table. The goblin inquisitor of Hyde Park had vanished with
-his hat and cloak. The excited empiric of the dark-room was a creature
-of that ruby light alone. Dr. Baumgartner was shaved and clad like
-other men, the iron-grey hair carefully brushed back from a lofty
-forehead, all traces of strong acids removed from his well-kept hands.
-There was a third person, and only a third, at table in the immature
-shape of a young lady whom the doctor introduced as his niece Miss
-Platts, and addressed as Phillida.
-
-Pocket thought he had never heard of nobler atonement for unmitigable
-surname. He could not help thinking that this Phillida did not look the
-one to flout a fellow, after the fashion of the only other Phillida he
-had ever heard of, and then that it was beastly cheek to start thinking
-of her like that and by her Christian name. But he was of the age and
-temperament when thoughts will come of contact with young animals of
-the opposite sex. He looked at her sidelong from time to time, but all
-four eyes dropped directly they met; she seemed as shy and
-uninteresting as himself; her conversation was confined to table
-attentions to her uncle and his guest.
-
-Pocket made more valiant attempts. A parlour billiard-table, standing
-against the wall, supplied an irresistible topic. “We have a full-size
-table at home,” he said, and could have mutilated his tongue that
-instant. “I like a small one best,” he assured the doctor, who shook
-his head and smiled.
-
-“Honestly, sir, and snob-cricket better than the real thing! I’m no
-good at real games.”
-
-The statement was too true, but not the preference.
-
-“That must be awkward for you, at an English public school,” was the
-doctor’s comment.
-
-Pocket heaved an ingenuous sigh. It was hateful. He blamed the asthma
-as far as modesty would permit. He was modest enough in his
-breakfast-table talk, yet nervously egotistical, and apt to involve
-himself in lengthy explanations. He had two types of listener—the dry
-and the demure—to all he said.
-
-“And they let you come up to London alone!” remarked Dr. Baumgartner
-when he got a chance.
-
-“But it wasn’t their fault that I——”
-
-Pocket stopped at a glance from his host, and plunged into profuse
-particulars exonerating his house-master, but was cut short again.
-Evidently the niece was not to know where he had spent the night.
-
-“I suppose there are a number of young men at your—establishment?” said
-the doctor, exchanging a glance with Miss Platts.
-
-“There are over four hundred boys,” replied Pocket, a little puzzled.
-
-“And how many keepers do they require?”
-
-A grin apologised for the word.
-
-“There must be over thirty masters,” returned Pocket more pointedly
-than before. He was not going to stand chaff about his public school
-from a mad German doctor.
-
-“And they arm you for the battle of life with Latin and Greek, eh?”
-
-“Not necessarily; there’s a Modern Side. You can learn German if you
-like!” said Pocket, not without contempt.
-
-“Do you?”
-
-“I don’t like,” said the boy gratuitously.
-
-“Then we must stick to your excellent King’s English.”
-
-Pocket turned a trifle sulky. He felt he had not scored in this little
-passage. Then he reflected upon the essential and extraordinary
-kindness which had brought him to a decent breakfast-table that
-morning. That made him ashamed; nor could he have afforded to be too
-independent just yet, even had he been so disposed in his heart. His
-asthma was a beast that always growled in the background; he never knew
-when it would spring upon him with a roar. Breakfast pacified the
-brute; hot coffee always did; but the effects soon wore off, and the
-boy was oppressed again, yet deadly weary, long before it was time for
-him to go to Welbeck Street.
-
-“Is there really nothing you can take?” asked Dr. Baumgartner, standing
-over him in the drawing-room, where Pocket sat hunched up in the big
-easy-chair.
-
-“Nothing now, I’m afraid, unless I could get some of those cigarettes.
-And Dr. Bompas would kick up an awful row!”
-
-“But it’s inhuman. I’ll go and get them myself. He should prescribe for
-such an emergency.”
-
-“He has,” said Pocket. “I’ve got some stuff in my bag; but it’s no use
-taking it now. It’s meant to take in bed when you can have your sleep
-out.”
-
-And he was going into more elaborate details than Dr. Bompas had done,
-when the other doctor cut him short once more.
-
-“But why not now? You can sleep to your heart’s content in that chair;
-nobody will come in.”
-
-Pocket shook his head.
-
-“I’m due in Welbeck Street at twelve.”
-
-“Well, I’ll wake you at quarter to, and have a taxi ready at the door.
-That will give you a good two hours.”
-
-Pocket hesitated, remembering the blessed instantaneous effect of the
-first bottle under the bush.
-
-“Would you promise to wake me, sir? You’re not going out?”
-
-“I shall be in again.”
-
-“Then it is a promise?”
-
-Pocket would have liked it in black and white.
-
-“Certainly, my young fellow! Is the stuff in your bag?”
-
-It was, and the boy took it with much the same results as overnight. It
-tasted sweeter and acted quicker; that was the only difference. The
-skin seemed to tighten on his face. His fingers tingled at the ends It
-was not at all an unpleasant sensation, especially as the labour in his
-breast came to an end as if by magic. The faintly foreign accents of
-Dr. Baumgartner sounded unduly distant in his last words from the open
-door. It was scarcely shut before the morning’s troubles ceased
-deliciously in the cosy chair.
-
-Yet they seemed to begin again directly, and this was a horrid crop! Of
-course he was back in Hyde Park; but the sky must have rained red paint
-in his absence, or else the earth was red-hot and the sky reflected it.
-No! the grass was too wet for that. It might have been wet with blood.
-Everything was as red as beet-root, as wet and red and one’s body
-weltering in it like the slain! Reddest of all was the old
-photographer, who turned into Mr. Spearman in cap and gown, who turned
-into various members of the Upton family, one making more inconsequent
-remarks than the other, touching wildly on photography and the flitting
-soul, and between them working the mad race up to such a pace and pitch
-that Pocket woke with a dreadful start to find Dr. Baumgartner standing
-over him once more in the perfectly pallid flesh.
-
-“I’ve had a beast of a dream!” said Pocket, waking thoroughly. “I’m in
-a cold perspiration, and I thought it was cold blood! What time is it?”
-
-“A quarter to six,” said the doctor, who had invited the question by
-taking out his watch.
-
-“A quarter to twelve, you mean!”
-
-“No—six.”
-
-And the boy was shown the dial, but would not believe it until he had
-gaped at his own watch, which had stopped at half-past three. Then he
-bounded to his feet in a puerile passion, and there lay the little
-garden, a lake of sunlight as he remembered it, swallowed up entirely
-in the shadow of the house.
-
-“You promised to wake me!” gasped Pocket, almost speechless. “You’ve
-broken your word, sir!”
-
-“Only in your own interest,” replied the other calmly.
-
-“I believe you were waiting for me to wake—to catch my soul, or some
-rot!” cried the boy, with bitter rudeness; but he looked in vain for
-the stereoscopic or any other sort of camera, and Dr. Baumgartner only
-shrugged his shoulders as he opened an evening paper.
-
-“I apologise for saying that,” the boy resumed, with a dignity that
-sounded near to tears. “I know you meant it for the best—to make up for
-my bad night—you’ve been very kind to me, I know! But I was due in
-Welbeck Street at twelve o’clock, and now I shall have to bolt to catch
-the six-thirty from St. Pancras.”
-
-“You won’t catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras,” replied Baumgartner,
-scarcely looking up from his paper.
-
-“I will unless I’m in some outlandish part of London!” cried Pocket,
-reflecting for the first time that he had no idea in what part of
-London he was. “I must catch it. It’s the last train back to school.
-I’ll get into an awful row if I don’t!”
-
-“You’ll get into a worse one if you do,” rejoined the doctor, looking
-over his paper, and not unfeelingly, at the boy.
-
-“What about?”
-
-Pocket held his breath instinctively as their eyes met. Baumgartner
-answered with increased compassion and restraint, a grey look on his
-grey face:
-
-“Something that happened this morning. I fear you will be wanted here
-in town about it.”
-
-“Do tell me what, sir!”
-
-“Can you face things, my young fellow?”
-
-“Is it about my people—my mother?” the boy cried wildly, at her funeral
-in a flash.
-
-“No—yourself.”
-
-“Then I can!”
-
-The doctor overcame his final hesitation.
-
-“Do you remember a man we left behind us on the grass?”
-
-“Perfectly; the grass looked as wet as it felt just now in my dream.”
-
-“Exactly. Didn’t it strike you as strange that he should be lying there
-in the wet grass?”
-
-“I thought he was drunk.”
-
-“He was dead!”
-
-Pocket was shocked; he was more than shocked, for he had never
-witnessed death before; but next moment the shock was uncontrollably
-mitigated by a sudden view of the tragic incident as yet another
-adventure of that adventurous night. No doubt one to retail in
-reverential tones, but a most thrilling adventure none the less. He
-only failed to see why it should affect him as much as the doctor
-suggested. True, he might be called as witness at the inquest; his very
-natural density was pierced with the awkward possibility of that. But
-then he had not even known the man was dead.
-
-Had the doctor?
-
-Yes.
-
-Pocket wondered why he had not been told at the time, but asked another
-question first.
-
-“What did he die of?”
-
-“A bullet!”
-
-“Suicide?”
-
-“No.”
-
-“Not murder?”
-
-“This paper says so.”
-
-“Does it say who did it?”
-
-“It cannot.”
-
-“Can you?”
-
-“Yes!”
-
-“Tell me.”
-
-The doctor threw out both hands in a despairing gesture.
-
-“Have I to tell you outright, my young fellow, that you did it
-yourself?”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII.
-BLOOD-GUILTY
-
-
-His overwhelming horror was not alleviated by a moment’s doubt. He
-marvelled rather that he had never guessed what he had done. The
-walking in his sleep, the shot that woke him, the first words of Dr.
-Baumgartner, his first swift action, and the warm pistol in his own
-unconscious hand: these burning memories spoke more eloquently than any
-words. They would have told their own tale at once, if only he had
-known the man was dead. Why had he been deceived? It was cruel, it was
-infamous, to have kept the truth from him for a single instant. Thus
-wildly did the stricken youth turn and rend his benefactor for the very
-benefaction of a day’s rest in ignorance of his deed. The doctor
-defended himself firmly, frankly, with much patience and some cynicism.
-Pocket was reminded of the state he himself had been in at the time. He
-also might have been a dying man, he was assured, and could well
-believe on looking back. Baumgartner had actually opened his lips to
-tell him the truth, but had checked himself in sheer humanity. Again
-the boy could confirm the outward detail out of his own recollection.
-To have told him later in the morning, the doctor went on to say, with
-an emphasis not immediately understood, could have undone nothing. He
-acknowledged a grave responsibility, but rightly or wrongly he had put
-the living before the dead.
-
-How had he known the man was dead? Baumgartner smiled at the question.
-He was not only a doctor, but an old soldier who had fought in one at
-least of the bloodiest battles in European history. He had seen too
-many men fall shot through the heart to be mistaken for a moment; but
-in point of fact he had confirmed his conviction by brief examination
-while Pocket was fetching his things from behind the bush. Pocket
-pressed for earlier details with a morbid appetite which was not
-gratified without reluctance, and out of a laconic interchange the deed
-was gradually reconstructed with appealing verisimilitude. It was
-Baumgartner who had first caught sight of the somnambulist, treading
-warily like the blind, yet waving the revolver as he went, as though
-any moment he might let it off. The moment came with a wretched reeling
-man who joined Baumgartner on the path, and would not be warned. The
-poor man had raised a drunken shout and been shot pointblank through
-the heart. The doctor described him as leaping backward from the
-levelled barrel, then into the air and down in the dew upon his face.
-
-The boy buried his face and wept; but even in his anguish he now
-recalled the shout before the shot. The enforced description had been
-so vivid in the end that he beheld the scene as plainly as though he
-had been wide awake. Then he dwelt upon the dead man, looking nothing
-else as he now remembered him, and that sent him off at a final
-tangent.
-
-He cried, looking up with a shudder for all his tears, “What about that
-negative you smashed? It was the poor dead man all the time!”
-
-“It was,” replied Baumgartner; “but it was never meant to be. I had you
-in focus when you fired. What I did was done instinctively, but with
-time to think I should have done just the same. You had given me the
-chance of a lifetime, though nothing has come of it so far. And that
-was another reason for saving you, ill as you were, from the immediate
-consequences of an innocent act.”
-
-Pocket was passionately honest, as his worst friends knew; he had an
-instinctive admiration for downright honesty in another. His young
-soul was torn with grief and pity for the dead; he was already haunted
-by the inevitable and complex consequences of his fatal misadventure,
-and yet he could dimly appreciate the candid declaration of one who had
-attempted to turn that tragedy to instantaneous and inconceivable
-account. It was the mistaken kindness to himself that he still found
-most difficult to forgive.
-
-“It’s got to come out,” he groaned; “this will make it all the worse.”
-
-“You mean the delay?”
-
-“Yes! Who’s to tell them I didn’t do it on purpose, and run away, and
-then think better of it?”
-
-Baumgartner smiled.
-
-“Surely I am,” said he; but his smile went out with the words. “If only
-they believe me!” he added as though it was a new idea to him.
-
-It was a terrifying one to Pocket.
-
-“Why shouldn’t they?” was his broken exclamation.
-
-“I don’t know. I never thought of it before. But what can I swear to,
-after all? I can swear you shot a man, but I can’t swear you shot him
-in your sleep!”
-
-“You said you saw I did!”
-
-“So I did, my young fellow,” replied the doctor, with a kinder smile;
-“at least I can swear that you were walking with your eyes shut, and I
-thought you were walking in your sleep. It’s not quite the same thing.
-It is near it. But we are talking about my evidence on oath in a court
-of justice.”
-
-“Shall I be tried?” asked the schoolboy in a hoarse whisper.
-
-“Perhaps only by the magistrate,” replied the other, soothingly; “let
-us hope it will stop at that.”
-
-“But it must, it must!” cried Pocket wildly. “I’m absolutely innocent!
-You said so yourself a minute ago; you’ve only to swear it as a doctor?
-They can’t do anything to me—they can’t possibly!”
-
-The doctor stood looking into the sunless garden with a troubled face.
-
-“Dr. Baumgartner!”
-
-“Yes, my young fellow?”
-
-“They can’t do anything to me, can they?”
-
-Baumgartner returned to the fireside with his foreign shrug.
-
-“It depends what you call anything,” said he. “They cannot hang you;
-after what I should certainly have to say I doubt if they could even
-detain you in custody. But you would only be released on bail; the case
-would be sent for trial; it would get into every paper in England; your
-family could not stop it, your schoolfellows would devour it, you
-would find it difficult to live down both at home and at school. In
-years to come it will mean at best a certain smile at your expense!
-That is what they can do to you,” concluded the doctor, apologetically.
-“You asked me to tell you. It is better to be candid. I hoped you would
-bear it like a man.”
-
-Pocket was not even bearing it like a manly boy; he had flung himself
-back into the big chair, and broken down for the first time utterly.
-One name became articulate through his sobs. “My mother!” he moaned.
-“It’ll kill her! I know it will! Oh, that I should live to kill my
-mother too!”
-
-“Mothers have more lives than that; they have more than most people,”
-remarked Baumgartner sardonically.
-
-“You don’t understand! She has had a frightful illness, bad news of any
-kind has to be kept from her, and can you imagine worse news than this?
-She mustn’t hear it!” cried the boy, leaping to feet with streaming
-eyes. “For God’s sake, sir, help me to hush it up!”
-
-“It’s in the papers already,” replied Baumgartner, with a forbearing
-shrug.
-
-“But my part in it!”
-
-“You said it had got to come out.”
-
-“I didn’t realise all it meant—to her!”
-
-“I thought you meant to make a clean breast of it?”
-
-“So I did; but now I don’t!” cried Pocket, vehemently. “Now I would
-give my own life, cheerfully, rather than let her know what I’ve
-done—than drag them all through that!”
-
-“Do you mean what you say?”
-
-Baumgartner appeared to be forming some conditional intention.
-
-“Every syllable!” said Pocket.
-
-“Because, you know,” explained the doctor, “it is a case of now or
-never so far as going to Scotland Yard is concerned.”
-
-“Then it’s never!”
-
-“I must put it plainly to you. It’s not too late to do whatever you
-decide, but you must decide now. I would still go with you to Scotland
-Yard, and the chances are that they would still accept the true story
-of to-day. I have told you what I believe to be the worst that can
-happen to you; it may be that rather more may happen to me for
-harbouring you all day as I have done. I hope not, but I took the law
-into my own hands, and I I am prepared to abide by the law if you so
-decide this minute.”
-
-“I have decided.”
-
-“Mind you, it would mean putting yourself unreservedly in my hands, at
-any rate for the present,” said Baumgartner, impressively. “Better
-come to Scotland Yard this minute than go back to school and blab about
-the whole thing there!”
-
-“I shouldn’t do that.”
-
-“I’m not so sure,” replied the acute doctor. “I believe I know you
-better than you know yourself; one learns more of a person in an hour
-like this than in a whole humdrum lifetime. I believe you would find it
-very difficult not to tell somebody.”
-
-Pocket admitted it with a natural outburst of his leading quality. In
-truth no previous act or word of Baumgartner’s had inspired such
-confidence as this unerring piece of insight. It seemed to the boy a
-perfect miracle of discernment. He was not old enough to know that what
-he would have done, in his weakness, most grown-up men and women of his
-temperament would have done in theirs.
-
-“Remember,” resumed the doctor, “you would have the whole of to-day to
-account for; it’s not as though you wouldn’t have some very awkward
-questions to answer the moment you got back to school.”
-
-And again the lad marvelled at this intuition into public-school
-conditions on the part of one who could have no first-hand knowledge of
-those insular institutions. But this fresh display of understanding
-only confirmed him in his resolve.
-
-“I trust you, sir,” said he; “haven’t you done enough for me to make
-me? I put myself, as you say, absolutely in your hands; and I’m
-grateful to you for all you’ve done and whatever you mean to do!”
-
-“Even though it comes to hiding with us here in London?”
-
-“No matter what it comes to,” cried Pocket, strangely exalted now, “so
-long as my people never know!”
-
-“They may think you dead.” He thought of saying that he wished he was;
-but it would not have been true; even then it would have been a lie,
-and Pocket was not the boy to tell one if he knew it.
-
-“That would be better than knowing what I have done,” was what he said;
-and in his exaltation he believed no less.
-
-“You quite see that you are taking a step which must be final?”
-
-“It is final—absolutely—so far as I am concerned.”
-
-And it was meant to be, in all good faith; the very fulness and
-fairness of the doctor’s warnings served but to strengthen that
-resolve. But Baumgartner, as if to let well or ill alone, dropped the
-matter with a clinching shrug; and presently he left his visitor, less
-wisely, to brood on it alone.
-
-Pocket was a dab at brooding! That is the worst of your conscientious
-ass; he takes his decision like a man; he means to stick to it like a
-sportsman; but he cannot help wondering whether he has decided for the
-best, and what would have happened if he had decided otherwise, and
-what his world will say about him as it is.
-
-This one went much further in the unique stress of his extraordinary
-position. He pictured his people dressing for dinner at home; he
-pictured his form sitting down to private-work in his form-master’s
-hall; there was no end to his mental pictures, for they included one of
-himself on the scaffold in the broad-arrows of the little old waxwork
-at Madame Tassaud’s! He could not help himself; his mind was crumbling
-with his dreadful deed and its awful possibilities. Now his heart bled
-honestly for the poor dead man, now for his own mother and sister, and
-now not less freely for himself. He had been so innocent in the whole
-matter; he had only been an innocent and rather sporting fool. And now
-one of these lives was ended by his hand, and all the rest would be
-darkened for ever after!
-
-It was too great a burden for a boy to bear; but Pocket bore it far
-into the long June twilight, scarcely stirring in the big soft chair,
-yet never leaning back in it again. He sat hunched up as though once
-more battling for breath, but curiously enough his bodily distress had
-flown before that of the mind. Pocket would thankfully have changed
-them back again, for his brain was as clear as his bronchial tubes, its
-capacity for suffering undimmed by a single physical preoccupation.
-Between seven and eight the young lady of the house came in with
-candles and a kind of high-tea on a tray; she also brought a box of
-d’Auvergne Cigarettes and the latest evening paper, which her uncle
-thought that Mr. Upton would like to see. That was how the girl
-addressed the boy, and the style always made him feel, and wish to
-seem, something of a man. But his present effort in that direction was
-sadly perfunctory: he almost ejected little Miss Platts in his
-eagerness to shut the door on her and see the news.
-
-It was neither unimportant nor at first sight reassuring. The dead man
-had been identified by the police, who knew him of old, and were
-reported as hopeful of obtaining a clue through his identity. The clue
-was the point that stuck like a burr in the boyish brain; his idea of a
-clue was one leading straight to himself; it took Dr. Baumgartner to
-explain the true value of the identity clause, and bid the boy eat his
-meal.
-
-“Trust the police!” said he. “They’re on a false scent already; they
-may try at that end till it turns their hair grey!”
-
-Pocket disliked this tone; he had begun to think almost as
-reverentially of his victim as of a dead member of his own family. It
-appeared thus early, however, that in life the defunct had been by no
-means worthy of respect. Rowton Houses had been his only home, except
-when his undistinguished offences got him into gaol; the surreptitious
-practices of the professional mendicant, his sole means of livelihood.
-So much was to be read between the few brief lines in the stop-press
-column of the latest evening paper. Again it required Baumgartner to
-extract comfort from such items.
-
-“At all events,” said he, “you cannot reproach yourself with the
-destruction of a valuable life! The man was evidently the worthless
-creature that he looked. You talk about your undesirable aliens, but
-here in England you breed undesirables enough to manure the world! It’s
-a public service to reduce their number.”
-
-This pitch of nauseous cynicism had not been reached at a bound; the
-doctor had been working up to it all the evening, and this was the
-climax of his cold-blooded consolation as the schoolboy mechanically
-undressed himself for bed. His host had accompanied him up two pairs of
-stairs, carrying candles, and his meerschaum pipe in aromatic blast.
-Pocket felt a new chill through his veins, but he was not revolted as
-he would have been at first. This extraordinary man had shown him still
-more extraordinary kindness; the die was cast for them to stand or fall
-together; and there was something about the gaunt old visionary, a
-confidential candour, a dry intellectual plausibility, which could not
-but stimulate respect for his ungodliest views. Whether they really
-were his views, or only a tortuous attempt at comfort, the sympathy
-underlying their expression was undoubted and indubitable. But the
-doctor spoke as though he meant every word, and the boy only longed to
-agree with him: his conscientious failure to do so declared itself in a
-series of incoherent expostulations to which Baumgartner himself gave
-articulate shape in order to demolish them in the next breath.
-
-“You say his life was as much to him as yours to you? Is that it, my
-young fellow?”
-
-Pocket acknowledged the interpretation, and watched the Turk’s head
-wreathed in cool blue clouds.
-
-“You might as well compare withered weed with budding flower!” cried
-the poetic doctor. “You have an honourable life before you; he had a
-disreputable one behind him. You were bred and nurtured in the lap of
-luxury; he finds it for the first time in his——”
-
-But here even Baumgartner broke off abruptly. The boy was writhing in
-his bed; the man sat down on the end of it.
-
-“You do such poor devils a service,” said he, “in sending them to a
-world that cannot use them worse than this one. They are better under
-the ground than lying on it drenched and drunk!”
-
-“It was a human life,” groaned the boy, shutting his eyes in pain.
-
-“Human life!” cried Baumgartner, leaping to his feet, his huge shadow
-guying him on the ceiling. “What is this human life, and who are you
-and I, that we set such store by it? The great men of this world never
-did; it’s only the little people and the young who pule and whine about
-human life. The ancient Roman sacrificed his weaklings as on an altar;
-there are some of us in these days who would prescribe a Tarpeian Rock
-for modern decadence. So much in pious parenthesis! Napoleon thought
-nothing of your human life. Von Moltke, Bismarck, and our staff in
-Germany thought as little of it as Napoleon; the Empire of my
-countrymen was founded on a proper appreciation of the infinitesimal
-value of human life, and your British Empire will be lost through
-exaggerating its importance. Blood and Iron were our watchwords;
-they’re on the tip of every Fleet Street pen to-day, but I speak of
-what I know. I’ve heard the Iron shriek without ceasing, like the wind,
-and I’ve felt the Blood like spray from a hot spring! I fought at
-Gravelotte; as a public schoolboy you probably never heard the name
-before this minute. I fought in the Prussian Guard. I saw you looking
-at the pictures downstairs. I was in that charge across those hellish
-ridges. Over two thousand of us fell dead in half an hour, but we
-gained the victory. More Germans were killed that day—that sweltering
-August afternoon—than English in your whole South African War that took
-you years! The flower of Germany fell at Gravelotte; that was human
-life with a vengeance! But an Empire rose out of my comrades’ ashes.
-And that’s all it’s for, this human life of yours: for the
-master-builders to lay out in their wisdom on the upward road.”
-
-The schoolboy was carried away. In the sudden eloquence of this strange
-outburst, with its poetic frenzy, its ruthless idealism, its wild
-bloodthirsty nobility, the youthful listener lost sight of its
-irrelevancy, or rather it was the irrevelant features that flared up
-first in his brain. It was a childish question, but here was a very
-child, and he could not help asking the fierce old soldier whether he
-had escaped without a wound.
-
-“Without a scratch,” was the reply. “I come home. I leave the army. I
-ally my human life with one that is all but divine. My Queen is struck
-down dead at my side within a year. And you expect me to pity the
-veriest pawn in the game!”
-
-The boy was never to forget these bitter speeches altogether; there was
-not a single sentence of them that he failed to recall at one time or
-another word for word. He would see a wild arm waving, wisps of smoke
-from a waving pipe, a core of nicotine in a curve of amber, and the
-Turk’s face glistening in its heat like that of the hard old man
-himself. He would hear the cynical and scornful voice softening in a
-breath to the simple, tender, and domestic humanity of his race. The
-voice and the face were with him throughout that night of his own
-manifold misery; but the time had not come for so young a boy to
-realise that Dr. Baumgartner had begun to say one thing, and been
-carried away like his listener.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII.
-POINTS OF VIEW
-
-
-On the following morning, the ominous Friday of this disastrous week,
-there was a letter for Mr. Upton on the breakfast-table down in
-Leicestershire. This circumstance was not so usual as it sounds,
-because Mr. Upton conducted all his correspondence from his office at
-the works. If you simply put the name of the village, as he did on his
-stationery, to the works it went; it was necessary to direct your
-letter to the hall if you wished it to be delivered there; and few
-there were who had anything to say to Mr. Upton, on paper, unless it
-was on business too. His youngest son, however, had furnished the more
-impressive address to Dr. Bompas, whose hurried hand it was that dealt
-the first blow.
-
-It so happened that a letter from Dr. Bompas had been expected; this
-made the letter he wrote especially upsetting, and for the following
-reason. Mrs. Upton had been so shaken by her vivid dream on the
-Thursday morning, that her husband had telegraphed to Bompas, somewhat
-against his own judgment, to know how he found their son. The reply had
-been: “Better expecting him again to-day will write”—which prepared the
-family for still more reassuring accounts in the morning. Lettice felt
-relieved as the original discoverer of Dr. Bompas. Horace found his
-views confirmed as to the systematic exaggeration of a touch of asthma,
-and Fred was only prevented by absence from entirely agreeing with
-Horace. Mr. Upton thought no more about the matter. But poor Mrs. Upton
-lay upstairs looking forward to a letter which it was quite impossible
-to show her now that it had come.
-
-Mr. Upton read it more than once without a word; and it was not his way
-to keep a family matter to himself at his own table; but on this
-occasion he triumphed over temperament with an extraordinary instinct
-for what was in the air.
-
-“The most infernal letter I ever had in my life!” was his only comment
-as he thrust it in his pocket out of sight. Lettice, however, might
-have seen that her father was far more distressed than angry had not
-Horace promptly angered him by saying he was not surprised. The young
-fellow’s face and the old one’s neck were redder before the last was
-heard of that remark. A garbled paraphrase of the letter was eventually
-vouchsafed; the boy had made very little improvement, and was not
-likely to make more while he remained at a school where he was allowed
-to use any remedy he liked; in fact, until he was taken away from
-school, and placed under his own immediate control in town, Dr. Bompas
-declined to persevere with the case.
-
-“Blighter!” said Horace impartially, as though now there were two of
-them. Such was, in fact, the sum of his observations to Lettice when
-their father had taken himself and his letter upstairs. Young Tony was
-not “playing the game”; but then he never did play it to the expert
-satisfaction of Fred and Horace.
-
-Upstairs the husband gave a more elaborate version of his letter, and
-told a lie. He said he had destroyed the letter in his indignation. He
-had destroyed it, but solely to escape any question of his showing it
-to his wife. He said a happier thing by chance; he said that for two
-pins he would motor over to the school and see for himself how the boy
-really was; then perhaps he would be in a position to consider the
-entreaty which Mrs. Upton added to the specialist’s demand, that his
-patient should be placed under his eye in town. Mr. Upton went so far,
-however, without much immediate intention of taking so strong a
-measure.
-
-He wished to discuss the matter with Horace; he might be quite
-justified in his fears. He was sorry he had let them lead to words with
-his eldest son. There were aspects of the case, as it presented itself
-to his mind, which he could hardly thresh out with Lettice, and her
-mother must not know of his anxiety on any account. Horace, however,
-had gone off earlier than usual in his dudgeon.
-
-Mr. Upton was not long in following him to the works.
-
-It was a charming garden that he passed through on his way; it charmed
-its owner all the more from his having made it himself out of a few
-rolling meadows. The rhododendrons were at the climax of their June
-glory. The new red gravel (his own colouring to a shade) appealed to an
-eye which had never looked longer than necessary in the glass.
-Lawn-tennis courts were marked out snowily on a shaven lawn; the only
-eyesore the good man encountered was poor Pocket’s snob-wickets painted
-on a buttress in the back premises; his own belching blast-furnaces,
-corroding and defiling acres and acres within a few hundred yards of
-his garden wall, were but another form of beauty to the sturdy Briton
-who had made them too.
-
-Horace was called into the private office and speedily propitiated. “I
-was more anxious than I could tell you at the time,” his father said;
-“the fact is, I concealed half the fellow’s letter on account of
-Lettice. But it’s a man’s matter, and you ought to know.”
-
-Of course the letter had stated that the erratic patient had failed to
-keep his appointment on the morning of writing; but if it had drawn the
-line of information there, it is highly improbable that Mr. Upton would
-have exercised so wise a discretion at table and in his wife’s room.
-It now appeared that as a busy professional man the outspoken Bompas
-had gone far out of his way to play Mahomet to his patient’s mountain.
-Tony had told him where he hoped to stay in London, which Bompas
-particularly wished to know on account of some special prescription the
-boy was to try that night. On his failure to appear at the appointed
-time, the doctor had telephoned to the address in question, only to
-learn that the boy had not stayed there at all. He had been given
-another address with the same result, except that from the second house
-he gathered that the young gentleman had gone on to some hotel. Horace
-was left to imagine a professional opinion of such proceedings, and
-asked for his own on the facts as a man of the world.
-
-“Exactly like young Tony!” quoth Horace, never afraid to say what he
-thought.
-
-“What! Like a lad of sixteen to go and put up at some hotel?”
-
-“Like Tony,” repeated Horace significantly. “Trust him to do what
-nobody else ever did.”
-
-“But how could Spearman give him the chance?”
-
-“Heaven knows! Fred and I never got it.”
-
-“I thought he was to stay at Coverley’s?”
-
-“So I heard.”
-
-“I don’t like it! It’s all wrong at his age,” said Mr. Upton. He had
-his notions of life and its temptations, and he was blunt enough with
-his elder sons, yet it was not without some hesitation that he added:
-“You don’t think there’s any question of bad company, do you?”
-
-And though Horace had “no use for” his so-called pocket edition, he
-answered without any hesitation at all: “Not for a moment, from what I
-know of Tony.”
-
-Mr. Upton was sorry he had said so much. He excused himself by
-mentioning his wife’s dream, now family property, which had been on his
-mind all this time. Horace, however, had no hesitation in informing him
-that nobody nowadays believed in dreams.
-
-“Well, I never have, certainly,” said Mr. Upton. “But what can it be?”
-
-“He probably went up to Lord’s, and forgot all about his doctor.”
-
-“I hope not! You’re too down on him, Horace.”
-
-“If there was nobody to put him up it was the game to go back to
-school.”
-
-“But he’s said to have gone to some hotel.”
-
-“I don’t suppose he did,” said Horace. “I expect he got back somehow.”
-
-The question was still under discussion when a telegram from Mr.
-Spearman settled it. Where was Tony? He had not returned when due the
-day before, and his friends in London wired that they knew nothing
-about him.
-
-“What friends?” cried Mr. Upton, in a fury. “Why the devil couldn’t
-Spearman give their names or Bompas the addresses he talked about?”
-
-Horace could only think of Mr. Coverley or “that Knaggs crowd.” Neither
-he nor Fred had been at Coverley’s school, and young Tony’s friends
-were by no means theirs.
-
-Mr. Upton thought Lettice would know, and was going to speak to her on
-the telephone when Horace reminded him of his own remark about its
-being “a man’s matter”; it was beginning to look, even to Horace, like
-a serious one as well, and in his opinion it was much better that
-neither his mother nor his sister should know anything at all about it
-before it was absolutely necessary. Horace now quoted his mother’s
-dream as the devil did Scripture, but adduced sounder arguments
-besides; he was speaking quite nicely of them both, for instance, when
-he declared that Lettice was wrapped up in Tony, and would be beside
-herself if she thought any evil had overtaken him. It would be simply
-impossible for her to hide her anxiety from the mother on whom she also
-waited hand and foot. Mr. Upton disagreed a little there; he had good
-reason to believe in Lettice’s power of suppressing her own feelings;
-but for her own sake, and particularly in view of that discredited
-dream, he now decided to keep his daughter in the dark as long as his
-wife.
-
-It was his first decision; his next was to motor over to the school, as
-he had fortunately told his wife he might, and have a word with Mr.
-Spearman, who deserved hanging for the whole thing! The mischief was
-done, however, and it was now a matter in which home and school
-authorities must act together. A clerk was instructed to telephone to
-the garage for the car to come straight to the works. And the
-ironmaster stood waiting at his office window in a fever of anxiety.
-
-The grimy scene on which he looked had a constant charm for him, and
-yet to-day it almost added to the bitterness of his heart. His was the
-brain that had conceived those broad effects of smoke and flame, and
-blackened faces lit by the light of molten metal; his the strong hand
-and the stout heart which had brought his conception into being. Those
-were his trucks bringing in his ore from his mines; that was his
-consequential little locomotive fussing in front of them. His men,
-dwellers in his cottages on the brow of that hill, which was also his,
-happened to be tapping one of his furnaces at the moment; that was his
-pig-iron running out into the moulds as magically as an electric
-advertisement writes itself upon the London sky at night. The sense of
-possession is the foible of many who have won all they have; the
-ironmaster almost looked upon the hot air dancing over the white-hot
-bars as his too. The whole sulphurous prospect, once a green pasture,
-had long been his to all intents and purposes, and no second soul would
-ever take his pride in it; to his children it would never be more than
-the means of livelihood; and how had it repaid even him for a life’s
-devotion? With a house of sorrow in the next valley! With a stricken
-wife, and sons whose right hands kept their cunning for the
-cricket-field, and one of whom the very thought had become a sudden
-madness!
-
-Yet he could think of nothing else, except his wife, even in the great
-green car that whisked him westward in a dancing cloud of dust; for he
-did not drive himself, and the rush through the iced fragrance of the
-summer’s day was a mental stimulant that did its work only too well.
-Now it recalled the ailing infancy of the missing boy—bronchitis it had
-been in the early stages—and how his mother had taken him to Hastings
-three successive winters, and wrapped him up far too much. Old family
-jokes cropped up in a new light, dimming the eyes without an instant’s
-warning. On one of those flittings south the solicitous mother had
-placed the uncomplaining child on a footwarmer, and forgotten him until
-a cascade of perspiration apprised her of the effect: poor Mr. Upton
-had never thought of the incident without laughter, until to-day.
-Without doubt she had coddled him, and all for this, and she herself
-too ill to hear a word about it!
-
-His mind harked back to his wife. In her sad case there was no
-uncertainty. He thought of thirty years ago when he had seen her first.
-There had been drama and colour in their meeting; the most celebrated
-of the neighbouring packs had run a fox to earth on his works, indeed
-in his very slag-heap! The author of cancerous furnaces in the green
-heart of a grass country had never been a popular personage with the
-hunting folk; but he was master of the situation that memorable day. It
-was his terrier that went into the slag-heap like a ferret, and came
-out bloody with a moribund fox; his pocket-knife that shore through the
-brush, his hand that presented it across the wall to the only young
-lady in at the death. The men in pink looking over, the hunt servants
-with their work cut out on the other side, the tongue of molten slag
-sticking out of the furnace mouth—the momentary contact of the
-industrial and the sporting world—it was that strange and yet
-significant scene which had first endeared its dingy setting to the
-ironmaster’s heart. But he had made the contact permanent by falling in
-love with the young lady of the brush and marrying her under all the
-guns of her countified kith and kin. And now she was a stricken
-invalid, and their youngest-born was God knew where!
-
-Of course there were no tidings of him at the school, where the now
-distracted father spent a more explosive hour than he cared to think
-about as he flew on to town in the car. He was afraid he had been very
-rude to Mr. Spearman; but then Spearman had been rash enough to
-repudiate his obvious responsibility in the matter. It was not his
-fault that the boy went up to town so often to see his doctor and stay
-the night. He had his own opinion of that arrangement, but it had
-become his business to see it carried out. Mr. Upton got in a sharp
-thrust here, to which the house-master retorted that if a boy of
-seventeen could not be trusted to keep his word, he should like to know
-who could! Tony had promised him faithfully to return that same night,
-failing friends whom he had mentioned as certain to put him up; their
-names Mr. Upton was able to demand at last as though they were so much
-blood; and he could not have cursed them more freely if Spearman had
-been a layman like himself. But that was all the information
-forthcoming from this quarter; for, happening to ask what the head
-master thought of the affair, Mr. Upton was calmly informed that it had
-still to reach his ears; at which he stared, and then merely remarked
-that he was not surprised, but in such a tone that Spearman sprang up
-and led him straight into the presence.
-
-Now the Benevolent Despot of this particular seat of learning was an
-astute pedagogue who could handle men as well as boys. He explained to
-Mr. Upton that the safe-keeping of the unit was the house-master’s
-concern, but agreed it was time that he himself was made acquainted
-with the present case. He took it as seriously, too, as Mr. Upton could
-have wished, but quite as frankly from his own point of view as his two
-visitors did from each of theirs. He had no doubt the boy would turn
-up, but when he did it would be necessary for him to give a
-satisfactory account of his proceedings before he could be received
-back into the school.
-
-“Bother the school!” cried Mr. Upton, diluting the anathema with
-difficulty. “Let me find my lad alive and well; then you can do what
-you like.”
-
-“But how do you propose to find him?” inquired the head master, with
-only a dry smile (which disappointed Spearman) by way of rejoinder.
-
-“First I shall have a word with these infernal people who, on their own
-showing, refused the boy a bed. I’ll give them a bit of my mind, I
-promise you! Then there’s the hotel they seem to have driven him to; it
-may be the one we always stay at, or one they’ve recommended. If I
-can’t hear anything of him there, I suppose there’ll be nothing for it
-but to call in the police.”
-
-“My dear sir,” exclaimed the head master, “you may as well call in the
-public at once! It will be in the papers before you know where you are;
-and that, I need hardly point out to you, is as undesirable from our
-point of view as I should have thought it would be from yours.”
-
-“It’s more so from mine!” cried Mr. Upton, in fresh alarm and
-indignation. “You think about your school. I think about my wife and
-boy; it might kill her to hear about this before he’s found. But if I
-don’t go to the police, who am I to go to?” The head master leant back
-in his chair, and joined his finger-tips judicially.
-
-“There was a man we had down here to investigate an extraordinary case
-of dishonesty, in which I was actually threatened with legal
-proceedings on behalf of a certain boy. But this man Thrush came down
-and solved the mystery within twenty-four hours, and saved the school a
-public scandal.”
-
-“He may save you another,” said Mr. Upton, “if he can find my boy. What
-did you say the name was?”
-
-“Thrush—Eugene Thrush—quite a remarkable man, and, I think, a
-gentleman,” said the head master impressively. Further particulars,
-including an address in Glasshouse Street, were readily supplied from
-an advertisement in that day’s _Times_, in which Mr. Thrush was
-described as an “inquiry agent,” capable alike of “delicate
-investigations” and “confidential negotiations.”
-
-That was the very man for Mr. Upton, as he himself agreed. And he
-departed both on speaking terms with Mr. Spearman, who said a final
-word for his own behaviour in the matter, and grimly at one with the
-head master on the importance of keeping it out of the papers.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX.
-MR. EUGENE THRUSH
-
-
-The remarkable Mr. Thrush was a duly qualified solicitor, who had never
-been the man for that orderly and circumscribed profession. The tide of
-events which had turned his talents into their present channel, was
-known to but few of his many boon companions, and much nonsense was
-talked about him and his first career. It was not the case (as anybody
-might have ascertained) that he had been struck off the rolls in
-connection with the first great scandal in which he was professionally
-concerned. Nor was there much more truth in the report that he drank,
-in the ordinary interpretation of the term.
-
-It is true, however, that Mr. Thrush had a tall tumbler on his
-dressing-table, to help him shave for the evening of that fateful
-Friday. He was dressing for an early dinner before a first night. His
-dressing-room, in which he also slept in Spartan simplicity, was the
-original powder-closet of the panelled library out of which it led.
-There was a third room in which his man Mullins prepared breakfast and
-spent the day. But the whole was a glorified garret, at the top of such
-stairs as might have sent a nervous client back for an escort.
-
-Mullins, with the expression of an undertaker’s mute (a calling he had
-followed in his day), was laying out his master’s clothes as mournfully
-as though his master were in them, instead of chatting genially as he
-shaved.
-
-“I’m sorry to have missed your evidence, Mullins, but if we go into
-this case it’s no use letting the police smell the competitive rat too
-soon. Inquests are not in my line, and they’d have wondered what the
-devil I was doing there, especially as you refrained from saying you
-were in my service.”
-
-“I had no call, sir.”
-
-“Quite right, Mullins! An ideal witness, I can see you were. So you’d
-only to describe the finding of the body?”
-
-“That was all, sir.”
-
-“And your description was really largely founded on fact?”
-
-Mullins stood like a funereal grenadier at his gentleman’s shaving
-elbow. “I told the truth, sir, and nothing but the truth,” said he,
-with sombre dignity.
-
-“But not the whole truth, eh, Mullins! What about the little souvenirs
-you showed me yesterday?”
-
-“There was no call to name them either, sir. The cheroot-end I must
-have picked up a hundred yards away, and even the medicine-cork wasn’t
-on the actual scene of the murder.”
-
-“That’s all right, Mullins. I don’t see what they could possibly have
-to do with it, myself; and really, but for the fluke of your being the
-one to find the body, and picking the first-fruits for what they’re
-worth, it’s the last kind of case that I should dream of touching with
-a ten-foot pole. By the way, I suppose they won’t require you at the
-adjourned inquest?”
-
-“They may not require me, sir, but I should like to attend, if quite
-convenient,” replied Mullins deferentially. “The police were very
-stingy with their evidence to-day; they’ve still to produce the fatal
-bullet, and I should like a sight of that, sir.”
-
-Mr. Thrush did not continue the conversation, possibly because he took
-as little real interest as he professed in the case which was being
-thrust upon him, but more obviously owing to the necessary care in
-shaving the corners of a delightfuly long and mobile mouth. Indeed, the
-whole face emerging from the lather, as a cast from its clay, would
-have delighted any eye but its own. It was fat and flabby as the rest
-of Eugene Thrush; there was quite a collection of chins to shave; and
-yet anybody but himself must have recognised the invincible freshness
-of complexion, the happy penetration of every glance, as an earnest of
-inexhaustible possibilities beneath the burden of the flesh. Great
-round spectacles, through which he stared like a wise fish in an
-aquarium, were caught precariously on a button of a nose which in
-itself might have prevented the superficial observer from taking him
-any more seriously than he took himself.
-
-Mr. Upton, who arrived before Thrush was visible, was an essentially
-superficial and antipathetic observer of unfamiliar types; and being
-badly impressed by the forbidding staircase, he had determined on the
-landing to sound his man before trusting him. In the rank undergrowth
-of his prejudices there was no more luxuriant weed than an innate
-abhorrence of London and all Londoners, which neither the cause of his
-visit nor the murky mien of Mullins was calculated to abate. The
-library of books in solid bindings, many of them legal tomes, was the
-first reassuring feature; another was the large desk, made
-business-like with pigeon-holes and a telephone; but Mr. Upton was only
-beginning to recover confidence when Eugene Thrush shook it sadly at
-his first entry.
-
-It might have been by his face, or his fat, or his evening clothes seen
-from the motorist’s dusty tweeds, almost as much as by the misplaced
-joviality with which Thrush exclaimed: “I’m sorry to have kept you
-waiting, sir, and the worst of it is that I can’t let you keep me!”
-
-This touched a raw nerve in the ironmaster, as the kind of reception
-one had to come up to London to incur. “Then I’ll clear out!” said he,
-and would have been as good as his word but for its instantaneous
-effect.
-
-Thrush had pulled out a gold watch after a stare of kindly
-consternation.
-
-“I really am rather rushed,” said he; “but I can give you four minutes,
-if that’s any good to you.”
-
-Now, at first sight, before a word was spoken, Mr. Upton would have
-said four hours or four days of that boiled salmon in spectacles would
-have been no good to him; but the precise term of minutes, together
-with a seemlier but not less decisive manner, had already quickened the
-business man’s respect for another whose time was valuable. This is by
-no means to say that Thrush had won him over in a breath. But the
-following interchange took place rapidly.
-
-“I understand you’re a detective, Mr. Thrush?”
-
-“Hardly that, Mr.——I’ve left your card in the other room.”
-
-“Upton is my name, sir.”
-
-“I don’t aspire to the official designation, Mr. Upton, an inquiry
-agent is all I presume to call myself.”
-
-“But you do inquire into mysteries?”
-
-“I’ve dabbled in them.”
-
-“As an amateur?”
-
-“A paid amateur, I fear.”
-
-“I come on a serious matter, Mr. Thrush—a very serious matter to me!”
-
-“Pardon me if I seem anything else for a moment; as it happens, you
-catch me dabbling, or rather meddling, in a serious case which is none
-of my business, but strictly a matter for the police, only it happens
-to have come my way by a fluke. I am not a policeman, but a private
-inquisitor. If you want anything or anybody ferreted out, that’s my job
-and I should put it first.”
-
-“Mr. Thrush, that’s exactly what I do want, if only you can do it for
-me! I had reason to fear, from what I heard this morning, that my
-youngest child, a boy of sixteen, had disappeared up here in London, or
-been decoyed away. And now there can be no doubt about it!”
-
-So, in about one of the allotted minutes, Thrush was trusted on grounds
-which Mr. Upton could not easily have explained; but the time was up
-before he had concluded a briefly circumstantial report of the facts
-within his knowledge.
-
-“When can I see you again?” he asked abruptly of Thrush.
-
-“When? What do you mean, Mr. Upton?”
-
-“The four minutes must be more than up.”
-
-“Go on, my dear sir, and don’t throw good time after bad. I’m only
-dining with a man at his club. He can wait.”
-
-“Thank you, Mr. Thrush.”
-
-“More good time! How do you know the boy hasn’t turned up at school or
-at home while you’ve been fizzing in a cloud of dust?”
-
-“I was to have a wire at the hotel I always stop at; there’s nothing
-there; but the first thing they told me was that my boy had been for a
-bed which they couldn’t give him the night before last. I did let them
-have it! But it seems the manager was out, and his understrappers had
-recommended other hotels; they’ve just been telephoning to them all in
-turn, but at every one the poor boy seems to have fared the same. Then
-I’ve been in communication with these infernal people in St. John’s
-Wood, and with the doctor, but none of them have heard anything. I
-thought I’d like to do what I could before coming to you, Mr. Thrush,
-but that’s all I’ve done or know how to do. Something must have
-happened!”
-
-“It begins to sound like it,” said Thrush gravely.
-
-“But there are happenings and happenings; it may be only a minor
-accident. One moment!”
-
-And he returned to the powder-closet of its modish day, where Mullins
-was still pursuing his ostensibly menial avocation. What the master
-said was inaudible in the library, but the man hurried out in front of
-him, and was heard clattering down the evil stairs next minute.
-
-“In less than an hour,” explained Thrush, “he will be back with a list
-of the admissions at the principal hospitals for the last forty-eight
-hours. I don’t say there’s much in it; your boy had probably some
-letter or other means of easier indentification about him; but it’s
-worth trying.”
-
-“It is, indeed!” murmured Mr. Upton, much impressed.
-
-“And while he is trying it,” exclaimed Eugene Thrush, lighting up as
-with a really great idea, “you’ll greatly oblige me by having a
-whisky-and-soda in the first place.”
-
-“No, thank you! I haven’t had a bite all day. It would fly to my head.”
-
-“But that’s its job; that’s where it’s meant to fly,” explained the
-convivial Mr. Thrush, preparing the potion with practised hand. Baited
-with a biscuit it was eventually swallowed, and a flagging giant
-refreshed by his surrender. It made him like his new acquaintance too
-well to bear the thought of detaining him any more.
-
-“Go to your dinner, man, and let me waylay you later!”
-
-“Thank you, I prefer to keep you now I’ve got you, Mr. Upton! My man
-begins his round by going to tell my pal I can’t dine with him at all.
-Not a word, I beg! I’ll have a bite with you instead when Mullins gets
-back, and in a taxi that won’t be long.”
-
-“But do you think you can do anything?”
-
-The question floated in pathetic evidence on a flood of inarticulate
-thanks.
-
-“If you give me time, I hope so,” was the measured answer. “But the
-needle in the hay is nothing to the lost unit in London, and it will
-take time. I’m not a magazine detective, Mr. Upton; if you want a
-sixpenny solution for soft problems, don’t come to me!”
-
-At an earlier stage the ironmaster would have raised his voice and
-repeated that this was a serious matter; even now he looked rather
-reproachfully at Eugene Thrush, who came back to business on the spot.
-
-“I haven’t asked you for a description of the boy, Mr. Upton, because
-it’s not much good if we’ve got to keep the matter to ourselves. But is
-there anything distinctive about him besides the asthma?”
-
-“Nothing; he was never an athlete, like my other boys.”
-
-“Come! I call that a distinction in itself,” said Mr. Thrush, smiling
-down his own unathletic waistcoat. “But as a matter of fact, nothing
-could be better than the very complaint which no doubt unfits him for
-games.”
-
-“Nothing better, do you say?”
-
-“Emphatically, from my point of view. It’s harder to hide a man’s
-asthma than to hide the man himself.”
-
-“I never thought of that.”
-
-It was impossible to tell whether Thrush had thought of it before that
-moment. The round glasses were levelled at Mr. Upton with an
-inscrutable stare of the marine eyes behind them.
-
-“I suppose it has never affected his heart?” he inquired nonchalantly;
-but the nonchalance was a thought too deliberate for paternal
-perceptions quickened as were those of Mr. Upton.
-
-“Is that why you sent round the hospitals, Mr. Thrush?”
-
-“It was one reason, but honestly not the chief.”
-
-“I certainly never thought of his heart!”
-
-“Nor do I think you need now, in the case of so young a boy,” said
-Thrush earnestly. “On the other hand, I shouldn’t be surprised if his
-asthma were to prove his best friend.”
-
-“It owes him something!”
-
-“Do you know what he does for it?”
-
-“Yes, I do,” said Mr. Upton, remembering the annoying letter he seemed
-to have received some weeks before. “He smokes, against his doctor’s
-orders.”
-
-“Do you mean tobacco?”
-
-“No—some stuff for asthma.”
-
-“In cigarettes?”
-
-“Yes.”
-
-“Do you know the name?”
-
-“I have it here.”
-
-The offensive letter was not only produced, but offered for inspection
-after a precautionary glance. Thrush was on his feet to receive it in
-outstretched hand. Already he looked extraordinarily keen for his bulk,
-but the reading of the letter left him alive and alert to the last
-superfluous ounce.
-
-“But this is magnificent!” he cried, with eyes as round as their
-glasses.
-
-“I confess I don’t see why.”
-
-“Cigarettes d’Auvergne!”
-
-“Some French rubbish.”
-
-“The boy has evidently been dependent on them?”
-
-“It looks like it.”
-
-“And this man Bompas made him give them all up?”
-
-“So he has the impudence to say.”
-
-“Is it possible you don’t see the importance of all this?”
-
-Mr. Upton confessed incompetence unashamed.
-
-“I never heard of these cigarettes before; they’re an imported article;
-you can’t get them everywhere, I’ll swear! Your boy has got to rely on
-them; he’s out of reach of the doctor who’s forbidden them; he’ll try
-to get them somewhere! If he’s been trying in London, I’ll find out
-where before I’m twenty-four hours older!”
-
-“But how can you?” asked Mr. Upton, less impressed with the possibility
-than by this rapid if obvious piece of reasoning.
-
-“A. V. M.!” replied Eugene Thrush, with cryptic smile.
-
-“Who on earth is he?”
-
-“Nobody; it’s the principle on which I work.”
-
-“A. V. M.?”
-
-“Otherwise the old nursery game of Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral.”
-
-Again Mr. Upton had to prevent himself by main force from declaring it
-all no laughing matter; but his silence was almost bellicose.
-
-“You divide things into two,” explained Thrush, “and go on so dividing
-them until you come down to the indivisible unit which is the answer to
-the riddle. Animal or Vegetable? Vegetable or Mineral? Northern or
-Southern Hemisphere? Ah! I thought your childhood was not so very much
-longer ago than mine.”
-
-Mr. Upton had shrugged an impatient recognition of the game.
-
-“In this case it’s Chemists Who Do Sell D’Auvergne Cigarettes and
-Chemists Who Don’t. Then—Chemists Who Do and Did Yesterday, and
-Chemists Who Do but Didn’t! But we can probably improve on the old game
-by playing both rounds at once.”
-
-“I confess I don’t quite follow,” said Mr. Upton, “though there seems
-some method in the madness.”
-
-“It’s all the method I’ve got,” rejoined Thrush frankly. “But you shall
-see it working, for unless I’m much mistaken this is Mullins back
-sooner than I expected.”
-
-Mullins it was, and with the negative information expected and desired,
-though the professional melancholy of his countenance might have been
-the precursor of the worst possible news. The hospitals on his rapid
-round had included Charing Cross, St. Thomas’s, St. George’s, and the
-Royal Free; but he had telephoned besides to St. Mary’s and St.
-Bartholomew’s. At none of these institutions had a young gentleman of
-the name of Upton, or of unknown name, been admitted in the last
-forty-eight hours. Mullins, however, looked as sympathetically
-depressed as though no news had lost its proverbial value; and he had
-one of those blue-black faces that lend themselves to the look, his
-chin being in perpetual mourning for the day before.
-
-“Don’t go, Mullins! I’ve another job for you,” said Eugene Thrush.
-“Take the telephone directory and the London directory, and sit you
-down at my desk. Look up ‘chemists’ under ‘trades’; there are pages of
-them. Work through the list with the telephone directory, and ring up
-every chemist who’s on the telephone, beginning with the ones nearest
-in, to ask if he keeps d’Auvergne Cigarettes for asthma. Make a note of
-the first few who do; go round to them all in turn, and be back here at
-nine with a box from each. Complain to each of the difficulty of
-getting ’em elsewhere—say you wonder there’s so little demand—and with
-any luck you should find out whether and to whom they’ve sold any since
-Wednesday evening.”
-
-“But surely that’s the whole point?” suggested the ironmaster.
-
-“It’s the next point,” said Thrush. “The first is to divide the
-chemists of London into the Animals who keep the cigarettes and the
-Vegetables who don’t. I should really like to play the next round
-myself, but Mullins must do something while we’re out.”
-
-“While we’re out, Mr. Thrush?”
-
-“My dear Mr. Upton, you’re going to step across into the Café Royal
-with me, and have a square meal before you crack up!”
-
-“And what about your theatre?” asked Mr. Upton, to whom resistance was
-a physical impossibility, when they had left the sombre Mullins
-entrenched behind telephone and directories.
-
-“The theatre! I was only going out of curiosity to see the sort of
-tripe that any manager has the nerve to serve up on a Friday in June;
-but I’m not going to chuck the drama that’s come to me!”
-
-The ironmaster dined with his head in a whirl. It was a remarkably good
-dinner that Thrush ordered, if as inappropriate to the occasion as to
-his own weight. His guest, however, knew no more what he was eating or
-drinking than he knew the names of the people in diamonds and white
-waistcoats who stared at the distraught figure in the country clothes.
-It even escaped his observation that the obese Thrush was an unblushing
-gourmet with a cynical lust for Burgundy. The conscious repast of Mr.
-Upton consisted entirely of the conversation of Eugene Thrush, and of
-that conversation only such portions as exploited his professional
-theories, and those theories only as bearing on the case in hand. He
-was merely bored when Thrush tried to distract him with some account
-of the murder in which he himself was only interested because his
-myrmidon happened to have discovered the body. What was the murder of
-some ragamuffin in Hyde Park to a man from the country who had lost his
-son?
-
-“I don’t see how your theory can work there,” he sighed, out of pure
-politeness, when Thrush paused to punish the wine.
-
-“It should work all right,” returned Thrush. “You take an absolutely
-worthless life; what do you do it for? It must be one of two motives:
-either you have a grudge against the fellow or his existence is a
-menace to you. Revenge or fear; he wants your money, or he’s taken your
-wife! But what revenge can there be upon a poor devil without the price
-of a bed on his indescribable person? He hasn’t anything to bless
-himself with, and he makes it a bit too hot for somebody who has, eh?
-So you whittle it down. And then perhaps by sheer luck you run your
-blade into the root of the matter.”
-
-Thrush gave up trying to take the other out of himself, since his
-boldest statements were allowed to pass unchallenged, unless they dealt
-with the one subject on the poor man’s mind. The cessation of his
-voice, however, caused a twinge of conscience in the bad listener; he
-made a mental grab at the last phrase, and was astonished to find it
-germane to his own thoughts.
-
-“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned luck, Mr. Thrush!”
-
-“When was the first?”
-
-“You spoke of Friday as an unlucky day, as God knows this one is to me!
-Are you of a superstitious turn of mind?”
-
-“Not seriously.”
-
-“You don’t believe in dreams, for example?”
-
-“That’s another question,” said Thrush, his spectacles twinkling to
-colossal rubies as he sipped his Santenay. “Why do you ask?”
-
-“If you’re a disbeliever it’s no use my telling you.”
-
-“Perhaps I’m neither one thing nor the other.”
-
-“Have you ever known a mystery solved through a dream?”
-
-“I’ve heard of one,” said Thrush, with a significant stress upon the
-verb; “that’s the famous old murder in the Red Barn a hundred years
-ago. The victim’s mother dreamed three nights running that her missing
-daughter was buried in the Red Barn, and there she was all the time.
-There _may_ have been other cases.”
-
-“Cases in which a parent has dreamt of an absent child, at the very
-time at which something terrible has happened to that child?”
-
-“Any amount of those.”
-
-The father’s voice had trembled with the question. Thrush put down his
-glass as he gave his answer, and his spectacled eyes fixed themselves
-in a more attentive stare.
-
-“Do you think they’re all coincidences?” demanded Mr. Upton hoarsely.
-
-“Some of them may be, but certainly not all,” was the reply. “That
-would be the greatest coincidence of the lot!”
-
-“I hardly like to tell you why I ask,” said Mr. Upton, much agitated;
-for he could be as emotional as most irascible men.
-
-“You’ve been dreaming about the boy?”
-
-“Not I; but my poor wife has; that was one reason why I daren’t tell
-her he had disappeared.”
-
-“Why? What was the dream?”
-
-“That she saw him—and heard a shot.”
-
-“A shot!”
-
-Thrush looked as though he had heard one himself, but only until he had
-time to think.
-
-“She says she did hear one,” added Mr. Upton, “and that she wasn’t
-dreaming at all.”
-
-“But when was this?”
-
-“Between six and seven yesterday morning.” This time Thrush did not
-move a muscle of his face; it only lit up like a Chinese lantern, and
-again he was quick to quench the inner flame; but now the coincidence
-was complete. Coincidences, however, had nothing to say to the A. V. M.
-system, neither was Eugene Thrush the man to jump to wild conclusions
-on the strength of one. He asked whether the boy was very fond of
-shooting in the holidays, as though that might have accounted for the
-dream, but his father was not aware that he had ever smelt powder in
-his life. He little dreamt what Thrush was driving at! The tone of
-subsequent inquiries concerning Mrs. Upton’s health (already mentioned
-as the great reason for keeping the affair as long as possible a
-secret) sounded purely compassionate to an ear unconsciously aching for
-compassion.
-
-“Then that accounts for it,” said Thrush, when he had heard the whole
-sad story. There was the faintest ring of disappointment in his tone.
-“What do you mean?”
-
-“That anybody as ill as that, more particularly a lady, is naturally
-fanciful, I’m afraid.”
-
-“Then you think it a mere delusion, after all?”
-
-“My dear Mr. Upton, it would be presumption to express an opinion
-either way. I only say, don’t think too much about that dream. And
-since you won’t keep me company in my cups, we may as well rejoin the
-faithful Mullins.”
-
-They ran into Mullins, as it happened, in Glasshouse Street, and Mr.
-Upton for one would not have recognised him as the same being. His
-sepulchral face was alight with news—it was the transformation of the
-undertaker’s mute into the wedding guest. And yet he had only one box
-of the d’Auvergne Cigarettes to show for his evening’s work, and that
-chemist had declared it was the first he had sold for weeks.
-
-Thrush ordered his man upstairs, and took his late guest’s hand as soon
-as ever he dared.
-
-“You need a good night’s rest, my dear sir, and it’s no use climbing to
-my masthead for nothing. Mullins and I will do best if you don’t mind
-leaving us to ourselves for the night; but first thing tomorrow morning
-I shall be at your service again, and I hope there will be some
-progress to report.”
-
-Mullins was waiting for him with all the lights on, his solemn face
-still more strikingly illuminated.
-
-“Look at this, sir, look at this! These are the d’Auvergne Cigarettes!”
-
-“So I perceive.”
-
-“This stump is the stump of a d’Auvergne Cigarette.”
-
-“I hope you enjoyed it, Mullins.”
-
-“I didn’t smoke it, sir!”
-
-“Who did?”
-
-“That’s for you to say, sir; but it’s one of the little things I
-collected near the scene of the murder, but took for a common cheroot,
-yesterday morning in Hyde Park.”
-
-“Near the actual place?”
-
-Thrush had pounced upon the stump, and was holding it under the
-strongest of the electric lamps.
-
-“Under a seat, sir, not above a hundred yards away!”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X.
-SECOND THOUGHTS
-
-
-Pocket had been dreaming again. What else could he expect? Waking, he
-felt that he had got off cheaply; that he might have been through the
-nightmare of battle, as described by one who had, and depicted in the
-engravings downstairs, instead of on a mercifully hazy visit to the
-Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s. The trouble was that he had
-seen the one and not the other, and what he had seen continued to haunt
-him as he lay awake, but quite horribly when he fell back into a doze.
-There was nothing nebulous about the vile place then; it was as light
-and bright as the room in which he lay. The sinister figures in the
-panelled pens were swathed in white, as he had somewhere read that they
-always were at nights. Their evil faces were shrouded out of sight. But
-that only made their defiant, portly figures the more humanly inhuman
-and terrifying; it was as though they had all risen, in their
-winding-sheets, from their murderer’s graves. Better by far their
-beastly faces, that you knew were wax! So he reasoned with himself, and
-screwed up his courage, and laid hands on one of the shorter figures
-that he could reach. It rocked stiffly in its place, a most palpable
-and reassuring waxwork. He unwound the cerements from the hollow and
-unyielding head; and the face was new to him; it had not been there the
-other afternoon. It was a young face like his own, as ill-mounted on
-high shoulders, with thickish lips ajar, and only a pair of intelligent
-eyes to redeem an apparent heaviness: one and all his own identical
-characteristics. And no wonder, for the last recruit to the waxen army
-of murderers was a faithful model of himself.
-
-There was no awaking from this dream: the dreamer was not positive that
-he had been asleep. The veiled sunlight in his room was just what it
-had seemed in that deserted dungeon of swaddled malefactors. The boy
-shuddered till the bed shook under him. But after that he still lay on,
-facing himself as he had seen himself, and his deed as others must see
-it soon or late. Not the actual accident in the Park; but this hiding
-in the heart of London, this skulking among strangers, this leaving his
-own people to mourn him as the dead!
-
-The thought of them drew scalding tears. Never had they seemed so dear
-to him before. It was not only Lettice and their parents. Fred and
-Horace, how good they had been to him at school, and how proud he had
-been of them! What would they think of him if he went on skulking like
-this? What would they have done in his place? Anything but lie low like
-that, thought Pocket, and resolved forthwith to play the game as
-preached and practised by his brothers. It was strange that he should
-have been so dense about so plain a duty overnight; this morning he saw
-it as sharp as an image in perfect focus on the ground-glass screen…To
-think that a mad photographer should have talked him into an attitude
-as mad as his own! This morning he saw the common sense of the
-situation as well as its right and wrong. Nothing would happen to him
-if he gave himself up, but anything might if he waited till he was
-caught. As for the consequences to his poor mother, surely in the end
-suspense and uncertainty would eat deeper into the slender cord of her
-life than the shock of the truth would cut.
-
-Having made up his mind, however, as to the only thing to do, the boy
-behaved characteristically in not hastening to do it. The ordeal in
-front of him, beginning in certain conflict with Baumgartner, and
-ending in a blaze of wretched notoriety, was a severe one to face;
-meanwhile he lay in such peace and safety as it was only human to
-prolong a little. That night, for all his moral innocence, he might
-lie in prison; let him make the most of a good bed while he had one,
-especially as he was still mysteriously free from asthma. The last
-consideration took his mind off the ethical dilemma for quite a little
-time. He remembered the doctor at home telling him that he himself had
-suffered from chronic asthma, but had lost it after a carriage accident
-in which he was nearly killed.
-
-“My accident may have done the same for me,” thought Pocket—and was
-bitterly ashamed next moment to catch himself thinking complacently of
-any aspect of his deed. Its other aspects were a sufficient punishment.
-
-To get up, and raise the green linen blind, flooding with sunshine the
-plain upstairs room to which Baumgartner had conducted his guest, was
-to conjure uncomfortable visions of the eccentric doctor, with his
-ferocious meerschaum, his bloodthirsty battle-talk, and all his
-arguments in favour of the course which Pocket had now determined to
-abandon. The boy fully realised that he had been given his chance, and
-had refused it. And of all the interviews before him, that with Dr.
-Baumgartner was the one that he most dreaded, and would have given most
-to escape.
-
-Could he escape it? That was an idea; others came of it. If he did
-escape, and did give himself up for what he had done, there was no
-reason why he should involve Baumgartner in that voluntary confession.
-Suppose he hailed the first cab he saw, and drove over to St. John’s
-Wood to borrow money (they could scarcely refuse him that), and then
-took the first train home to tell his father everything in the first
-instance, that father would never hear of his incriminating a stranger
-who had befriended him according to his lights. He himself need never
-say where he had spent the twenty-four hours after the tragedy, even if
-he were ever to know. And so far he had no notion, thanks to the
-ridiculous posture prescribed by Baumgartner in the cab; he could only
-suppose the motive had been to keep him out of sight, the benefit to
-his breathing a mere pretext; and yet it was a curious result that
-after a day and a night he should still be in total ignorance of his
-whereabouts.
-
-He opened his window and looked out; but it was a back window, and the
-sunny little strip of garden below was one of many in a row. Old
-discoloured walls divided them from each other and from the gardens of
-a parallel block of bigger houses, whose slates and chimneys towered
-above the intervening trees. The street in front of those houses was
-completely hidden, but the hum of its traffic travelled pleasantly to
-the ear, and there were other reassuring sights and sounds. In one of
-the contiguous gardens a very small boy was wheeling a doll’s
-perambulator; on the other side, where the fine, warm gravel reminded
-Pocket of the carroty kind at home, a man was mowing an equally trim
-lawn. Pocket listened to the murmur of the machine, and watched the
-green spray playing over the revolving knives, and savoured the
-curiously countrified smell of cut grass; the combined effect was a
-still stronger reminiscence of his father’s garden, where his own old
-pony pulled the machine in leather shoes.
-
-Because such associations filled his eyes again, there seemed no end to
-them. Somebody was playing the piano near some open window, and playing
-almost as well as Lettice did, and playing one of her things! Pocket
-could not bear to listen or look out any longer, and he dressed as
-quietly as he could. He had almost resolved to slip out without a word,
-whatever else he did, if the opportunity offered. It simply never
-occurred to him, until he made the discovery, that anybody would dare
-to lock him in his room!
-
-Yet they had done it; that infernal old German doctor had had the cheek
-to do it; and the effect on the boy, who so expressed the situation to
-himself, was rather remarkable. A wholly ineffectual tug or two told
-him he was on the wrong side of the door for applying mere bodily
-strength, that either he must raise an ignominious shout for freedom or
-else achieve it for himself by way of the window. Unathletic as he
-always had been, he was sportsman enough not to hesitate an instant
-between the two alternatives; and on again looking out of the window,
-saw his way down at a glance.
-
-Immediately underneath was another window, opening on a leaded balcony
-over the bow-window in the drawing-room. To shift his bedstead with the
-least possible noise, to tie a sheet to it, and to slide down the sheet
-till he had but a few feet to drop into the balcony, was the work of a
-very few minutes to one as excitedly determined as Pocket had become on
-finding himself a prisoner. Thought they would lock him in, did they?
-They would just find out their mistake! It was exactly the same mood in
-which he had scaled the upright palings in defiance of the policeman
-who said he might not sleep in the Park.
-
-The balcony window was open, the room within empty. It was obviously
-Baumgartner’s bedroom. There was a camp bedstead worthy of an old
-campaigner, a large roll-top desk, and a waste-paper basket which
-argued either a voluminous correspondence or imperfect domestic
-service; it would have furnished scent for no short paper-chase.
-Otherwise the room was tidy enough, and so eloquent of Baumgartner
-himself, in its uncompromising severity, that Pocket breathed more
-freely on the landing. And in the hall he felt absolutely safe, for he
-had gained it without the creaking of a stair, and there on the pegs
-hung his hat, but neither the cloak nor the weird wide-awake affected
-by his host.
-
-Baumgartner out. That was a bit of luck; and it was just like Pocket to
-lose a moment in taking advantage of it; but the truth was that he had
-made an interesting discovery. It was in that house the piano was being
-played. He heard it through the drawing-room door; he had heard it on
-the balcony up above; it had never stopped once, so silent had he been.
-It was that Phillida, with the large dark eyes, and she was playing
-something that Lettice sometimes played, and very nearly, though
-naturally not quite, as well. Pocket would have said that it was
-Mendelssohn, or Chopin, “or something,” for his love of music was
-greater than his knowledge. But it was not exactly the music that
-detained him; he was thinking more of the musician, who had shown him
-kindness, after all. It would be only decent to thank her before he
-went, and the doctor himself through his niece. If she knew he had been
-locked in, and he had to tell her how he had made his escape and yet
-not a sound—well, she would not think the less of him at all events,
-and so they would part for ever. Or perhaps not for ever! The juvenile
-instinct for romance was not to be stifled at such a stimulating
-moment. The girl would be sorry for him when she knew all; she might
-know enough to be sorry for him as it was; in any case it was the game
-to say goodbye.
-
-The girl sprang from the music-stool in extraordinary excitement. Her
-large eyes were larger than ever, as it were with fear, and yet they
-blazed at the intruder. Pocket could not understand it, unless she
-already knew the truth.
-
-“I’m so sorry for starting you,” he apologised. “I just came in to say
-goodbye.”
-
-And he held out a hand which she never seemed to see.
-
-“To say goodbye!” she gasped.
-
-“Yes, I’ve got to go. I’m afraid the doctor’s out?”
-
-“Yes, he is. Won’t you wait?”
-
-“I’m afraid I can’t.”
-
-She was shrinking from him, shrinking round towards the door. He stood
-aside, to let her bolt if that was her desire. And then she in turn
-took her stand, back to the door.
-
-“He’ll be very sorry to miss you,” she said more firmly, and with a
-smile.
-
-“And I’m very sorry to miss him,” said Pocket, unconscientiously enough
-for anybody. “He’s been most awfully good to me, and I wish you’d tell
-him how grateful I am.”
-
-“I’m afraid he won’t believe me,” the girl said dryly, “if he finds you
-gone.”
-
-“I must go—really I must. I shall get into an awful row as it is. Do
-you mind giving him one other message?”
-
-“As many as you like.”
-
-“Well, you might tell him from me that I’ll give myself away, but I’ll
-never give him! He’ll know what I mean.”
-
-“Is that all?”
-
-She was keeping him very cleverly, putting in her word always at the
-last moment, and again refusing to see his hand; but again it was the
-boy who helped to waste his own golden opportunity, this time through
-an indefensible bit of boyish braggadocio.
-
-“No; you may tell the doctor that if he wanted to detain me he went the
-worst way about it by locking me into my room!”
-
-She looked mystified at first, and then astounded.
-
-“How did you get out?”
-
-“How do you suppose?”
-
-“I never heard anything!”
-
-“I took care you shouldn’t.”
-
-And he described the successful adventure with pardonable unction in
-the end. After that he insisted on saying goodbye. And the young girl
-stood up to him like a little heroine.
-
-“I’m very sorry, but I can’t let you go, Mr. Upton.”
-
-“Can’t let me?”
-
-“I really am sorry—but you must wait to see my uncle.”
-
-He stood aghast before the determined girl. She was obviously older
-than himself, yet she was only a slip of a girl, and if he forced his
-way past—but he was not the fellow to do it—and that maddened him,
-because he felt she knew it.
-
-“Oh, very well!” he cried, sarcastically. “If you won’t let me out that
-way, I’ll go this!”
-
-And he turned towards the tiny conservatory, which led down into the
-garden; but she was on him, and there was no hesitation about her; she
-held him firmly by the hand.
-
-“If you do I’ll blow a police-whistle!” she said. “We have one—it won’t
-take an instant. You shan’t come out the front way, and you’ll be
-stopped if you climb the wall!”
-
-“But why? Do you take me for a lunatic, or what?” he gasped out
-bitterly.
-
-“Never mind what I take you for!”
-
-“You’re treating me as though I were one!”
-
-“You’ve got to stay and see my uncle.”
-
-“I shan’t! Let me go, I tell you! You shall you shall! I hate your
-uncle, and you too!” But that was only half true, even then while he
-was struggling almost as passionately as though the girl had been
-another boy. He could not strike her; but that was the only line he
-drew, for she would grapple with him, and release himself he must. Over
-went walnut whatnots, and out came mutterings that made him hotter than
-ever for very shame. But he did not hate her even for what she made him
-say; all his hatred and all his fear were of the dreadful doctor whose
-will she was obeying; and both were at their highest pitch when the
-door burst open, and in he sprang to part them with a look. But it was
-a look that hurt more than word or blow; never had poor Pocket endured
-or imagined such a steady, silent downpour of indignation and contempt.
-It turned his hatred almost in a moment to hatred of himself; his fear
-it only increased.
-
-“Leave us, Phillida,” said Baumgartner at last. Phillida was in tears,
-and Pocket had been hanging his head; but now he sprang towards her.
-
-“Forgive me!” he choked, and held the door open for her, and shut it
-after her with all the gallantry the poor lad had left.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI.
-ON PAROLE
-
-
-“So,” said Dr. Baumgartner, “you not only try to play me false, but you
-seize the first opportunity when my back is turned! Not only do you
-break your promise, but you break it with brutal violence to a young
-lady who has shown you nothing but kindness!”
-
-Pocket might have replied with justice that the young lady had brought
-the violence upon herself; but that would have made him out a greater
-cad than ever, in his own eyes at any rate. He preferred to defend his
-honour as best he could, which was chiefly by claiming the right to
-change his mind about what was after all his own affair. But that was
-precisely what Baumgartner would not allow for a moment; it was just as
-much his affair as accessory after the fact, and in accordance with
-their mutual and final agreement overnight. Pocket could only rejoin
-that he had never meant to give the doctor away at all.
-
-“I daresay not!” said Baumgartner sardonically. “It would have been
-dragged out of you all the same. I told you so yesterday, and you
-agreed with me. I put it most plainly to you as a case of then or never
-so far as owning up was concerned. You made your own bed with your
-eyes open, and I left you last night under the impression that you were
-going to lie on it like a man.”
-
-“Then why did you lock me in?” cried Pocket, pouncing on the one point
-on which he did not already feel grievously in the wrong. The doctor
-flattered him with a slight delay before replying.
-
-“There were so many reasons,” he said, with a sigh; “you mustn’t forget
-that you walk in your sleep, for one of them. We might have had you
-falling downstairs in the middle of the night; but I own that I was
-more prepared for the kind of relapse which appears to have overtaken
-you. I was afraid you had more on your soul than you could keep to
-yourself without my assistance, and that you would get brooding over
-what has happened until it drove you to make a clean breast of the
-whole thing. I tell you it’s no good brooding or looking back; take one
-more look ahead, and what do you see if you have your way? Humiliating
-notoriety for yourself, calamitous consequences in your own family,
-certain punishment for me!”
-
-“The consequences at home,” groaned Pocket, “will be bad enough
-whatever we do. I can’t bear to think of them! If only they had taken
-Bompas’s advice, and sent me round the world in the _Seringapatam!_ I
-should have been at sea by this time, and out of harm’s way for the
-next three months.”
-
-“The _Seringapatam?_” repeated the doctor. “I never heard of her.”
-
-“You wouldn’t; she’s only a sailing vessel, but she carries passengers
-and a doctor, a friend of Dr. Bompas’s, who wanted to send me with him
-for a voyage round the world. But my people wouldn’t let me go. She
-sails this very day, and touches nowhere till she gets to Melbourne. If
-I could only raise the passage-money, or even stow away on board, I
-could go out in her still, and that would be the last of me for years
-and years!”
-
-It was not the last of him in his own mind; suddenly as the thought had
-come, and mad as it was, it flashed into the far future in the boy’s
-brain; and he saw himself making his fortune in a far land, turning it
-up in a single nugget, and coming home to tell of his adventures,
-bearded like the pard, another “dead man come to life,” after about as
-many years as the dream took seconds to fashion. And Baumgartner looked
-on as though following the same wild train of thought, as though it did
-not seem so wild to him, but extremely interesting; so that Pocket was
-quite disappointed when he shook his head.
-
-“A stowaway with an attack of asthma! I think I see my poor young
-fellow! Why, they’d hear you wheezing in the hold, and you’d gasp out
-your whole story before you were in the Bay of Biscay! No, no, my
-fellow; you’ve taken your line, and you must stick to it, and stop with
-me till we can think of something better than a long sea voyage. If you
-say you won’t, I say I’ll make you—to save you from yourself—to save us
-both.”
-
-There was no mistaking the absolute intention in this threat; it was
-fixed and final, and the boy accepted it as he accepted his oppressor’s
-power to make good his words. It was true that he might have escaped
-already; the nearer he had been to it, the less chance was he likely to
-be given again. So reasoned Pocket from the face and voice now
-dominating him more powerfully than ever; but it is an interesting fact
-that his conclusion neither cowed nor depressed him as it might have
-done. There was actually an element of relief in his discomfiture. He
-had done his best to do his duty. It was not his fault that
-responsibility had been wrested from his shoulders, and an evil hour
-delayed. And yet there was a certain, an immediate, a creature comfort
-in such delay, which was all the greater because unsought by him; it
-was a comfort that he had both ways, as the saying is, and from all
-points of view but that of his poor people wondering what had become of
-him.
-
-“If only they knew!” he cried; “then I shouldn’t care. Let me write to
-one of them! My mother needn’t know; but I must write to one of the
-others, and at least let them know I am alive and well. My sister would
-keep my secret; she’d play the game all right, I promise you! And I’d
-play any game you like if only you let me write a line to her!”
-
-The doctor would not hear of it at first. Eventually he said he should
-have to inspect the letter before it went; and this proved the thin
-edge of consent. In the end it was arranged that Pocket should write
-what he liked to his sister only, and that Baumgartner should read and
-enclose it in a covering letter, so that everybody need not know it was
-a letter from the missing boy. Baumgartner was to have it posted from
-St. Martin’s-le-Grand, to destroy all trace of a locality which he now
-refused point-blank to disclose even to the writer. And in return for
-the whole concession the schoolboy was to give his solemn word and
-sacred promise on the following points.
-
-He was not to set foot outside the house without Baumgartner, nor to
-show himself for a moment at the windows back or front.
-
-On no account was he to confide in the doctor’s niece Phillida, to give
-her the slightest inkling of his connection with the latest of London
-mysteries, or even of the scene, or any of the circumstances of his
-first meeting with Baumgartner.
-
-“You are bound to see something of each other; the less you say about
-yourself the better.”
-
-“But what can she think?”
-
-“What she likes, my young fellow! I am a medical man; medical men may
-bring patients to their houses even when they have ceased to practise
-in the ordinary way. It is no business of hers, and what she chooses to
-think is no affair of ours. She has seen you very ill, remember, and
-she had your doctor’s orders not to let you out of the house in his
-absence.”
-
-“She obeyed them like a little brick!” muttered Pocket, with a wistful
-heaviness.
-
-“She did what she was told; think no more about it,” said the doctor.
-“Give me your hand on these your promises, and die on your feet rather
-than break one of them! Now I trust you, my young fellow; you will play
-the game, as you call it, even as the poor lads in these pictures
-played it at Gravelotte, and die like them rather than go back an inch.
-Look at this one here. No, not the one with the ridges, but here where
-we come to bayonets and the sword. See the poor devils of the Prussian
-Guard! See the sheet-lightning pouring into us from the walls of St.
-Privat! Look at that fellow with his head bound up, and this one with
-no head to bind. That’s meant for our colonel on the white horse. See
-him hounding us on to hell! And there’s a drummer drumming as though we
-could hear a single beat! Our very colours were blown to ribbons, you
-see, and we ourselves to shreds; but the shreds hung together, my young
-fellow, and so will you and I in our day of battle!” Baumgartner might
-have known his boy for years, so sure was his touch upon the strings of
-a responsive nature, to strike the chords of a generous enthusiasm, and
-to wake the echoes of noble deeds. Pocket attacked his letter with the
-heart of a soldier, hardened and yet uplifted for the fight; it was
-only when he found himself writing down vague words, which nevertheless
-brought his innocent deed home to him as nothing had done before, that
-the artificial frost broke up, and real tears ran with his ink. He
-begged Lettice not to think too hardly of him, still less to be anxious
-about him, or to make anybody else; they must not fret for him, he
-wrote more than once, without seeing the humour of the injunction. He
-was better than he had been for years, and in the best of hands. But
-something terrible had happened; something he could not help, but would
-bitterly repent all his days, especially as it might prevent him from
-ever seeing any of them again. It was this monstrous remark, and others
-to which it led, that were literally blotted with the writer’s tears.
-But just then he saw himself in all vivid sincerity as an outcast who
-could never show himself at home or at school again. And it required
-the spell of Baumgartner’s presence to make the prospect such as could
-be borne with the least degree of visible manhood.
-
-Be it remembered that he was not a man at all, but a boy in many ways
-younger than most boys of sixteen and three quarters, albeit older in
-some few. He was old in imagination, but young in common sense. One may
-be imaginative and still have a level head, but it is least likely in
-one’s teens. The particular temperament does not need a label; but none
-who know it when they see it, and who see it here, will be surprised to
-learn that this emotional writer for one was enormously relieved and
-lightened in spirit when he had got his letter off his mind and hands.
-
-True to his warning, Dr. Baumgartner began to glance at it with a
-kindly gravity; it was with something else that he shook his head over
-the second leaf.
-
-“This is not for me to read!” said he. “I’d rather run the risk of
-trusting your discretion.”
-
-No words could have enslaved poor Pocket more completely; he clasped
-the hand that proceeded to write the covering note, and then the
-address, all openly before his eyes. And while the doctor was gone to
-the nearest messenger office to despatch the missive to the General
-Post Office, ostensibly to catch a particular post, his prisoner would
-not have decamped for a hundred pounds, and the doctor knew it.
-
-Phillida did not appear at dinner, but at supper she did, and Pocket
-was only less uncomfortable in her absence, which he felt he had
-caused, than when they were both at table and he unable to say another
-word to express his sorrow for the unseemly scene of the forenoon. She
-spoke to him once or twice as though nothing of the kind had happened,
-but he could scarcely look her in the face. Otherwise both meals
-interested him; they were German in their order, a light supper
-following the substantial middle-day repast; but it appeared that they
-both came from an Italian restaurant, and the English boy was much
-taken with the pagoda-like apparatus in which the dishes arrived
-smoking hot in tiers. It provided a further train of speculation when
-he remembered that he had never seen a servant in the house, and that
-the steps had struck him as dirty, and the doctor’s waste-paper basket
-as very full. Pocket determined to make his own bed next morning. He
-had meanwhile an unpleasing suspicion that the young girl was clearing
-away, for the doctor took him back into the drawing-room after supper;
-and later, when they returned for a game of billiards on the toy board,
-which they placed between them on the dining-table, both Phillida and
-the fragments had disappeared.
-
-The little billiards were a bond and a distraction. They brought out
-Baumgartner’s simple side, and they emphasised the schoolboy’s
-simplicity. Both played a strenuous game, the doctor a most deliberate
-one; his brows would knit, his mouth shut, his eyes calculate, and his
-hand obey, as though his cue were a surgical instrument cutting deep
-between life and death. It was a curious glimpse of disproportionate
-concentration; even the Turk’s head was only lit to be laid aside as an
-obstruction. Pocket’s one chance was to hit hard and trust to the
-fortune that accrues on a small table. Both played to win, and the boy
-forgot everything when he actually succeeded in the last game. They had
-played very late for him, and he slept without stirring until
-Baumgartner came to his room about eight o’clock next morning.
-
-Now Pocket had not seen a newspaper all Friday, but it was the first
-thing he did see on the Saturday morning, for the doctor was waving one
-like a flag to wake him.
-
-“Trust your vermin press to get hold of the wrong end of the stick!” he
-cried, with fierce amusement; “it only remains to be seen whether they
-succeed in putting your precious police on the wrong tack too. Really,
-it’s almost worth being at the bottom of a popular mystery to watch the
-smartest men in this country making fools of themselves!”
-
-“May I see?” asked Pocket; he had winced at more than one of these
-remarks.
-
-“Certainly,” replied Baumgartner; “here’s the journalistic wonder of
-the age, and there you are in its most important column. I brought it
-up for you to see.”
-
-The boy bit his lips as he read. His deed had been promoted to leaded
-type and the highest rank in headlines. It appeared, in the first
-place, that no arrest had yet been made; but it was confidently
-asserted (by the omniscient butt of Teutonic sallies) that the police,
-wisely guided by the hint in yesterday’s issue (which Pocket had not
-seen), were already in possession of a most important clue. In
-subsequent paragraphs of pregnant brevity the real homicide was
-informed that his fatal act could only be the work of a totally
-different and equally definite hand. Pocket gathered that there had
-been a certain commonplace tragedy, in a street called Holland Walk, in
-the previous month of March. A licensed messenger named Charlton had
-been found shot under circumstances so plainly indicative of suicide
-that a coroner’s jury had actually returned a verdict to that effect.
-There appeared, however, to have been an element of doubt in the case.
-This the scribe of the leaded type sought to remove by begging the
-question from beginning to end. It had not been a case of suicide at
-all, he declared, but as wilful a murder as the one in Hyde Park, to
-which it bore a close and sinister resemblance. Both victims had been
-shot through the heart in the early hours of the morning; both belonged
-to one neighbourhood, and to the same dilapidated fringe of the
-community. A pothouse acquaintanceship was alleged between them; but
-the suggestion was that the link lay a good deal deeper than that, and
-that the two dead men were known to the police, who were busy searching
-for a third party of equal notoriety in connection with both murders.
-
-“But we know he had nothing to do with the second one,” said the boy,
-looking up at last. “It wasn’t a murder, either; neither was the first,
-according to the coroner’s jury, who surely ought to know.”
-
-“One would have thought so,” said Baumgartner, with his sardonic smile;
-“but the yellow pressman knows better still, apparently.”
-
-“Do you suppose there’s a word of truth in what he says? I don’t mean
-about Charlton or—or poor Holdaway,” said Pocket, wincing over his
-victim’s name, which he had just gleaned from the paper. “But do you
-think the police are really after anybody?”
-
-“I don’t know,” said Baumgartner. “What does it matter?”
-
-“It would matter a great deal if they arrested somebody for what I
-did!”
-
-The boy was no longer looking up; and his voice trembled.
-
-“It would alter the whole thing,” he mumbled significantly.
-
-“I don’t see it,” returned the doctor, with grim good-nature. “The
-little wonder of the English reading world has nearly unearthed another
-mare’s nest, as two of its readers know full well. No real harm can
-come of this typical farrago. Let it lead to an arrest! There are only
-two living souls who can’t account for their time at that of this
-unfortunate affair.”
-
-Pocket realised this; but it was put in a way that gave him goose-skin
-under the clothes. He was always seeing his accident in some new light,
-always encountering some new possibility, or natural consequence of his
-silence, which had not occurred to him before. But he was learning to
-keep his feelings under control, to set his face and his teeth against
-the regular reactions of his coward conscience and his fickle will. And
-once again did Dr. Baumgartner atone for an unintentional minor by
-striking a rousing chord on the very heart-strings of the boy.
-
-“Eight o’clock!” cried the magician, with a glance at his watch and an
-ear towards the open window. “The postman’s knock from door to door
-down every street in town—house to house from one end of your British
-Islands to the other! A certain letter is without doubt being delivered
-at this very moment—eh, my poor young fellow?”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII.
-HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS
-
-
-Eugene Thrush was a regular reader of the journal on which Dr.
-Baumgartner heaped heavy satire, its feats of compression, its genius
-for headlines, and the delicious expediency of all its views, which
-enabled its editorial column to face all ways and bow where it listed,
-in the universal joint of popularity, were points of irresistible
-appeal to a catholic and convivial sense of humour. He read the paper
-with his early cup of tea, and seldom without a fat internal chuckle
-between the sheets.
-
-That Saturday morning, however, Mr. Thrush was not only up before the
-paper came, but for once he took its opinion seriously on a serious
-matter. It said exactly what he wished to think about the Hyde Park
-murder: that the murderer would prove to be the author of a similar
-crime, committed in the previous month of March, when the Upton boy
-must have been safe at school. If that were so, it was manifestly
-absurd to connect the lad with a mystery which merely happened to
-synchronise with that of his own disappearance—absurd, even if he were
-shown to have been somewhere near the scene of the murder, somewhere
-about the time of its perpetration.
-
-That much, though no more, had, however, been fairly established
-overnight. It was a conclusion to which Mullins, with the facile
-conviction of his class, had jumped on the slender evidence of the
-asthma cigarette alone; but before midnight Thrush himself had been
-forced to admit its extreme probability. There was a medicine cork as
-well as an asthma cigarette; the medicine cork had been found very much
-nearer the body; in fact, just across the pathway, under a shrub on the
-other side of the fence. It was Mullins, who had made both discoveries,
-who also craved permission to ring up Dr. Bompas, late at night, to ask
-if there was any particular chemist to whom he sent his patients with
-their prescriptions. Dr. Bompas was not at home, which perhaps was just
-as well but his man gave the name of Harben, in Oxford Street. Harbens,
-rung up in their turn, found that they certainly had made up one of the
-doctor’s prescriptions on the Wednesday, for a young Mr. Upton, and,
-within half an hour, had positively identified the cork found by
-Mullins in Hyde Park. It was still sticky with the very stuff which
-had put poor Pocket asleep.
-
-Yet Thrush could not or would not conceive any actual connection
-between a harmless schoolboy and an apparently cold-blooded crime. He
-resisted the idea on more grounds than he felt disposed to urge in
-argument with his now strangely animated factotum. It was still a wide
-jump to a detestable conclusion, but he confined his criticism to the
-width of the jump. The cork and the cigarette might be stepping-stones,
-but at least one more was wanted to justify the slightest suspicion
-against the missing boy. Let it be shown that he had carried firearms
-on the Wednesday night, and Thrush undertook to join his satellite on
-the other side; but his mental bias may be gauged from the fact that he
-made no mention of the boy’s mother’s dream.
-
-Mullins found him not only up, shaved and booted, but already an
-enthusiastic convert to the startling theory of a sensation journalist,
-and consequently an irritable observer of the saturnine countenance
-which darkened to a tinge of distinct amusement over the leaded type.
-
-“So you don’t think there’s much in it, Mullins?”
-
-“I shouldn’t say there was anything at all, sir.”
-
-“Yet I suppose you remember the very similar occurrence in Holland
-Walk?”
-
-“Oh yes, sir, but it was a case of suicide.”
-
-“I don’t agree.”
-
-“But surely, sir, the jury brought it in suicide?”
-
-“The coroner’s jury did—in spite of the coroner—but it may come before
-another jury yet, Mullins! I remember the case perfectly; the medical
-evidence was that the shot had been fired at arm’s length. That isn’t
-the range at which we usually bring ourselves down! Then there was
-nothing to show that the man ever possessed a pistol, or even the price
-of one; he was so stony it would have gone up the spout long before.
-The very same point crops up in the case of this poor boy. Who says he
-ever had a revolver in his life? His father tells me explicitly that he
-never had; I happened to ask the question,” added Thrush, without
-explaining in what connection.
-
-“Well, sir,” said Mullins, with respect enough in his tone, “you talk
-about jumping to conclusions, but it strikes me the gentleman who write
-for the papers could give me some yards and a licking, sir!”
-
-This was a sprightly speech for Mullins; but it was delivered with the
-very faintest of deferential smiles, and Mr. Thrush shook his
-spectacles without one at all.
-
-“The gentlemen on this paper have a knack of lighting on the truth,
-however,” he remarked; “it may be by fair means, or it may be by foul,
-but they have a way of getting there before the others start.”
-
-Mullins remarked with quiet confidence that they were not going to do
-it this time. His position was, briefly, that he could not bring
-himself to believe in two separate mysteries, at one and the same time
-and place, with no sort of connection between them.
-
-“That would be too much of a coincidence,” said Mullins, sententiously.
-
-Thrush looked at him for a moment.
-
-“But life’s one long collection of coincidences! That’s what I’m always
-telling you; the mistake is to look on them as anything else. Don’t you
-call it a bit of a coincidence that both these men should meet their
-death at the very hour of the morning when you’re on your way over here
-from Netting Hill, and in much the same degree of latitude, which
-you’ve got to cross somewhere or other on your way? Yet who has the
-nerve to say you must have gone through Holland Walk that other
-morning, and been mixed up in that affair because you are in this?”
-
-“I don’t admit I’m mixed up in anything,” replied Mullins, with some
-warmth.
-
-“I mean as a witness of sorts. I was merely reducing your argument to
-the absurd, Mullins; you didn’t take me literally, did you? It’s no use
-talking when we both seem to have made up our minds; but I’m always
-ready to unmake mine if you show me that young Mr. Upton carried a
-pistol, Mullins! Now I should like my breakfast, Mullins, and you must
-be roaring inside for yours. The man who’s been knocking up chemists
-all night is the man to whom breakfast is due; get your own and then
-mine, and after that you can tell me how you got on.”
-
-Anything more genial than the garrulous banter of Eugene Thrush, at his
-best, it was impossible to encounter or incur; he had been, however,
-for a few minutes at his worst, and it was difficult to see why the
-pendulum should have swung so suddenly to the other extreme. Mullins
-went about his business with his usual sleek solemnity. But Thrush was
-yet another man the moment he was alone. His face was a sunny
-background for ideas, misgivings, and half-formed plans, one after the
-other, whirling like clouds across a crimson sky. But the sky was clear
-whenever Mullins was in the room. And at the breakfast-table there was
-not a cloud.
-
-“To come back to those chemists, and this shop-to-shop canvassing,”
-resumed Thrush, as Mullins poured out his tea; “how many have you done,
-and how many have we still to do between us?”
-
-Mullins produced a pocket-book that did him credit, and consulted notes
-as neat.
-
-“Rung up when you were out at dinner—seventeen. Kept Cigarettes
-d’Auvergne—one. That was Thornycroft’s in Shaftesbury Avenue, where I’d
-just been when I met you down below in the street. In the night I
-knocked up other eight-and-twenty, all either in the neighbourhood of
-Trafalgar Square or else on the line of the Park.”
-
-“Poor devils! I suppose you urged a pretty bad case?”
-
-“A matter of life or death.”
-
-“Well?”
-
-“Three more kept them, not counting Harbens: one in Knightsbridge, one
-in New Bond Street, and one a little way down the Brompton Road.”
-
-“Much demand in any of those quarters?”
-
-“Only in the Brompton Road; a literary gentleman has a box regularly
-every week, and two in the autumn. Pringle, his name is.”
-
-“I know him; so he’s as breathless as his own yarns, is he?” murmured
-Thrush, to his buttered egg. “But has one of these apothecaries sold a
-box of d’Auvergnes since Wednesday afternoon?”
-
-“Two have,” said Mullins, “but one was to Mr. Pringle.”
-
-Thrush levelled inquiring spectacles.
-
-“How did you worm that out, Mullins?”
-
-“By changing my tune a bit, sir. I started asking if they knew anybody
-who could recommend the cigarettes from personal experience, as we
-were only trying them on hearsay.”
-
-“Very smart of you, Mullins! And one wheezy novelist is the only
-consumer?”
-
-“That’s right, sir, but the man in Knights-bridge sold a box on
-Thursday to a doctor.”
-
-“Did you get the name?”
-
-“Bone-Gardner, I think it was a Dr. Otto Bone-Gardner.”
-
-“Baumgartner, I expect you mean!” cried Thrush, straightening a wry
-face to spell the name. “I’ve heard of an Otto Baumgartner, though I
-can’t say when or where. What’s his address?”
-
-“He couldn’t tell me, sir; or else he wouldn’t. Suppose he thought I’d
-be turning the doctor out next. Old customer, I understood he was.”
-
-“For d’Auvergne Cigarettes?”
-
-“I didn’t inquire.”
-
-“My good fellow, that’s the whole point! I’ll go myself and ask for the
-asthma cigarettes that Dr. Baumgartner always has; if they say he never
-had them before, that’ll be talking. His being a doctor looks well. But
-I’m certain I know his name; you might look it up in _Who’s Who_, and
-read out what they say.”
-
-And Mullins did so with due docility, albeit with queer gulps at
-barbaric mouthfuls such as the list of battle-fields on which Dr.
-Baumgartner had fought in his martial youth; the various Universities
-whereat he had studied psychology and theology in an evident reaction
-of later life; even the titles of his subsequent publications, which
-contained some long English words, but were given in German too. A
-copious contribution concluded with the information that photography
-and billiards were the doctor’s recreations, and that he belonged to a
-polysyllabically unpronounceable Berlin club, and to one in St. James’s
-which Mullins more culpably miscalled the Parthenian.
-
-“Parthenon!” said Thrush, as though he had bitten on a nerve. “But what
-about his address?”
-
-“There’s no getting hold of that address,” said Mullins, demoralised
-and perspiring. “It’s not given here either.”
-
-“Well, the chemist or the directory will supply that if we want it, but
-I’m afraid he sounds a wheezy old bird. The author of _Peripatetic
-Psychology_ deserves to have asthma all his nights, and _After this
-Life_ smacks of the usual Schopenhauer and Lager. No, we won’t build on
-Dr. Baumgartner, Mullins; but we’ll go through the chemists of London
-with a small tooth-comb, from here to the four-mile radius.”
-
-Thrush had finished breakfast, and Mullins was beginning to clear away,
-when a stormy step was heard upon the stairs, and in burst Mr. Upton
-with a panic-stricken face. He was colourless almost to the neck, but
-he denied that he had any news, though not without a pregnant glance at
-Mullins, and fell to abusing London and the Londoners, but City men
-above all others, till Thrush and he should be alone together. The
-incidental diatribe was no mere padding, either; it was the sincere
-utterance of a passionately provincial soul. Nobody in all London, he
-declared, and apparently without excepting Mr. Thrush, cared a twopenny
-curse what became of his poor boy. In view of the fact that the present
-company alone knew of his disappearance, and not so very many more of
-the boy’s existence, this was an extravagantly sweeping statement. But
-the distracted man had a particular instance to bear him out; he had
-been to see his boy’s friends’ father, “a swine called Knaggs,” that
-very morning at his house in St. John’s Wood.
-
-“Rather early, wasn’t it?” suggested Thrush, whose manner was more
-softly sympathetic than it had been the night before. The change was
-slight, and yet marked. He was more solicitous.
-
-“Early!” cried Mr. Upton. “Haven’t I lost my boy, and wasn’t it these
-Cockney cads who turned him adrift in London? I ought to have gone to
-them last night. I wish I had, when my blood was up after your dinner;
-for I don’t mind telling you now, Mr. Thrush, that in spite of your
-hospitality I was none too pleased at your anxiety to get rid of me
-afterwards. It made me feel like doing a little bit for the boy on my
-own; but I’d called once on my way into town, and only seen a servant
-then, so I thought I’d make sure of putting salt on somebody by waiting
-till this morning.”
-
-The visitor paused to look harder than ever at Mullins, and Thrush
-seized the opportunity to offer an apology for his abrupt behaviour in
-the street.
-
-“I confess I showed indecent haste,” said he; “but Mullins and I had
-our night’s work cut out, and he at any rate has not had his boots off
-since you saw him.”
-
-“Hasn’t he?” cried Mr. Upton, in remorseful recognition of an
-unsuspected devotion; “then I’ll say what I’ve got to say in front of
-him, for you’re both my friends, and I’ll unsay all I said just now.
-Bear with my temper, both of you, if you can, for I feel beside myself
-about the boy! It was all I could do to keep my hands off that smug
-little lump of London inhumanity! Kept me waiting while he finished his
-breakfast, he did, and then came in polishing a hat as sleek as
-himself, and saying ‘Rather early!’—just as you set me off by saying
-yourself a minute ago.”
-
-“But he seems to have told you something, Mr. Upton?”
-
-“Has he not! He began by telling me he was sorry for me, confound him!
-I could have made him sorrier for himself! He was sorry for me, but
-what could he do? London was a large place, and ‘we Londoners’ were
-busy men. I told him so were some of us in the iron-trade, but not too
-busy to keep an eye on boys who were friends of our boys. He said
-London life was different; and I said so I could see. They never had
-spare beds at a moment’s notice, much less for boys who might set fire
-to the house or—or shoot themselves——”
-
-His two hearers uttered a simultaneous exclamation, and Mr. Upton stood
-glancing piteously from one to the other, as though his lad’s
-death-warrant were written in their faces. Eugene Thrush, however,
-looked so genuinely distressed that the less legible handwriting on the
-face of Mullins also attracted less attention.
-
-“Had he anything to shoot himself with?” inquired Thrush, in a
-curiously gentle voice.
-
-Mr. Upton nodded violently as he moistened his lips.
-
-“He had, after all!” he croaked. “Little as I dreamt it yesterday, my
-unhappy boy, who had never to my knowledge pulled a trigger in his life
-before, was going about London with a loaded revolver in his pocket!”
-
-“Had he brought it from school?” asked Thrush, with a covert frown at
-the transfigured Mullins.
-
-Mr. Upton repeated what he had heard through the young Westminsters,
-with their father’s opinion of pawnbrokers’ shops as resorts for young
-schoolboys, of young schoolboys who frequented them, and of parents and
-guardians who gave them the chance. How the two gentlemen had parted
-without fisticuffs became the latest mystery to Eugene Thrush, whose
-only comment was that it behoved him all the more to do something to
-redeem the capital in the other’s eyes.
-
-“Now we know why my poor wife heard a shot!” was the only rejoinder, in
-a voice not too broken to make Mullins prick up his ears; it was the
-first he had heard about the dream.
-
-“I wouldn’t say that, Mr. Upton. We know no more than we knew before.
-Yet I will own now,” exclaimed Thrush, catching Mullins’s bright eye,
-“that the coincidence will be tremendous if there’s nothing in it!”
-
-But only half the coincidence was present in the father’s mind; no
-thought of the murder had yet entered it in connection with his boy;
-and to hear so emphatic an echo to his foreboding was more than his
-fretted nerves could stand. In the same breath he pounced on Thrush for
-a pessimist—apologised—and humbly entreated him to take a more hopeful
-view.
-
-“There may have been an accident, Thrush, but not necessarily a fatal
-one!”
-
-An accident! Thrush had never thought of that explanation of the public
-mystery; but evidently Mullins had, judging by his almost fiendish
-grins and nods behind the poor father’s back. Thrush looked at both men
-with the troubled frown of a strenuously reasoning being—looked and
-frowned again—frowned and reasoned afresh. And then, all in an instant,
-the trouble lifted from his face; light had come to him in an almost
-blinding flash, such as might well obscure the quality of the light;
-enough for Eugene Thrush that it lit him back to his mystery every bit
-as brightly as it lit him onward to its solution.
-
-He was even man enough to refrain from reflecting it automatically in
-his face, as he put a number of apparently irrelevant questions to Mr.
-Upton about the missing boy. What was his character? what its chief
-points? Was he a boy with the moral courage of his acts? Would he face
-their consequences like a man?
-
-“I never knew him tell a lie in his life,” said Mr. Upton, “either to
-save his own skin or any thing else; and it was a case of their young
-skins when they got into trouble with me! Poor Tony was the most
-conscientious of them all, and I hear that’s what they say of him at
-school.”
-
-Thrush put one or two further questions, and then said he had a clue,
-though a very slight one, which he was rather in a hurry to follow up
-himself; and this time the ironmaster went off quietly of his own
-accord, with a dejected undertaking to be at his hotel when he was
-wanted.
-
-“I don’t like the look of our friend,” remarked Thrush, looking hard at
-Mullins when at last they were alone. “He shapes none too well for the
-strain he’s got to bear; if he cracks up there’ll be a double tragedy,
-if not a triple one, in that family. We must catch our hare quickly,
-Mullins, or we may catch him too late.”
-
-Mullins turned on the disagreeable grin that Thrush had so resented a
-few minutes before; he took no notice of it now.
-
-“You’ll find your man,” said Mullins significantly, “the very moment
-that I find mine, Mr. Thrush.”
-
-“Meaning they’re the same person?”
-
-“To be sure.”
-
-“That this lad is the actual slayer of the man Holdaway?”
-
-“Surely, sir, it’s as plain as a pikestaff now?”
-
-“Not to me, Mullins—not to me.”
-
-Thrush was twinkling behind his great round goggles.
-
-“Then who do you think has done it, sir?” inquired Mullins, in
-deferential derision.
-
-“Ah! that’s another matter, my man; but I can tell you whom I hope to
-get arrested within another hour!”
-
-Mullins looked as though he could hardly believe his ears; his jaw,
-black as a crape hat-band this morning, fell in front of his grimy
-collar.
-
-“You’re actually thinking of arresting some one else?”
-
-“I am—with your permission, Mullins.”
-
-“Tell me who it is, sir, for Heaven’s sake!”
-
-And with his fattest smile Thrush whispered into an ear that recoiled
-from his words as though they had been so many drops of boiling oil.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII.
-BOY AND GIRL
-
-
-Pocket Upton was able to relieve his soul of one load that morning. Dr.
-Baumgartner had left the schoolboy to his soap and water, taking the
-newspaper with him; but apparently Pocket had followed him down in
-quicker time than the other anticipated. At any rate the little lady of
-the house was all alone in the dining-room, where Pocket found her
-boiling eggs on the gas-fire, and had her to himself for several
-seconds of which he wasted none. There was neither grace nor tact in
-what he said, and his manner was naturally at its worst, but the
-penitential torrent came from his heart, and was only stemmed by the
-doctor’s hasty arrival on the scene. Miss Platts had not been given
-time to say a word, but now she asked Mr. Upton how many minutes he
-liked his egg boiled, and would not let him do it himself, but smiled
-when he told her it was “done to a shake.” Dr. Baumgartner, on the
-other hand, scowled upon them both until observation or reflection had
-convinced him that no promises had been broken and no confidences
-exchanged.
-
-The callow pair saw something more of each other during the morning;
-for Pocket hotly resented being distrusted, and showed it by making up
-to the young girl under the doctor’s nose. He talked to her about books
-in the other room. He had the impertinence to invite her into the
-dining-room for a game of billiards, but the sense next moment to
-include her uncle in an amended form of more becoming suggestion.
-Baumgartner eventually countenanced a game, but spent most of the time
-with his back to the players and his eye on the street. The boy and
-girl got on very well now; they seemed frankly glad of each other,
-though he caught her more than once with a large and furtive eye on
-him. But she seemed to enjoy her baptism of schoolboy slang. And it was
-only when she began to question him about his special vocabulary, that
-Baumgartner looked on for a little, and put in his word.
-
-“You see he still believes in his public school,” said he to Phillida,
-in a tone which reminded their visitor of his first breakfast in the
-house.
-
-“I should think I did!” cried Pocket, and did a little loyal boasting
-about the best of schools, and the best house in that school, until
-memory took him by the throat and filled his eyes. It was twelve
-o’clock, and a summer’s Saturday. School was over for the week. Only
-your verses to do in your own time, and get signed by Spearman before
-you went up to dormitory on Saturday night; but meanwhile, Saturday
-afternoon! A match on the Upper, where you could lie on your rug and
-watch the game you couldn’t play; call-over at the match; ices and
-lemon-drinks in a tent on the field; and for Saturday supper anything
-you liked to buy, cooked for you in the kitchen and put piping hot at
-your place in hall, not even for the asking, but merely by writing your
-name plainly on the eggs and leaving them on the slab outside! It was
-not these simple luxuries that Pocket missed so sorely; it was the
-whole full life of ups and downs, and no yesterdays and no to-morrows,
-that he had lost for ever since last Saturday. The heavy midday meal
-came in smoking from the Italian restaurant, and Pocket was himself
-again, as a boy will be; after all, they knew about him at home by this
-time, their worst fears were allayed, and in the end it would all come
-right. In the end he would be sitting in his own old place at home,
-instead of with strangers in an unknown street; telling them
-everything, instead of holding his peace; and watching even Fred and
-Horace listening to every word—much as Dr. Baumgartner was listening to
-something now.
-
-What was it? Phillida was listening, too, and watching her uncle as she
-listened. Pocket did both in his turn.
-
-It was the voice of newspaper hawkers, shouting in couples, coming
-nearer with their shouts. Dr. Baumgartner jumped up from the table, and
-ran outside without his hat.
-
-His promise alone prevented Pocket from following and outstripping the
-doctor. He knew what the shouting was about before he could have sworn
-to a single raucous word. But Phillida could not know, and she resumed
-at once where they had left off before breakfast.
-
-“Of course I forgive you,” she whispered. “It was I began it!”
-
-“Began what?”
-
-“Our row yesterday.”
-
-Phillida had a demure twinkle, after all; but it was lost on Pocket
-now. “I’d forgotten all about it,” he said with superfluous candour,
-his ear still on the street.
-
-“I haven’t.”
-
-Her voice made him remember better. “I hope to goodness I didn’t hurt
-you?”
-
-“Of course you didn’t.”
-
-“But you must have thought me mad!”
-
-There was a slight but most significant pause.
-
-“Well, I never shall again.”
-
-“Then you did!” he gasped. Their eyes had met sharply; both young faces
-were flooded with light, and it was much the same light. There was no
-nonsense about it, but there was indignant horror on his side, and
-indignant shame on hers.
-
-“You really are at school?” she whispered, not increduously, but as one
-seeking assurance in so many words; and in a flash he saw what she had
-thought, what she had been deliberately made to think, that his beloved
-school was not a school at all, but an Ayslum!
-
-But at that moment Dr. Baumgartner was heard bargaining at the gate
-with one raucous voice, while the other went on roaring huskily, “Park
-murder—arrest! ’Rest o’ de Park murderer! Park murder—Park
-murder—arrest!” And Pocket sprang up from the table in a state that
-swept his last thoughts clean from his mind.
-
-The girl said something; he did not hear what. He was white and
-trembling, in pitiable case even to eyes that could only see skin-deep;
-but the doctor’s step came beating like a drum to him, and he was
-solidly seated when the doctor entered—without any paper at all.
-
-“It’s that murder the papers are all exploiting,” he explained
-benignly. “They were shouting out something about an arrest; you would
-hear them, I daresay. But it’s the usual swindle; the police are merely
-hoping to effect an arrest. I threatened to send for them unless the
-scoundrel took his paper back!”
-
-He was in his lightest mood of sardonic gaiety. The sins of the vendors
-recalled those of “your vermin press itself”; the association was
-wilfully unfair, the favourite phrase a studied insult; but the English
-boy was either dense or indifferent, and Phillida’s great eyes were in
-some other world. Baumgartner subjected them both to a jealous
-scrutiny, and suddenly cried out upon his own bad memory. It appeared
-there was a concert at the Albert Hall, where “the most popular and
-handsome pair in England” (the inverted commas were in the doctor’s
-sneer) were being welcomed on their return from the ends of the earth.
-He had intended going to hear what they could do; but Phillida should
-go instead; she was not past the ballad stage.
-
-And Phillida rose submissively, with unreal thanks which could not
-conceal her recognition of the impromptu pretext for getting rid of
-her; her uncle called a taxicab, and with harsh hilarity turned her off
-the premises in the frock she had been wearing all day.
-
-“And now,” said he, returning with a scowl, “what the devil were you
-two talking about while my back was turned?”
-
-“Yesterday,” replied Pocket, more than ready for him, though his heart
-beat fast.
-
-“What about yesterday?”
-
-“Our scuffle in the other room.”
-
-“Is that all?”
-
-“No—I found out something; she didn’t tell me.”
-
-“What did you find out?”
-
-“That you let her think me mad!” cried Pocket, in monstrous earnest. He
-might have laughed at himself, could he have seen his own reproachful
-face. But he could have killed Baumgartner for laughing at him; it did
-not occur to him that the laugh was partly one of pure relief.
-
-“Why, my young fellow, how else can I account for you?”
-
-“You said she would think I was a patient.”
-
-“Exactly! A mental case.”
-
-“You had no business to make me out mad,” persisted Pocket, with dogged
-valour.
-
-“Pardon me! I had all the business in the world; and I beg that you’ll
-continue to foster the illusion as thoroughly as you did yesterday when
-I was out. It’s no good shaking your head at me; listen to reason,”
-continued Baumgartner, with an adroit change of tone. “And try, my good
-young fellow, do try to think of somebody besides yourself; have some
-consideration for my niece, if you have none for me.”
-
-Pocket was mystified, but still more incensed; for he felt himself
-being again put gently but clearly in the wrong.
-
-“And I should like to know,” he cried, “what good it does her to think
-she’s associating with a lunatic?”
-
-“She would probably prefer the idea to that of a murderer,” was the
-suave reply. “I speak only of ideas; otherwise I should not make use of
-such an expression, even in jest. It’s as ugly as it’s ridiculous in
-your case. Yet you heard for yourself that others are applying the
-horrid term in all sobriety.”
-
-“I heard more than that,” returned Pocket. “They’ve arrested somebody!”
-
-“I thought I told you there was no truth in that?”
-
-But Baumgartner had winced for once, and the boy had seen it, and his
-retort was a precocious inspiration.
-
-“That was only to avoid a scene at table, Dr. Baumgartner!”
-
-“Well, my young fellow,” said the doctor, after one of his wise pauses,
-“and what if it was?”
-
-“I can’t sit here and let an innocent man lie in prison.”
-
-“He won’t lie long.”
-
-“It’s absolutely wicked to let them keep him at all.”
-
-“Nor will they, longer than another hour or two.”
-
-“Well, if they do, you know what I shall do!”
-
-Pocket had never displayed such determination, nor incurred quite the
-same measure or quality of wrath that Baumgartner poured upon him
-without a word for the next few moments. It was a devouring gaze of
-sudden and implacable animosity. The ruthless lips were shut out of
-sight, yet working as though the teeth were being ground behind them;
-the crow’s footed face flushed up, and the crow’s feet were no more; it
-was as though age was swallowed in that flood of speechless passion
-till the whole man was no older than the fiery eyes that blazed upon
-the boy. And yet the most menacing thing of all was the complete
-control with which the doctor broke this pregnant silence.
-
-“You say that. I say otherwise. You had better find a book in the other
-room till you know your own mind again.”
-
-“I know it now, unless they release that man,” said Pocket, through his
-teeth, although they chattered.
-
-“Give them a chance, and give yourself one! It will be time to think of
-clearing other people when they fail to clear themselves. Have more
-patience! Think of your own friends, and give them time too.”
-
-If the last allusion was to the lad’s letter, due in Leicestershire
-that morning, it was as happy as all Baumgartner’s last words. If he
-meant himself to be included among Pocket’s friends, there was food for
-thought in the suggestion that a man of the doctor’s obvious capacity
-was not idle in the boy’s best interests. Pocket was made to feel
-rather ashamed of himself, as usual; but he could not forget the
-concentrated fury of the look which had not been weakened by infuriate
-words; and the recollection remained as an excuse, as well as a menace,
-in his mind. He had time enough to think it over. Dr. Baumgartner
-smoked his meerschaum in the gathering shade at the back of the house.
-The schoolboy sulked for some time in the big chair, but eventually
-took the doctor at his word about a book.
-
-If it be ever true that a man may be known by his books, it was
-certainly so to some extent in the case of Dr. Otto Baumgartner. His
-library was singularly small for an intellectual man who wrote
-himself, and a majority of the volumes were in languages which no
-public schoolboy could be expected to read; but of the English books
-many were on military subjects, some few anthropological; there were
-photographic year-books and Psychical Research Reports by the foot or
-yard, and there was an odd assortment of second-hand books which had
-probably been labelled “occult” in their last bookseller’s list.
-Boismont on _Hallucinations_ was one of these; it was the book for
-Pocket. He took the little red volume down, and read a long chapter on
-somnambulism in the big chair. In a way it comforted him. It was
-something to find that he was far from being the only harmless creature
-who had committed a diabolical deed in his sleep; here among several
-cases was one of another boy who had made an equally innocent and yet
-determined attempt on his own father. But there was something peculiar
-in poor Pocket’s case, something that distinguished it from any of
-those cited in the book, and he was still ferreting for its absolute
-fellow when Phillida came in long before he expected her. Boismont had
-made the time fly wonderfully, in spite of everything; the girl, too,
-appeared to have been taken out of herself, and talked about her
-concert as any other young girl might have done, both to Pocket and her
- uncle, who glided in at once from the garden. The doctor, however, was
-himself in mellower mood; and they were having tea, for all the world
-like any ordinary trio, the girl still making talk about sundry songs,
-the man quizzing them and her, and the boy standing up for one that his
-sister sang at home, when a metallic tattoo put a dramatic stop to the
-conversation.
-
-The two young people, but not their elder, were startled quite out of
-their almost inadvertent tranquillity; and the knocker was not still
-before Pocket realised that it was the first time he had heard it. No
-letters were delivered at that house; not a soul had he seen or heard
-at the door before. Even in his excitement, however, with its stunning
-recrudescence of every reality, its instantaneous visions of his people
-or the police, there was room for a measure of disgust when the girl
-got up, at an ungallant nod from the German, to go to the door.
-
-“It’s a huge fat man,” whispered Phillida, on her return to the big
-room at the back of the house. “Here’s his card.”
-
-“Thrush!” muttered Baumgartner as though he knew the name, and he
-glowered at the two young faces on which it made no impression
-whatever. It was plain how he hated leaving them together; but for once
-it must be done, and done quickly—with both doors open and the
-visitor’s very movements audible on the steps. To the door the doctor
-must go, and went, shutting that one pointedly behind him.
-
-The young creatures, looking in each other’s eyes, listened for raised
-voices and the slam of prompt expulsion; but the voices were pitched
-too low to reach their ears in words, and were only interrupted by the
-sound of footsteps in the hall, and the perfectly passive closing of an
-outer and an inner door in quick succession.
-
-“He’s taken him into the dining-room,” murmured Phillida. “Who can it
-be?”
-
-“Hasn’t he any friends?”
-
-“None who ever come here; none of that name anywhere, I feel sure.” Her
-great eyes, without leaving his for an instant, filled with thought as
-a blank screen takes a shadow. “I wonder if it’s about that!” she
-whispered.
-
-“What?”
-
-“What they were calling out with the newspapers while we were at
-table.”
-
-There was a pause. The look in her eyes had changed. It was purely
-penetrating now.
-
-“Why should it be?” asked Pocket, his own eyes falling.
-
-“It’s no use asking me, Mr. Upton.”
-
-“But I don’t understand the question.”
-
-“Is that true?”
-
-“No,” he muttered; “it isn’t.”
-
-She was leaning over to him; he felt it, without looking up.
-
-“Mr. Upton,” she said, speaking quickly in the undertone they were both
-instinctively adopting, “you know now what I thought about you at
-first. I won’t say what made me; but that was what I thought, but could
-hardly believe, and never will again. It makes it all the more a
-mystery, your being here. I can’t ask my uncle—he tells me nothing—but
-there’s something I can and must ask you.”
-
-Pocket hung his head. He knew what was coming. It came.
-
-“My uncle brought you here, Mr. Upton, on the very morning that thing
-happened they were calling out about to-day. In the Park. It is to the
-Park he goes so often in the early morning with his camera! How can I
-say what I want to say? But, if you think, you will see that everything
-points to it; especially the way he ran out for that paper—and hid the
-truth when he came in!”
-
-Pocket looked up at last.
-
-“I know the truth.”
-
-“About the arrest?”
-
-“Yes; it was quite obvious, and he admitted it when you’d gone.”
-
-“Why not before?”
-
-“I couldn’t tax him about it in front of you,” he muttered, looking up
-and down quickly, unable to face her fierce excitement.
-
-“Do tell me what it is you both know about this dreadful case!”
-
-“I can’t,” the boy said hoarsely; “don’t ask me.”
-
-“Then you know who did it. I can see you do.”
-
-There was a new anguish even in her whisper; he could hear what she
-thought.
-
-“It was nobody you care about,” he mumbled, hoarser than before, and
-his head lower.
-
-“You don’t mean——”
-
-She stopped aghast.
-
-“I can’t say another word—and you won’t say another to me!” he added, a
-bitter break in his muffled voice. He longed to tell her it had been an
-accident, to tell her all; but he had given his word to Baumgartner not
-to confide in her, and he did not think that he had broken it yet.
-
-“You don’t know me,” she whispered, and for a moment her hand lay warm
-in his; “trust me! I’m your friend in spite of all you’ve said—or
-done!”
-
-Dr. Baumgartner might have been ten minutes getting rid of the
-intruder; before that he had been first amazed and then relieved to
-hear the piano in the drawing-room; and that was all his anxious ear
-had heard of either boy or girl during his absence. Yet the boy was
-not standing over the piano, as he might have been, for Phillida was
-trying to recall one of the concert songs he said his sister sang.
-Pocket, however, was staring out into the garden with a troubled face,
-which he turned abruptly, aggressively, and yet apprehensively to meet
-the doctor’s.
-
-But the doctor no longer looked suspiciously from him to Phillida, but
-stood beaming on them both, and rubbing his hands as though he had done
-something very clever indeed.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV.
-BEFORE THE STORM
-
-
-Sunday in London has got itself a bad name among those who occasionally
-spend one at their hotel, and miss the band, their letters, and the
-theatre at night; but at Dr. Baumgartner’s there was little to
-distinguish the seventh day from the other six. The passover of the
-postman, that boon to residents and grievance of the traveller, was a
-normal condition in the dingy house of no address. More motor-horns
-were heard in the distance, and less heavy traffic; the sound of church
-bells came as well through the open windows; then the street-door shut,
-and there was a long period without Phillida, until it opened and shut
-again, and in she peeped with her parasol and Prayer-book, as though
-they were all quite ordinary people without a guilty secret among them!
-
-Such was the Sunday morning. It was fine and warm. Dr. Baumgartner
-pottered about his untidy little garden, a sun-trap again as Pocket had
-seen it first; the Turk’s head perspired from internal and external
-heat, but its rich yellow, shading into richer auburn, clashed rather
-with a red geranium which the doctor wore jauntily in the button-hole
-of his black alpaca jacket.
-
-It was Phillida who had given him the flower at breakfast. She grew
-what she could in the neglected garden; the plants in the miniature
-conservatory were also hers, though the doctor took a perfunctory
-interest in them, obviously on her account. It was obvious at least to
-Pocket Upton. He saw all these things, and what they meant. He was not
-without his little gifts of observation and deduction. He noticed the
-difference in Baumgartner’s voice when he addressed his niece, the
-humane kindling of the inexorable eyes, and to-day he thought he saw a
-reciprocal softening on the part of Phillida. There had been none to
-see yesterday or the day before. It was her uncle whom the girl had
-seemed unable to forgive for the unseemly scuffle of Friday morning.
-But now it was as though memory and common fairness had set years of
-kindness against these days of unendurable mystery, and bidden her
-endure them with a better grace. If she felt she had been disloyal to
-him, she could not have made sweeter amends than she did by many an
-unobtrusive little office. And she exchanged no more confidences with
-poor Pocket.
-
-Yet these two were together most of the day; all three were; and it was
-a strangely peaceful day, a day of natural hush, and the cessation of
-life’s hostilities, such as is sometimes almost pointedly bestowed
-before or after a time of strain. It was a day on which Pocket
-certainly drew his spiritual breath more freely than on any other since
-the dire catastrophe. There were few fresh clouds; perhaps the only one
-before evening was the removal of the book on hallucinations in which
-Pocket had become interested on the Saturday afternoon. It was no
-longer lying about the room as he had left it. There was a gap in its
-place in the shelf. The book had been taken away from him; it made him
-feel as though he were back again at his very first dame’s school.
-
-And the church bells sent him back to the school he was at now! They
-were more mellow and sedate then the chapel bells there, that rang you
-down the hill at the double if you were late and not too asthmatical;
-and Pocket saw and heard himself puffing up the opposite hill to take
-his place for chapel call-over in the school quad. The fellows would be
-forming in squads there now, all in their Sunday tails or Eton jackets
-as the case might be; of course Pocket was in tails, though still
-rather proud of them. The masters, in their silk hoods or their
-rabbit-skins were prominent in his mind’s eye. Then came the cool and
-spacious chapel, with its marble pulpit and its brazen candelabra, and
-rows of chastened chapel faces, that he knew better than his own,
-giving a swing to chants which ran in his head at the very thought. How
-real it all was to him, and how unreal this Sunday morning, in the
-sunny room with the battle engravings over the book-cases, and the
-walnut chairs in front of them, and Dr. Baumgartner in and out in his
-alpaca coat! After chapel he would have gone for a walk with Blundell
-minor, most probably, or else written his letter home and got it over.
-And that chapter would have ended with cold boiled beef and apple-pie
-with cloves in it at Spearman’s.
-
-The Italian restaurant which sent in Dr. Baumgartner’s meals certainly
-provided richer fare than that. There was a top-floor of soup in the
-portable contrivance, and before the meat a risotto, which the doctor
-praised without a single patriotic reservation.
-
-“Italy is a country where one can live,” said he. “Not that you must
-understand me to be altogether down on your own fatherland, my young
-fellow; there is something to be said for London, especially on a
-Sunday. No organs from my dear Italy, none of those so-called German
-bands which we in Germany would not tolerate for a moment; no postman
-every hour of the day, and no gaolbirds crying false news down the
-streets.”
-
-Pocket looked for a grim twinkle in the speaker’s eye, but found it
-fixed on Phillida, who had not looked up. Instinct prompted Pocket to
-say something quickly; that he had not seen a postman there, was the
-actual remark.
-
-“That is because I conduct my correspondence at my club,” explained the
-doctor. “I give out no other address; then you only get your letters
-when you want them.”
-
-“Do you often go there?” the boy ventured to inquire, devoutly wishing
-he would go that afternoon.
-
-“Not when I have visitors,” replied Baumgartner, with a smiling bow.
-“And I look upon my patients in that light,” he added, with benevolent
-but futile hypocrisy, embarrassing enough to Phillida, but not more so
-than if she had still believed it to be the truth.
-
-Silence ensued until they were all in the other room; then the niece
-took refuge at her piano, and this time Pocket hung over her for an
-hour or more. He went through her music, and asked for everything that
-Lettice played or sang. Phillida would not sing to him, but she had the
-makings of a pianist. The boy’s enthusiasm for the things he knew made
-her play then as well as ever he had heard them played. Even the
-doctor, dozing in the big chair with eyes that were never quite shut,
-murmured his approval more than once; he loved his Mendelssohn and
-Schubert, and had nothing to say against the Sousas and others that the
-boy picked out as well, and mentioned with ingenuous fervour in the
-same breath. Pocket would have sung himself if the doctor had not been
-there, for he had a bit of a voice when he was free from asthma; and
-once or twice he stopped listening to wonder at himself. Could he be
-the boy who had killed a man, however innocently, three days before!
-Could it be he whom the police might come and carry off to prison at
-any moment? Was it true that he might never see his own people any
-more? Such questions appalled and stunned him; he could neither answer
-them nor realise their full import. They turned the old man in the
-chair, who alone could answer them, back into the goblin he had seemed
-at first. Yet they did give a certain shameful zest and excitement even
-to this quiet hour of motley music in his presence.
-
-Besides, there was always one comfort to remember now: his letter home.
-Of course Lettice would show it to their father; of course something
-would be done at once. Shame and sorrow for the accident would be his
-for ever; but as for his present situation, there were moments when
-Pocket felt rather like a story-book cabin-boy luxuriously marooned,
-and already in communication with the mainland.
-
-He wondered what steps had been taken so far. No doubt his father had
-come straight up to town; it was a moving thought that he might be
-within a mile of that very room at that very moment. Would all the
-known circumstances of his disappearance be published broadcast in the
-papers? Pocket felt he would have red ears all his life if that were
-done; and yet it had hurt him a little to gather from Baumgartner that
-so far there was nothing in the papers to say he had so much as
-disappeared. That fact must have been known since Thursday or Friday.
-Once it did cross his mind that to keep it from his mother they would
-have to keep it out of the papers. Well, as long as she did not know!
-
-He pictured the blinds down in her room; it was the hour of her
-afternoon rest. If he were at home, he would be going about quietly.
-Lettice would be reading or writing in the morning-room, most
-probably. Father would be gloating over his rhododendrons with a strong
-cigar; in his last letter the boy had heard how beautiful they were.
-Horace might be with him, smoking a cigarette, if he and Fred were not
-playing tennis. Their pocket edition had not to look very far ahead to
-see himself smoking proper cigarettes with the others, to hear his own
-voice telling them of his own experience—of this very hour at Dr.
-Baumgartner’s. Even Fred and Horace would have to listen to that!
-Pocket looked at the long lean figure in the chair, at the eyelids
-never quite closed, and so imparting at once a softening and a sinister
-effect. He noted the drooping geranium in his buttonhole, and grey ash
-from the Turk’s head sprinkling the black alpaca coat. It brought the
-very phrases of a graphic portrait almost to his lips.
-
-Yet if anybody had told the boy he was beginning to gloat over the
-silver lining to the cloud that he was under, and that it was not
-silver at all but one of the baser metals of the human heart, how
-indignantly he would have denied it at first, how humbly seen it in the
-end!
-
-When Phillida went off to make the tea her uncle sought his room and
-sponge, but did not neglect to take Pocket with him. Pocket was for
-going higher up to his own room; but Baumgartner said that would only
-make more work, in a tone precluding argument. It struck Pocket that
-the doctor really needed sleep, and was irritable after a continuous
-struggle against it. If so, it served him right for not trusting a
-fellow—and for putting Boismont in the waste-paper basket, by Jove!
-
-There was no mistaking the red book there; it was one of the first
-things Pocket noticed, while the doctor was stooping over his basin in
-the opposite corner; and the schoolboy’s strongest point, be it
-remembered, was a stubborn tenacity of his own devices. He made a dive
-at the waste-paper basket, meaning to ask afterwards if the doctor
-minded his reading that book. But the question never was asked; the
-book was still in the basket when the doctor had finished drying his
-face; and the boy was staring and swaying as though he had seen the
-dead.
-
-“Why, what’s the matter with my young fellow?” inquired Baumgartner,
-solicitously.
-
-“Nothing! I’ll be all right soon,” muttered Pocket, wiping his forehead
-and then his hand.
-
-“You look faint. Here’s my sponge. No, lie flat down there first!”
-
-But Pocket was not going to lie down on that bed.
-
-“I do feel seedy,” he said, in a stronger voice with a new note in it,
-“but I’m not going to faint. I’m quite well able to go upstairs. I’d
-rather lie down on my own bed, if you don’t mind.”
-
-His own bed! The irony struck him even as he said the words. He was
-none the less glad to sit down on it; and so sitting he made his first
-close examination of two or three tiny squares of paper which he had
-picked out of the basket in the doctor’s room instead of Boismont’s
-book on hallucinations. There had been no hallucination about those
-scraps of paper; they were fragments of the boy’s own letter to his
-sister, which Dr. Baumgartner had never posted at all.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV.
-A LIKELY STORY
-
-
-At that moment help was as far away as it had been near the day before,
-when Eugene Thrush was closeted in the doctor’s dining-room; for not
-only had Mr. Upton decamped for Leicestershire, without a word of
-warning to anybody, on the Saturday afternoon, but Thrush himself had
-followed by the only Sunday train.
-
-A bell was ringing for evening service when he landed in a market town
-which reversed the natural order by dozing all summer and waking up for
-the hunting season. And now the famous grass country was lying in its
-beauty-sleep, under a gay counterpane of buttercups and daisies, and
-leafy coverts, with but one blot in the sky-line, in the shape of a
-permanent plume of sluggish smoke. But the works lay hidden, and the
-hall came first; and Thrush, having ascertained that this was it,
-abandoned the decrepit vessel he had boarded at the station, and
-entered the grounds on foot.
-
-A tall girl, pacing the walks with a terribly anxious face, was
-encountered and accosted before he reached the house.
-
-“I believe Mr. Upton lives here. Can you tell me if he’s at home? I
-want to see him about something.”
-
-Lettice flushed and shrank.
-
-“I know who you are! Have you found my brother?”
-
-“No; not yet,” said Thrush, after a pause. “But you take my breath
-away, my dear young lady! How could you be so sure of me? Is it no
-longer to be kept a secret, and is that why your father bolted out of
-town without a word?”
-
-“It’s still a secret,” whispered Lettice, as though the shrubs had
-ears, “only I’m in it. Nobody else is—nobody fresh—but I guessed, and
-my mother was beginning to suspect. My father never stays away a Sunday
-unless he’s out of England altogether; she couldn’t understand it, and
-was worrying so about him that I wired begging him to come back if only
-for the night. So it’s all my fault, Mr. Thrush; and I know everything
-but what you’ve come down to tell us!”
-
-“That’s next to nothing,” he shrugged. “It’s neither good nor bad. But
-if you can find your father I’ll tell you both exactly what I have
-found out.”
-
-In common with all his sex, he liked and trusted Lettice at sight,
-without bestowing on her a passing thought as a person capable of
-provoking any warmer feeling. She was the perfect sister—that he felt
-as instinctively as everybody else—and a woman to trust into the
-bargain. It would be cruel and quite unnecessary to hide anything from
-that fine and unselfish face. So he let her lead him to a little
-artificial cave, lined and pungent with pitch-pine, over against the
-rhododendrons, while she went to fetch her father quietly from the
-house.
-
-The ironmaster amplified the excuses already made for him; he had
-rushed for the first train after getting his daughter’s telegram,
-leaving but a line for Thrush with his telephone number, in the hopes
-that he would use it whether he had anything to report or not.
-
-“As you didn’t,” added Mr. Upton, in a still aggrieved voice, “I’ve
-been trying again and again to ring you up instead; but of course you
-were never there, nor your man Mullins either. I was coming back by
-the last train, however, and should have been with you late to-night.”
-
-“Did you leave the motor behind?”
-
-“Yes; it’ll be there to meet me at St. Pancras.”
-
-“It may have to do more than that,” said Thrush, spreading his full
-breadth on the pitch-pine seat. “I’ve found out something; how much or
-how little it’s too soon to tell; but I wasn’t going to discuss it
-through a dozen country exchanges as long as you wanted the thing a
-dead secret, Mr. Upton, and that’s why I didn’t ring you up. As for
-your last train, I’d have waited to meet it in town, only that wouldn’t
-have given me time to say what I’ve got to say before one or other of
-us may have to rush off somewhere else by another last train.”
-
-“Do for God’s sake say what you’ve got to say!” cried Mr. Upton.
-
-“Well, I’ve seen a man who thinks he may have seen the boy!”
-
-“Alive?”
-
-“And perfectly well—but for his asthma—on Thursday.”
-
-The ironmaster thanked God in a dreadful voice; it was Lettice who
-calmed him, not he her. Her eyes only shone a little, but his were
-blinded by the first ray of light.
-
-“Where was it?” he asked, when he could ask anything.
-
-“I’ll tell you in a minute. I want first to be convinced that it really
-was your son. Did the boy take any special interest in Australia?”
-
-“Rather!” cried Lettice, the sister of three boys.
-
-“What kind of interest?”
-
-“He wanted to go out there. It had just been talked about.” She looked
-at her father. “I wouldn’t let him go,” he said. “Why?”
-
-“I want to know just how it came to be talked about.”
-
-“A fool of a doctor in town recommended it.”
-
-Lettice winced, but Thrush nodded as though that tallied.
-
-“Did he recommend any particular vessel?”
-
-“Yes, a sailing ship—the _Seringapatam_— an old East Indiaman they’ve
-turned into a kind of floating hospital. I wouldn’t hear of the beastly
-tub.”
-
-“Do you know when she was to sail?”
-
-“I did know,” said Lettice. “I believe it was just about now.”
-
-“She sailed yesterday,” said Thrush, impressively; “and your brother,
-if it was your brother, talked a good deal about her to this man. He
-told him all about your having always been in favour of it, Miss Upton,
-and his father not. I’m bound to say it sounds as though it may have
-been the boy.”
-
-Thrush seemed to be keeping something back; but the prime and absorbing
-question of identity prevented the others from noticing this.
-
-“It must have been!” cried Mr. Upton. “Who was the man, and where
-exactly did he see him?”
-
-“First on Thursday morning, and last on Thursday night. But perhaps I’d
-better tell you about my informant, since we’ve only his word for
-Thursday, and only his suspicions as to what has happened since. In the
-first place he’s a semi-public man, though I don’t suppose you know his
-name. It’s Baumgartner—Dr. Otto Baumgartner—a German scientist of some
-distinction.”
-
-The ironmaster made a remark which did him little credit, and Thrush
-continued with some pride: “There was some luck in it, of course, for
-he was the very first man I struck who’d bought d’Auvergne Cigarettes
-since Wednesday; but I was on his doorstep well within twenty-four
-hours of hearing that your son was missing; and you may chalk that up
-to A. V. M.! I might have been with him some hours sooner still, but I
-preferred to spend them getting to know something about my man. I tried
-his nearest shops; perfect mines! One was a chemist, who didn’t know
-him by sight, and had never heard of the cigarettes, but remembered
-being asked for them by an elderly gentleman last Thursday morning!
-That absolutely confirmed my first suspicion that Baumgartner himself
-was not the asthmatic; if he had been, the nearest chemist would have
-known all about him. Yet he had gone to the nearest chemist first!”
-
-“The nearest butcher was next door; but he was so short about
-Baumgartner that I scented a true-green vegetarian. It was a false
-scent, Mr. Upton; not to mention the baker and the candlestick-maker,
-there’s a little restaurant in the same row, which was about the fifth
-place where I began by asking if they knew where a Dr. Baumgartner
-lived in that neighbourhood. The little Italian boss was all over me on
-the spot! The worthy doctor proved to be his most regular customer,
-having all his meals sent in hot from the restaurant in quite the
-Italian manner. I don’t suppose you see how very valuable this was to
-me. Germans love Italy, the little man explained; but I said that was
-the one point on which I should never yield to Germany—and I thought I
-was going to be kissed across the counter! It seems the good doctor
-lives alone with his niece (not always even her), and keeps no servants
-and never entertains. Yet on Friday, for the first time since the
-arrangement was made, the old chap went to the restaurant himself to
-complain of short commons; there had not been enough for them to eat on
-the Thursday night!”
-
-“Had they been alone?” asked Mr. Upton, with a puzzled face.
-
-“That’s the whole point! My little Florentine understood they were, but
-I deduced one extra, and then conceived a course that may astonish you.
-It was the bold course; but it nearly always pays. I lunched at my
-leisure (an excellent Chianti my little friend keeps) and afterwards
-went round and saw the doctor himself. The niece opened the door—I wish
-I’d seen more of her—but she fetched her uncle at once and I begged for
-an interview on an urgent matter. He consented in a way that, I must
-say, impressed me very favourably; and the moment we were alone I said,
-‘I want to know, Doctor, who you bought those asthma cigarettes for
-last Thursday!’”
-
-“That took him aback, but not unduly; so then I added, ‘I’m an inquiry
-agent with a very delicate case in hand, and if you’ll tell me it may
-solve at heart-breaking a mystery as I’ve ever handled.’ Is was
-treating him like a gentleman, but I believe in that; there’s no
-shorter cut to whether a man is one or not.”
-
-“Well, his face had lit up, and a very fine face it is; it hadn’t
-blackened for the fifth of a second; but I had a disappointment in
-store. ‘I’d tell you his name with all my heart,’ he said, ‘only I
-don’t really know it myself. He said it was John Green—but his
-handkerchiefs were marked “A. A. U.”’”
-
-“Tony’s initials!” cried Tony’s father.
-
-“But it never was Tony under a false name,” his sister vowed. “That
-settles it for me, Mr. Thrush.”
-
-“Not even if he’d got into some scrape or adventure, Miss Upton?”
-
-“He would never give a name that wasn’t his.”
-
-“Suppose he felt he had disgraced his name?”
-
-“My brother Tony wouldn’t do it!”
-
-“He might feel he had?”
-
-“He might,” the father agreed, “even if he’d done no such thing; in
-fact, he’s just the kind of boy who would take an exaggerated view of
-some things.” His mind went back to his last talk with Horace on the
-subject.
-
-“Or he might feel he was about to do something, shall we say, unworthy
-of you all?” Thrush made the suggestion with much delicacy.
-
-“Then I don’t think he’d do it,” declared loyal Lettice.
-
-“Let us hear what you think he did,” said Mr. Upton.
-
-“It’s not what I think; it’s what this man Baumgartner thinks, and his
-story that you ought to hear.”
-
-And that which they now heard at second-hand was in fact a wonderfully
-true version—up to a point—of poor Pocket’s condition and
-adventures—with the sleep-walking and the shooting left out—from the
-early morning of his meeting with Baumgartner until the late afternoon
-of that day.
-
-Baumgartner had actually described the boy’s long sleep in his chair;
-it was with the conversation when he awoke that the creative work began
-in earnest.
-
-“That’s a good man!” said Mr. Upton, with unimaginable irony. “I’d like
-to take him by the hand—and those infernal Knaggses by the scruff of
-their dirty necks—and that old hag Harbottle by the hair!”
-
-“I think of dear darling Tony,” said Lettice, in acute distress; “lying
-out all night with asthma—it was enough to kill him—or to send him out
-of his mind.”
-
-“I wonder if it could have done that,” remarked Thrush, in a tone of
-serious speculation which he was instantly called upon to explain.
-
-“What are you keeping back?” cried Lettice, the first to see that he
-had been keeping something all this time.
-
-“Only something he’d kept back from them,” replied Thrush, with just a
-little less than his usual aplomb. “It was a surprise he sprang on them
-after waking; it will probably surprise you still more, Mr. Upton. You
-may not believe it. I’m not certain that I do myself. In the morning he
-had spoken of the Australian voyage as though you’d opposed it, but
-withdrawn your opposition—one moment, if you don’t mind! In the evening
-he suddenly explained that he was actually sailing in the
-_Seringapatam_, that his baggage was already on board, and he must get
-aboard himself that night!”
-
-“I don’t believe it, Thrush.”
-
-“No more do I, father, for a single instant. Tony, of all people!”
-
-Thrush looked from one to the other with a somewhat disingenuous eye.
-“I don’t say I altogether accept it myself; that’s why I kept it to the
-end,” he explained. “But we must balance the possibilities against the
-improbabilities, never losing sight of the one incontestable fact that
-the boy has undoubtedly disappeared. And here’s a man, a well-known
-man, who makes no secret of the fact that he found him wandering in the
-Park, in the early morning, breathless and dazed, and drove him home to
-his own house, where the boy spent the day; they took a hansom, the
-doctor tells me, than which no statement is more quickly and easily
-checked. Are we to believe this apparently unimpeachable and
-disinterested witness, or are we not? He was most explicit about
-everything, offering to show me exactly where he found the boy, and
-never the least bit vague or unsatisfactory in any way. If you are
-prepared to believe him, if only for the sake of argument, you may care
-to hear Dr. Baumgartner’s theory as to what has happened.”
-
-Lettice shook her head in scorn, but Mr. Upton observed, “Well, we may
-as well hear what the fellow had to say to you; we must be grateful to
-him for taking pity on our boy, and he was the last who saw him; he may
-have seen something that we shouldn’t guess.”
-
-“Exactly!” exclaimed Eugene Thrush; “he saw, or at any rate he now
-thinks he saw, enough to build up a pretty definite theory on the
-foundation of fact supplied by me. He didn’t know the boy had come up
-to see a doctor and been refused a lodging for the night; he understood
-he had come up to join his ship, and suspected he had been on a sort of
-mild spree—if Miss Upton will forgive me!” And he turned deferential
-lenses on the indignant girl.
-
-“I don’t forgive the suggestion,” said she; “but it isn’t yours, Mr.
-Thrush, so please go on.”
-
-“It’s an idea that Dr. Baumgartner continues to hold in spite of all I
-was able to tell him, and we mustn’t forget, as Mr. Upton says, that he
-was the last to see your brother. Briefly, he believes the boy did
-meet with some misadventure that night in town; that he had been
-ill-treated or intimidated by some unscrupulous person or persons;
-perhaps threatened with blackmail; at any rate imbued with the
-conviction that he is not more sinned against than sinning. That, I
-think, is only what one expects of these very conscientious characters,
-particularly in youth; he was taking something or somebody a
-thousandfold more seriously than a grown man would have done. Afraid to
-go back to school for fear of expulsion, ashamed to show his face at
-home! What’s to be done? He thinks of the ship about to sail, the ship
-he hoped to sail in, and in his desperation he determines to sail in
-her still—even if he has to stow away!”
-
-“My God!” cried Mr. Upton, “he’s just the one to think of it. His head
-was full of those trashy adventure stories!”
-
-But Lettice shook hers quietly.
-
-“To think of it, but not to do it,” said she, with a quiet conviction
-that rather nettled Mr. Thrush.
-
-“But really, Miss Upton, he must have done something, you know! And he
-actually talked to Dr. Baumgartner about this; not of doing it himself,
-but of stowaways in general, à propos of his voyage; and how many
-pounds of biscuit and how many ounces of water would carry one alive
-into blue water. There’s another thing, by the way! He told Baumgartner
-the ship touched nowhere between the East India Docks and Melbourne; he
-would be out of the world for three whole months.”
-
-“And she only sailed yesterday?” cried Mr. Upton, coming furiously to
-his feet. “And you let her get through the Straits of Dover and out to
-sea while you came down here to tell me this by inches?”
-
-Thrush blinked blandly through his port-hole glasses.
-
-“I’m letting her go as far as Plymouth,” said he, “where one or both of
-us will board her tomorrow if she’s up to time!”
-
-“You said she didn’t touch anywhere between the docks and Melbourne?”
-
-“No; your son said that, Mr. Upton, and it was his one mistake. They
-don’t usually touch, but a son of one of the owners happens to have
-gone round in the ship to Plymouth for the trip. I got it first from an
-old boatswain of the line who’s caretaker at the office, and the only
-man there, of course, yesterday afternoon; but I’ve since bearded one
-of the partners at his place down the river, and had the statement
-confirmed and amplified. One or two pasengers are only going aboard at
-Plymouth, so she certainly won’t sail again before to-morrow noon, even
-if she’s there by then. You will be in ample time to board her—and I’ve
-got a sort of search-warrant from the partner I saw—if you go down by
-the 12.15 from Paddington to-night.”
-
-The ironmaster asked no more questions; that was good enough for him,
-he said, and went off to tell a last lie to his wife, with the
-increasing confidence of one gradually mastering the difficulties of an
-uncongenial game. He felt also that a happy issue was in sight, and
-after that he could tell the truth and liberate his soul. He was
-pathetically sanguine of the solution vicariously propounded by Eugene
-Thrush, and prepared to rejoice in a discovery which would have filled
-him with dismay and chagrin if he had not been subconsciously prepared
-for something worse. It never occurred to Mr. Upton to question the
-man’s own belief in the theory he had advanced; but Lettice did so the
-moment she had the visitor to herself in the smoking-room, where it
-fell to her to do certain honours _vice_ Horace, luckily engaged at the
-works. “And do you believe this astounding theory, Mr. Thrush?”
-
-Thrush eyed her over his tumbler’s rim, but completed his draught
-before replying.
-
-“It’s not my province to believe or to disbelieve, Miss Upton; my job
-is to prove things one way or the other.”
-
-“Then I’ll tell you just one thing for your guidance: my brother is
-absolutely incapable of the conduct you ascribe to him between you.”
-
-Thrush did not look as though he were being guided by anybody or
-anything, beyond the dictates of his own appetites, as he sat by the
-window of the restaurant car, guzzling new potatoes and such Burgundy
-as could be had in a train. But he was noticeably less garrulous than
-usual, and his companion also had very little to say until the train
-was held up inexplicably outside Willesden, when he began to fume.
-
-“I never knew such a thing on this line before,” he complained; “it’s
-all the harder luck, for I never was on such an errand before, and
-it’ll just make the difference to me.”
-
-“You’ll have time,” said Thrush, consulting his watch as the train
-showed signs of life at last.
-
-“Not for what I want to do,” said Mr. Upton firmly. “I want to shake
-that man’s hand, and to hear from his own lips about my boy!”
-
-“I’m not sure that you’ll find him at home,” Thrush said, after a
-contemplative pause.
-
-“I’ll take my chance of that.”
-
-“He said something about their both going out of town to-day—meaning
-niece and self. I heard her playing just before I left, and that
-seemed to remind him of it.”
-
-“Well, Thrush, I mean to risk it.”
-
-“And losing the train?”
-
-“I can motor down to Plymouth; there’s plenty of time. I might take him
-with me, as well as you?”
-
-“Better,” said Thrush, after another slight pause. “I’d rather you
-didn’t count on me for that trip, Mr. Upton.”
-
-“Not count on you”?
-
-“One of us will be quite enough.”
-
-“Have you some other case to shove in front of mine, then?” cried the
-ironmaster, touched on the old raw spot.
-
-“I shouldn’t put it like that, Mr. Upton.”
-
-“All right! I’ll take your man Mullins instead; but I’ll try my luck at
-that German doctor’s first,” he growled, determined to have his own way
-in something.
-
-“I’m afraid you can’t have Mullins,” said Thrush, gently.
-
-“Want him yourself do you?”
-
-“I do; but I’m afraid neither of us can have him just now, Mr. Upton.”
-
-“Why not? Where is he.”
-
-Thrush leant across as they swam into the lighted terminus.
-
-“In prison.”
-
-“In prison! Your man Mullins?”
-
-“Yes, Mr. Upton, he’s the man they arrested yesterday on suspicion of
-complicity in this Hyde Park affair!”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI.
-MALINGERING
-
-
-Pocket had put the fragments of his poor letter together again, and was
-still poring over those few detached and mutilated words, which were
-the very ones his tears had blotted, when there came a warning chink of
-tea-things on the stairs. He was just able to thrust the pieces back
-into his pocket, and to fling himself at full length on the bed, before
-Dr. Baumgartner entered with a tray.
-
-“There, my young fellow! This will make a man of you! Then we shall see
-you yourself again by supper-time.”
-
-“I’m not coming down again,” said Pocket. “Don’t force me, please”
-
-“Force you?” Baumgartner cocked a keen eye at the open window. “What a
-tyrant you would make me out! On the contrary, I think you show your
-wisdom in remaining quiet. Perhaps you would be quieter still with the
-window shut—so—and fastened to prevent it rattling. I will open it
-when I come up again. There shall not be a sound in the house to
-disturb you.”
-
-And he took to tiptoes there and then, gliding about with a smiling
-stealth that set Pocket shivering on the bed; he shivered the more when
-an admirable doctor’s hand, cool and smooth as steel, was laid upon his
-forehead.
-
-“A little fever, I’m afraid! I should get right into bed, if I were
-you. It’s nothing to be alarmed about, much less astonished; you have
-been through so much, my poor young fellow.”
-
-“I have indeed!” cried Pocket, with unguarded bitterness.
-
-And Baumgartner paused between the foot of the bed and the door.
-
-“But there’s one consolation for you,” he said at length, in a sibilant
-whisper. “They’ve had that letter of yours at home quite a long time
-now—ever since yesterday morning, haven’t they?”
-
-The bed shook under Pocket when the door was shut—he only hoped it was
-not before. Up to the last minute, he felt quite sure that Dr.
-Baumgartner, suspicious as he was, had suspected nothing of the
-discovery downstairs behind his back. If he himself had betrayed
-anything it was in the last few seconds, when it had been all that he
-could do to keep from screaming out his knowledge of the other’s
-trickery. To play such a trick upon a broken-hearted boy! To have the
-heart to play it! No wonder he felt feverish to that wicked hand; the
-wonder was that he had actually lain there listening to the smooth
-impostor gratuitously revelling in his imposition!
-
-Rage and disappointment seized him by turns, and both together; at
-first they bit deeper even than the fear of Baumgartner—a fear felt
-from the beginning, and naturally redoubled now. Disappointment had the
-sharper tooth: his letter had ever gone, not one of his people knew a
-thing about him yet, his tears had not drawn theirs, they had not hung
-in anxious conclave on his words! Not that he had recognised any such
-subtle consolations as factors in his temporary and comparative peace
-of mind; now that they were gone, he could not have said what it was he
-missed; he only knew that he could least forgive Baumgartner for this
-sudden sense of cruel and crushing disappointment.
-
-The phase passed, for the boy had the temperament that sees the other
-side eventually, and of course there was something to be said for the
-doctor’s stratagem. He could understand it, after all; the motive was
-not malevolent; it was to relieve his mind and keep him quiet. The plan
-had succeeded perfectly, and nobody was really any the worse off. His
-people would have known he was alive and well on the Friday; but that
-was all, and they had no reason yet to assume his death. No; even
-Pocket came to see that his letter had been more of a relief to write
-than it could have been to read; that, indeed, it could only have
-aggravated the anxiety and suspense at home. Yet there was in him some
-fibre which the deliberate deception had fretted and frayed beyond
-reason or forgiveness. He saw all there was to be said about it; he
-could imagine Baumgartner himself putting the case with irresistible
-logic, with characteristic plausibility, and all the mesmeric wisdom of
-a benevolent serpent; but for once, the boy felt, he would not be taken
-in. It was not coming to that, however, for he had quite decided not to
-betray his knowledge of the fraud—if only he had not already done so!
-
-His fears on that score were largely allayed by Baumgartner’s manner
-when at length he returned with another tray; for nothing could have
-been more considerate and sympathetic, and even fatherly, than the
-doctor’s behaviour then. Pocket had never touched his tea; he was very
-gently chidden for that. Obstinately he declared he did not want any
-supper either: it was true he did not want to want any, or another bite
-of that man’s bread, but he was sorry as soon as the words were out. It
-was against his reasoned policy to show temper, and he was beginning
-to feel very hungry besides. The doctor said, “You’ll think better of
-that, my young fellow,” which turned a mere remark into more than half
-an absolute resolution. The second tray was set with a lighted candle
-on a chair by the bedside. The boy eyed it wistfully with set teeth,
-and Baumgartner eyed the boy.
-
-“Is there anything you could fancy, my young fellow?”
-
-“Nothing to eat.”
-
-“Is there any book?”
-
-“Yes,” said Pocket, without a moment’s premeditation. “There’s the book
-I was reading yesterday.”
-
-“What was that?”
-
-“Some Frenchman on hallucinations.”
-
-“So you were reading that book!” remarked the doctor, with detestable
-aplomb. “I wondered who had taken it down. It is a poor book. I have
-destroyed it.”
-
-“I’m sorry,” said Pocket, and tried to look it rather than revolted.
-
-“I am not,” rejoined Baumgartner. “Even if it were a good book, it is
-no book for you at the present time. It is morbid to dwell on what is
-done and over.”
-
-“If it is over,” murmured the boy.
-
-“It is over!” said Baumgartner, fiercely.
-
-“Well,” said Pocket, “I’m glad I read what he’d got to say about
-somnambulism.”
-
-“Why?”
-
-Pocket did not say it was a satisfaction to have done anything in spite
-of such a despot as his questioner. But he did say it was a comfort to
-know that others besides himself had committed terrible deeds in their
-sleep.
-
-“But,” he added, “they always seem to have dreamt the dreadful thing as
-well. Now, the funny thing is that I remember nothing until the shot
-woke me and I found myself where you saw me.”
-
-“I’m glad you find it funny!”
-
-The sneer seemed strangely unworthy of a keen intelligence; the
-increased asperity of Baumgartner’s manner, and his whole conduct about
-a harmless book, altogether inexplicable.
-
-“You know what I mean,” replied the boy, with spirit.
-
-“Yes, I know what you mean! You mean to go out of your mind, and to do
-your best to drive me out of mine, for the sake of a technically human
-life less precious than the average dog’s!”
-
-And, much as it puzzled him, there was certainly something more human
-about this sudden outburst than in anything Dr. Baumgartner had said
-since the scene between them in the bedroom below. He even slammed the
-door behind him when he went. But Pocket preferred that novel
-exhibition, for its very heat and violence, to the sleek and calculated
-solicitude of the doctor’s final visit, with pipe and candle, when the
-one by the bedside had burnt down almost to the socket.
-
-“My young fellow!” he exclaimed in unctuous distress. “Not a bite eaten
-in all these hours! Do you know that it’s nearly midnight?”
-
-“I’m not hungry,” replied Pocket, lying gloriously for once. “I told
-you I wasn’t well.”
-
-“You’ll be worse if you don’t force yourself to eat.”
-
-“I can’t help that.”
-
-“Well, well!” said the doctor, instead of the objurgation that seemed
-to tremble for an instant on his lips. He replaced between them the
-oval hook of clear amber enclosing the thin round one of black
-nicotine, and he puffed until the cruel carved face was hotter and more
-infuriate than ever, under the swirling smoke of mimic battle. To the
-boy it was all but a living face, and a vile one, capable of nameless
-atrocities; and the hard-frozen face of Baumgartner was capable of
-looking on.
-
-“Well, well! If I am to have you ill on my hands it’s my own fault. I
-take the responsibility for everything that has happened since the very
-first moment we met. Remember that, my young fellow! I took the law
-into my own hands, and you I took into my own house for better or
-worse. You were worse then, remember, and yet I took you in! Is it not
-strange that your asthma has entirely left you under my roof? Does it
-not lead you to believe in me, my young fellow—to trust me perhaps more
-than you have done?”
-
-It did not. Pocket was not going to lie about that; he held his tongue
-stubbornly instead. He still believed in his own explanation, derived
-from one of his many doctors, and moreover already mentioned to this
-one, of the sudden cessation of his chronic complaint. He hated
-Baumgartner for forgetting that, and pretending for a moment to take
-any credit to himself. That again was not worthy of so cool and keen a
-brain, much less of the candid character with which Pocket had supposed
-himself to be dealing. The very young are pathetically apt to see their
-own virtues in those whom they trust at all; but the schoolboy’s faith
-in Dr. Baumgartner had been shattered to its base; and now (as sure a
-symptom of his youth) he could see no virtue at all.
-
-“You must trust me again,” said Baumgartner, as though he knew what he
-had forfeited. “I know what will do you good.”
-
-“What?” asked Pocket, out of mere incredulous curiosity.
-
-“Fresh air; some exercise; a glimpse of the beautiful town we live in,
-before another soul is about, before the sun itself is up!”
-
-Pocket hardly knew what made him shudder at the proposition. It might
-have been the poignant picture of that other early morning, which came
-before him in a scorching flash. But there was something also in the
-way the doctor was bending over him in bed, holding his pipe nearer
-still, so that the two dreadful faces seemed of equal size. And
-Baumgartner’s had become a dreadful face in the boy’s eyes now; there
-was none among those cruel waxworks to match it in cold intellectual
-cruelty; and its smile—its new and strange smile it must have been that
-made him shudder and shake his head.
-
-“But, my young fellow,” urged the doctor, “it will do you so much good.
-And not a soul will see us so early, early in the morning!”
-
-Again that insinuating smile inspired a horror of which the boy himself
-could have offered no satisfactory explanation, especially as there was
-much to commend the proposal to his mind. But his face was white enough
-as he moved it from side to side on the pillow.
-
-“I tell you I’m ill,” he whimpered. “How can I go out with you, when
-you see I can’t eat a bite?”
-
-Baumgartner gave it up for the night. He was coming back in the early,
-early lovely summer’s morning; then they would see, would they not?
-Pocket had a last wave from the hideous meerschaum head, and a nod from
-the other. He was alone for the night. And he meant to be alone next
-morning when the doctor took his early walk; let him prowl by himself.
-Pocket was not going with him. He had never been more determined about
-anything than that. It was an animal instinct of fear and deep
-revulsion, an impulse quite distinct from a further determination to
-slip away in his turn as soon as the coast was clear. On this course he
-was equally decided, but on other and more palpable grounds.
-Baumgartner had broken his side of their treaty, so the treaty was torn
-up with the letter which had never gone. And Pocket was going instead
-of his letter—going straight to his people to tell them all, and have
-that poor innocent man set free before the day was out.
-
-The night’s immunity was meanwhile doubly precious; but it had been
-secured, or rather its continuance could only be assured, at a price
-which he wondered even now if he could pay. He was a growing, hungry
-boy, no longer ailing in wind or limb. Distress of mind was his one
-remaining ill; the rest was sham; and distress of mind did not prevent
-him from feeling ravenous after fasting ten or eleven hours. Here was
-food still within his reach, even at his side; but he felt committed
-to his declaration that he could not eat. If the tray were still
-untouched in the morning, surely there could be no further question of
-his going out with Baumgartner; but there was an “if.” The boy was not
-used to being very stern with himself; his strongest point was not
-self-denial. Much of his moral stamina had been expended in nightly
-tussles for mere breath; he had grit enough there. But his temperament
-was self-indulgent, and that he triumphed over positive pangs only
-shows the power of that rival instinct not to accompany the doctor a
-yard from his door.
-
-Yet it meant more hours with the food beside him than he could endure
-lying still. He got up, inch by inch, for he knew who lay underneath;
-and he opened the window, which Baumgartner had broken his promise to
-open, by even slower and more laborious degrees. He leant out as he had
-done that first morning, it might have been a month ago; and this scene
-must have challenged comparison with that, had his mind been even as
-free from dread and terror as it had been then. But all he saw was the
-few remaining lighted windows in the backs of those other houses; he
-could not have sworn there was a moon. The moon poured no beam of
-comfort on his aching head; but the lighted windows were as the open
-eyes of honest men, who would not see him come to harm; and the last
-rumble in the streets was a faint but cheering chorus for lonely ears.
-
-Once a motor-horn blew a solo near at hand, and Pocket half recognised
-its note; but he did not connect it with quite another set of sounds,
-which grew but gradually on his ear out of the bowels of the house.
-Somebody was knocking and ringing at the doctor’s door, not furiously,
-but with considerable pertinacity. Pocket was thrilled to the marrow
-just at first, and flew from the open window to the landing outside his
-door. The house was in perfect darkness, and still as death in the
-patient intervals between each measured attempt to rouse the inmates
-without disturbing the street. It came to Pocket that it must be
-Baumgartner himself, gone out for something without his key; and the
-boy was about to run down and let him in, when he distinctly heard the
-retreat of feet down the front steps, and then a chuckle on the next
-landing as the doctor closed his bedroom door.
-
-Who could it have been? Baumgartner’s chuckle suggested the police; but
-in that case it was the boy upstairs who was going to have the last
-laugh, though a grim one, and very terribly at his own expense. He
-could not close an eye for thinking of it, and listening for another
-knocking and ringing down below. But nothing happened until the doctor
-returned between five and six, still with his meerschaum pipe, still in
-his alpaca jacket, but wearing also the goblin hat and cloak of their
-first meeting, to renew and intensify the animal fear that glued the
-boy to his bed.
-
-“It is a pity,” said Baumgartner, standing at the window which Pocket
-had left open. “The air is like champagne at this hour, and not a cloud
-in the sky! It would do you more good than lying there. It is you who
-are making yourself ill. If I thought you were doing it on purpose
-”—and his eyes blazed—“I’d feed you like a fowl!”
-
-“It’s so likely that I should do it on purpose,” muttered Pocket, with
-schoolboy sarcasm. His eyes, however, were purposely closed, and they
-had missed the old daggers in Baumgartner’s.
-
-“You know best,” said the doctor. “But you are missing the morning of
-your life! Not a cloud in the sky, only the golden rain in my little
-garden. I suppose you have not learnt what the golden rain is at your
-public school? You English call it laburnum; but we Germans have more
-imagination, thank God!”
-
-Pocket did not open his eyes again till he had gone; next instant he
-had the door open too, as the doctor’s step was creaking down the lower
-flight of stairs. Once more Pocket ventured out upon the landing, not
-quite to the banisters; he trusted to his ears as before. They told
-him the doctor had gone into his dark-room. His heart sank. It was only
-for a moment. The dark-room door shut sharply. The steps came creaking
-back along the hall, went grating out upon the doorstep. There was
-another sharp shutting. Food at last!
-
-It was neither very nice nor half enough for a famishing lad, that
-plate of cold mixed meats from the restaurant, with a hard stale roll
-to eke them out. But Pocket felt he had a fresh start in life when he
-had eaten every crumb and emptied his water-bottle. Nor was he without
-plan or purpose any longer; he was only doubtful whether to knock at
-Phillida’s door and shout goodbye, or to leave her a note explaining
-all. Baumgartner would be out for hours; he always was, on these early
-jaunts of his; there would almost be time to wait and say goodbye
-properly when the girl came down. She would hardly hinder him a second
-time, and he longed to see her and speak to her again, especially if
-that was to be the end between them. He did not mean it to be the end,
-by any means; but any nonsense that might have been gathering in the
-schoolboy’s head was, at this point, more than rudely dispelled by the
-discovery that Dr. Baumgartner had removed his clothes!
-
-Pocket swore an oath that would have shocked him in a schoolfellow; it
-was a practice he indeed abhorred, but decent words would not meet
-such a case. It was to be met by action, however, just as that locked
-door had been met, and the policeman’s prohibition in the Park. He knew
-where his clothes must be. He slipped his overcoat, which he was using
-as a dressing-gown, over his pyjamas, and ran right downstairs as Dr.
-Baumgartner had done not many minutes before him. His clothes were in
-the dark-room. But the dark-room door had a Yale lock; there was no
-forcing it by foot or shoulder, though Pocket in his passion tried
-both. So round he went without a moment’s hesitation to the dark-room
-window by way of the little conservatory. The blind was drawn. That
-mattered nothing. He went back for a plant-pot, and smashed both it and
-a sheet of ruby glass with one vicious blow.
-
-Entry was simple after that; he had only to be careful not to cut his
-hands or feet. Inside, he removed the broken glass, closed the window,
-and let the blind down as he had found it, without looking twice at his
-clothes. There they were for him to carry upstairs at his leisure. They
-were not his only property in that room either. His revolver was there
-somewhere under lock and key. He might want it, waking, if Dr.
-Baumgartner came back before his time.
-
-It was easily located; of the lockers, built in with the shelves on
-the folding doors, only one was actually locked, and the revolver was
-not in the others. Pocket went to his waistcoat for one of those knives
-beloved of schoolboys, with the hook for extracting stones from hoofs,
-among other superfluous implements. Pocket had never used this one, had
-often felt inclined to wrench it off because it was hard to open and in
-the way of the other tools. But he used it now with as little
-hesitation as he had done the other damage, with almost a lust for
-breakage; and there was his revolver, safe and sound as his clothes.
-
-It had been honoured with a place beside a rack of special negatives;
-at least, there were other racks, in the other lockers, not locked up
-like that; and there was no other treasure that Pocket could see. He
-had his hand on his own treasure, was in the act of taking it,
-trembling a little, but more elated, as he stood in a ruby flood only
-partially diluted by the broken window behind the blind.
-
-At that moment there came such a thunder of knuckles on the door beside
-him that the revolver caught in the rack of negatives, and brought the
-whole lot crashing about his toes.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII.
-ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH
-
-
-The unseen knuckles renewed their assault upon the dark-room door; and
-Pocket wavered between its Yale lock, which opened on this side with a
-mere twist of the handle, and the broken red window behind the drawn
-red blind. Escape that way was easy enough; and if ever one could take
-the streets in pyjamas and overcoat, with the rest of one’s clothes in
-a bundle under one’s arm, it was before six o’clock in the morning. But
-it was not a course that vanity encouraged in an excited schoolboy with
-romantic instincts and a revolver which he perceived at a glance to be
-still loaded in most of its chambers. Pocket was not one of nature’s
-heroes, but he had an overwhelming desire to behave like one, and time
-to feel how he should despise himself all his life if he bolted by the
-window instead of opening the door. So he did open it, trembling but
-determined. And there stood Phillida in her dressing-gown, her dark
-hair tumbling over her shoulders.
-
-“It’s you!” she cried, taking the exclamation out of his mouth.
-
-“Yes,” he said, with a gust of relief; “did you think it was thieves?”
-
-“Isn’t it?” she demanded, pointing to the broken window visible through
-the blind. Then she saw his revolver, and drew back an inch.
-
-“He took this from me,” said Pocket. “I had a right to it. Take it if
-you will!”
-
-And he offered it, in the best romantic manner, by the barrel. But
-Phillida was too angry to look at revolvers.
-
-“You had no business to break in to get it,” she told him, with
-considerable severity.
-
-“I didn’t! I broke in for my clothes; he took them, too, this morning
-before he went out. They’re what I broke in for, and I’d a perfect
-right; you know I had! And while I’m about it I thought I might as well
-have this thing too. I knew it was in here somewhere. It was in there.
-And I’m glad I got it, and so should you be, because you and I are in
-the house of one of the greatest villains alive!”
-
-The words tumbled over each other with quite hereditary heat. They were
-all out in a few seconds, and the boy left panting with his
-indignation, the girl’s eyes flashing hers.
-
-“I begin to think my uncle was right,” said she. “This is the act of
-what he said you were, if anything could be.”
-
-“He lied to you, and he’s been lying to me!”
-
-“He may have been justified.”
-
-“You wait till you hear all he’s done! I don’t mean taking my revolver
-from me; he was justified in that, if you like, after what I’d done
-with it. He may even have been justified in taking away my clothes, if
-he couldn’t trust me to keep my word and stay in this awful house. But
-that isn’t the worst. He encouraged me to write a letter home, to my
-own poor people who may think me dead——”
-
-“Well?”
-
-There was more sympathy in her voice, more anxiety; but his was
-breaking with his great grief and grievance.
-
-“He took it out himself, to send it to the General Post Office to catch
-the country post. So he said; and I was so grateful to him! On Saturday
-morning he said they must have got it; he kept on saying so, and you
-don’t know how thankful I was every time! But yesterday afternoon I
-found scraps of my letter in the waste-paper basket in his room; he’d
-never posted it at all!”
-
-Phillida looked shocked and distressed enough at this; her liquid eyes
-filled with sympathy as they gazed upon the wretched youth.
-
-“I’m a fool to blub about it—but—but that was the Limit!” he croaked,
-and worked the poor word till it came distinctly.
-
-“It was cruel,” she allowed. “It must seem so, at any rate; it does to
-me; but then I understand so little. I can’t think why he’s hiding you,
-or why you let yourself be hidden.”
-
-“But you must know what I’ve done; you must guess?”
-
-The revolver was still in his hand; he gave it a guilty glance, and she
-looked from it to him without recoiling.
-
-“Of course I guessed on Saturday.” There was a studious absence of
-horror in her tone. “Yet I couldn’t believe it, unless it was an
-accident. And if it was an accident——”
-
-“It was one!” he choked. “It was the most absolute accident that ever
-happened; he saw it; he can tell you; but he never told me till hours
-afterwards. I was nearly dead with asthma; he brought me here, he was
-frightfully good to me, I’m grateful enough for all that. But he should
-have told me before the accident became a crime! When he did tell me I
-lost my head, and begged him to keep me here, and afterwards when I
-came to my senses he wouldn’t let me go. I needn’t remind you of that
-morning! After that I promised to stay on, and I’d have kept all my
-promises if only my letter had gone to my poor people!”
-
-He told her what a guarded letter it had been, only written to let them
-know he was alive, and that with the doctor’s expressed approval. But
-now he had learnt his lesson, and he was going to play the game. It was
-more than ever the game with that poor fellow lying in prison for what
-he had never done. And so the whole story would be in to-morrow’s
-papers, with the single exception of Dr. Baumgartner’s name.
-
-“Nothing shall make me give that,” said Pocket valiantly; “on your
-account, if not on his!”
-
-Phillida encouraged his new resolution without comment on this last
-assurance. She had stooped, and was picking up the unbroken negatives
-and putting them back in the rack; he followed her example, and
-collected the broken bits, while she put the rack back in its place,
-and certain splinters in theirs, until the locker shut without showing
-much damage. Pocket was left with the fragmentary negatives on his
-hands.
-
-“I should throw those away,” said Phillida. “And now, by the time
-you’re ready to go, I’ll have a cup of tea ready for you.”
-
-They faced each other in the rosy light, now doubly diluted by the open
-door, and Pocket did not move. He wanted to say something first, and he
-was too shy to say it. Shyness had come upon him all at once; hitherto
-they had both been like young castaways, finely regardless of
-appearances, he of his bare feet and throat, she of her dressing-gown
-and her bedroom slippers. She was unconscious or careless still, as
-with a brother; but he had become the very embodiment of mauvaise
-honte, an awful example of the awkward age; and it was all the fault of
-what he suddenly felt he simply must say.
-
-“But—but I don’t want to leave you!” he blurted out at last.
-
-“But I want you to,” she returned promptly and firmly, though not
-without a faint smile.
-
-It was leaving her with a villain that he minded; but he could not get
-that out, except thus bluntly, nor could he denounce the doctor now as
-he had done when his blood was up. Besides, the man was a different man
-to his niece; all that redeemed him went out to her. Pocket did not
-think he was peculiar there; in fact, he thought romantically enough
-about the girl, with her dark hair all over her pink dressing-gown, and
-ivory insteps peeping out of those soft slippers especially when the
-vision was lost for ever, and he upstairs making himself as presentable
-as he could in a few minutes. But it seemed she was busy in the same
-way, and she took longer over it. He found the breakfast things on the
-table, the kettle on the gas-stove, but no Phillida to make the tea. He
-could not help wishing she would be quick; if he was going, the sooner
-he went the better, but he was terribly divided in his desires. He
-hated the thought of deserting a comrade, who was also a girl, and such
-a girl! He could only face it with the fixed intention of coming back
-to the rescue of his heroine, he the hero of their joint romance. But
-for his own immediate freedom he was already unheroically eager. And
-yet he could deliberately fit the broken negatives together, on the
-white tablecloth, partly to pass the time, partly out of a boyish
-bravado which involved little real risk; for the doctor had not yet
-been gone an hour; and a loaded revolver is a loaded revolver, be it
-brandished by man or boy.
-
-The piecing of the plates was like a children’s puzzle, only easier,
-because the pieces were not many. One of the reconstructed negatives
-was of painful interest; it reminded Pocket of the fatal one smashed to
-atoms by Baumgartner in the pink porcelain trough. There were trees
-again, only leafless, and larger, and there was a larger figure
-sprawling on a bench. Pocket felt he must have a print of this; he
-remembered having seen printing-frames and tubes of sensitised paper in
-the other room; and hardly had he filled his frame and placed it in
-position, than Phillida ran down stairs, and he told her what he had
-done.
-
-“I wish you hadn’t,” she said nervously, as she made mechanical
-preparations with pot and kettle. “It would only make matters worse if
-my uncle came in now.”
-
-“But he wasn’t back on Friday before ten or eleven.”
-
-“You never know!”
-
-Pocket spoke out with a truculence which his brothers had inherited,
-but not he, valiantly as he might try to follow a family example.
-
-“I don’t care! I can’t help it if he does come. I’ll tell him exactly
-what I’ve done, and why, and exactly what I’m going to do next. I give
-him leave to stop me if he can.”
-
-“I’m afraid he won’t wait for that. But I wish you had waited for his
-leave before printing his negative.”
-
-Pocket jumped up from table, and ran to the printing-frame in the sunny
-room at the back. He had been reminded of it only just in time. It was
-a rather dark print that he first examined, one half at a time, and
-then extracted from the frame. It was meshed with white veils, showing
-the joins of the broken plate. But it had been an excellent negative
-originally. And it was still good enough to hold Pocket rooted to the
-carpet in the sunny room, until Phillida came in after him, and stood
-looking over his shoulder.
-
-“I know that place!” said she at once. “It’s Holland Walk, in
-Kensington.”
-
-He turned to her quickly.
-
-“The place where there was a suicide or something not long ago?”
-
-“The very place!” exclaimed the girl, looking up from the darkening
-print.
-
-“I remember my uncle would take me to see it next day. He’s always so
-interested in mysteries. I’m sure that’s the very spot he showed me as
-the one where it must have happened.”
-
-“Did he take the photograph then?”
-
-“No; he hadn’t his camera with him.”
-
-“Then this is the suicide, or whatever it was!” cried Pocket, in
-uncontrollable excitement. “It’s not only the place; it’s the thing
-itself. Look at that man on the bench!”
-
-The girl took a long look nearer the window.
-
-“How horrible!” she shuddered. “His head looks as though it were
-falling off! He might be dying.”
-
-“Dying or dead,” said Pocket, “at the very second the plate was
-exposed!”
-
-She looked at him in blank horror. His own horror was no less apparent,
-but it was more understanding. He had Baumgartner’s own confession of
-his attempts to secure admission to hospital death-beds, even to
-executions; he expounded Baumgartner on the whole subject, briefly,
-clumsily, inaccurately enough, and yet with a certain graphic power
-which brought those incredible theories home to his companion as
-forcibly as Baumgartner himself had brought them home to Pocket. It was
-the first she had ever heard of them. But then he had never discussed
-his photography with her, never showed her plate or print. That it was
-not merely a hobby, that he was an inventor, a pioneer, she had always
-felt, without dreaming in what direction or to what extent. Even now
-she seemed unable to grasp the full significance of the print from the
-broken negative; and when she would have examined it afresh, there was
-nothing to see; the June sunshine had done its work, and blotted out
-the repulsive picture even as she held it in her hands.
-
-“Then what do you think?” she asked at last; her voice was thin and
-strained with formless terrors.
-
-“I think that Dr. Baumgartner has the strangest power of any human
-being I ever heard of; he can make you do anything he likes, whether
-you like it yourself or not. The newspapers have been raking up this
-case in connection with—mine—and I see that one theory was that the man
-in this broken negative committed suicide. Well, if he did, I firmly
-believe that Dr. Baumgartner was there and willed him to do it!”
-
-“He must have been there if he took the photograph.”
-
-“Is there another man alive who tries these things? I’ve told you all
-he told me about it, but I haven’t told you all he said about the value
-of human life.”
-
-“Nor need you! He makes no secret of his opinion about that!”
-
-“Then put the two things together, and where do they lead you? To these
-murders committed with the mad idea of taking the spirit in its flight
-from the flesh; that’s his own way of putting it, not mine.”
-
-“But I thought your case was an accident pure and simple?”
-
-“On my part, certainly; but how do I know he couldn’t get more power
-over me in my sleep than at any other time? He saw me walking in my
-sleep with this wretched revolver. He said himself I’d given him the
-chance of a lifetime. You may be sure he meant before that poor man’s
-death, not after it.”
-
-“It isn’t possible,” declared Phillida, as though she had laid hold of
-one solid certainty in a sea of floating hypotheses. “And I know he
-hasn’t a pistol of his own,” she added, lest he should simplify his
-charge.
-
-But there they were agreed.
-
-“He hadn’t one on him that morning; that I can swear,” said Pocket,
-impartially disposing of the idea. “Mine was the only one in that cape
-of his, because I once jolly nearly had it out again when he came back
-into the room. There was nothing of the sort in his other coat, or
-anywhere else about him, or I couldn’t have helped seeing it.” Phillida
-accepted this statement only too thankfully. She beamed on the boy, as
-if in recognition of a piece of downright magnanimity towards an enemy
-whom she could now understand his regarding in that light. If only he
-would go before the enemy returned! If her uncle had such a power over
-him as he himself seemed to feel, then that was all the more reason for
-him to go quickly. But Pocket was not the man to get up and run like
-that. Perhaps he enjoyed displaying his bravery on the point, and
-keeping his companion on tenter-hooks on his account; at any rate he
-insisted on finishing his breakfast, and gave further free expression
-to the wildest surmises as he did so. And yet he was even then on the
-brink of a discovery which was some excuse for the wildest of them all,
-while it demanded a fresh solution of the whole affair.
-
-He had been fingering the recovered weapon in his pocket, almost
-fondling it, though with mingled feelings, as the Prodigal Son of his
-small possessions; suddenly it leapt out like a live thing in his hand,
-and clattered on the table between the girl and boy. It was a wonder
-neither of them was shot dead in his excitement. His whole face was
-altered; but so was his whole life. She could not understand his
-incoherent outburst; she only knew that he was twisting the chambers
-round and round under her nose, and that there appeared to be live
-cartridges in all six.
-
-“Don’t you see?” the words came pouring. “Not one of them’s been
-fired—it’s as I loaded it myself the other night! It can’t have been
-this revolver at all!”
-
-“But you must have known whether you fired or not?”
-
-“I tell you I was walking in my sleep till the row woke me. I’d only
-heard it once before, in a room. It sounded loud enough for the open
-air, though I do remember wondering I hadn’t felt any kick. But I was
-so dazed, and there was this beastly thing in my hand; and he took it
-from me in such a rage that of course I believed I’d let it off. But
-now I can see I can’t have done. It wasn’t my revolver and it wasn’t
-me!”
-
-“Yet you say yourself my uncle didn’t carry one?”
-
-“I’ll swear he didn’t; but there’s another man in all this! There was
-the man they arrested on Saturday—the man I was so keen to set free!”
-
-The boy’s laugh grated; he was beside himself with righteous joy. What
-was it to him that his innocence implied another’s complicity? Only too
-characteristically, he saw simply the central fact from his own point
-of view; but was it such an undoubted fact as he hot-headedly supposed?
-There was the broken negative to confirm a certain suspicion, but that
-was not enough for Phillida.
-
-She asked if he had no more cartridges, and he said he had a few loose
-in his waistcoat pocket; he had thrown away the box. “Then my uncle
-might have put in a fresh one while you were asleep.”
-
-“Why should he?”
-
-“I don’t know, but it sounds quite as possible as the other.”
-
-“I’ll soon tell you if he did!” cried Pocket. “There were fourteen in
-the box to start with, because I counted them, and we only shot away
-one at the Knaggses’ before we were cobbed. That left thirteen—six in
-the revolver and seven in my pocket. There are your six, and here’s
-one, two, three, four—and three’s seven!”
-
-He swept them over the cloth like crumbs, for her to count them for
-herself, while he looked on with flaming cheeks and wagging tongue. He
-was beginning to see what it all meant now, but still only what it
-meant to him and his. He could look his people in the face again; that
-was the burden of his loud thanksgiving. He was as sure of his
-innocence as though the dead man had risen to prove it.
-
-“Very well,” said Phillida, briskly; “then it’s all the more reason you
-should go this minute, and catch the very first train home.”
-
-And in her sudden anxiety to see him safely off, she was for helping
-him on with the overcoat he had brought down again with his bag; but he
-followed her out slowly, and he would not turn his back.
-
-“I can’t leave you now,” he said; and she knew that he saw it from her
-side at last.
-
-“Why not?”
-
-“Because the whole thing’s altered! I’m not going to leave you with a
-man like that!”
-
-So Pocket, without a moment’s thought either for her immediate feelings
-or the ultimate consequences to himself; and yet with an unconscious
-air of sacrifice more wounding than his actual words. She would have
-flung open the door, and ordered him out, but he got his back to it
-first. So her big eyes blazed at him instead.
-
-“You’re very kind!” she cried. “But suppose I don’t believe a word you
-say against my uncle behind his back?”
-
-“I shall wait and say it to his face. That’s another reason for
-waiting.”
-
-“Do you think you’re the person to judge him—a boy like you?”
-
-“I don’t say I am. I only say that print——”
-
-“How do you know he took the negative?”
-
-“I don’t, but——”
-
-“But you jump to conclusions like a baby!” cried the girl, too quick
-for him in following up a confusing advantage. “I never heard anybody
-like you for flying from one wild notion to another; first you say he
-must have made you fire, though you own you were walking in your sleep
-with a loaded revolver, and then you’re sure you never fired at all,
-simply because you find the revolver fully loaded after days and days!
-Then you find a photograph that needn’t necessarily be what we thought
-it, that my uncle needn’t have taken even if it was; but you jump to
-another conclusion about him, and you dare to speak of him to me as
-though you knew every horrid thing you chose to think! As if you knew
-him and I didn’t! As if he hasn’t been kind and good to me for years
-and years—and kind to you—far too kind——”
-
-The strained voice broke, tears were running down her face, and in it
-and them there was more sincerity. Grief, and not anger, was the well
-of those bitter tears. And it was in simple supplication, not
-imperiously any more, that she pointed to the door when speech failed
-her. The boy’s answer was to go close up to her instead. “Will you
-come with me?” he asked hoarsely.
-
-She shook her head; she was past surprise as well as indignation; she
-could only shake her head.
-
-“My people would be as good to you as ever he was,” urged Pocket
-extravagantly. “They’d understand, and you’d stay with us, Phillida!
-You might live with us altogether!”
-
-She smiled very faintly at that.
-
-“Oh, Phillida, can’t you see that they’d do anything for you after all
-we’ve been through together? And I, oh! there’s nothing I wouldn’t do
-if only you’d come with me now this minute! I know there’s a train
-about ten, and I know where we could borrow the money on the way. Come,
-Phillida, get on your things and come away from all this horror!”
-
-He had gone on, even into details, encouraged by the tolerance or
-apathy which had allowed him to go on at all. He took it for
-indecision; but, whatever it was, she shook it off and declared once
-for all that she would never leave Dr. Baumgartner, even if everything
-was true about him, and he as mad as that would make him out.
-
-“But he is!” cried Pocket, with most eager conviction. “That’s the only
-possible explanation, and you’d believe it fast enough if you’d heard
-all he said to me that first night, and been with me in the dark-room
-when he developed his negative of the man he said I shot! You’d see how
-it all fits in, and how this other negative this morning simply shows
-he was at the bottom of that other affair as well! Of course he’s mad;
-but that’s the very reason why I can’t go and leave you with him.”
-
-“He would be as he’s always been to me.”
-
-“I believe he would,” said honest Pocket.
-
-“Then why don’t you go away and leave us?”
-
-“Because I can’t.”
-
-“Because you won’t!”
-
-“Very well, because I won’t and never will! But, mind you, it’ll be
-your fault if anything happens to either of us after this!”
-
-He only meant it as a last argument, though he did resent her fatal
-obstinacy, and all the obligations which it imposed upon himself. He
-stood chained in fetters of her forging, as it were to the stake, but
-he was prepared to stand there like a man, and he did not deserve the
-things she said to him in a fresh paroxysm of unreasonable wrath. He
-might be a baby, but he was not a complete coward, or simply trying to
-make her miserable, as she declared; neither, on this occasion, was he
-thinking only of himself. But Phillida seemed suddenly to realise that,
-for she broke off with a despairing little cry, and ran sobbing up the
-stairs.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII.
-A THIRD CASE
-
-
-In days to come, when the boy had schooled himself not to speak of
-these days, nor to let his mind dwell on their mystery and terror, it
-was as a day of dark hours and vivid moments that he remembered the one
-which Phillida and he began alone together in her uncle’s house. Those
-endless hours were either mercifully forgotten or else contracted to an
-endurable minimum; but the unforgettable moments would light themselves
-up in his memory without a detail missing.
-
-There was their first encounter at the dark-room door, and Phillida
-standing all but barefoot in the ruby light, with her glorious hair
-about her shoulders, a picture that could never fade. Then there was
-the moment of the incriminating print, which the sun wiped out even as
-Phillida stood with it in her hands. That moment merged itself in the
-greater one of his discovery that the revolver was fully loaded, his
-inspiration that neither it nor he had done the fatal mischief in the
-Park. Then she was begging him to go (she who would keep him the time
-before!) and he entreating her to come with him, and neither giving way
-an inch, so that they quarrelled just when they should have stuck
-together, and she ran away in tears, and he stayed below in a glow of
-anger which dissolved his fears like snow in May.
-
-That was the beginning of a black hour and more. Phillida was never to
-be forgiven, then; he was staying there at his peril, staying
-absolutely on her account, and so far from giving him the slightest
-credit for it, or a single word of encouragement, she said all sorts of
-things and was off before he could answer one of them. It was not for
-Pocket to see the many ironies of that moment, and not for him to
-recognise the tonic property of his heroic grievance. He could only see
-himself at the foot of those stairs, first gnashing his teeth and not
-sorry he had made her cry, then sitting down with his eye on the front
-door, revolver in hand, to await the click of the doctor’s key. Another
-click was to answer it; and at the point of the cocked revolver
-Baumgartner was to have made a clean breast of his crimes, not only to
-the giant-killer at the foot of the stairs but to the girl he meant to
-call to witness with her own ears.
-
-Pocket saw himself a desperate character just then, and one not
-incapable of desperate action had the climax only come at once. But he
-had more than an hour of it alone at his post; he had a whole hot
-forenoon of unmitigated suspense, of sickening alarms from tradesmen’s
-carts, boys whistling past the house as though they were not in a
-wicked world at all, and then a piano-organ that redoubled his
-watchfulness, and spoilt some tunes for him for ever. Once he did hear
-shambling feet on the very steps outside. Once was quite enough, though
-it was but an advertisement for cast-off clothing (and false teeth)
-that came fluttering through the letter-box. Pocket was left in such a
-state that he would not have backed himself to hit the door from the
-stairs; and he put the chain on it, thinking to interview the doctor
-over that, in the manner of old Miss Harbottle.
-
-So it happened that the first significant sound was entirely lost upon
-him, because he was listening for one so much nearer at hand, until
-Phillida ran downstairs and almost over him where he sat.
-
-He got up to make way stiffly, but a glance assured him that the
-quarrel was over on her side. The great eyes were fixed appealingly
-upon him, but with a distressing look which he had done nothing to
-provoke. Not before then was he aware of another duet between newsboys
-coming nearer and nearer, and shouting each other down as they came.
-
-“You hear that?” she whispered, as if not to drown a note.
-
-“I do now.”
-
-“Do you hear what it is?”
-
-Pocket listened, and caught a word he was not likely to miss.
-
-“Something fresh about the murder,” said he grimly.
-
-“No; it’s another one,” she shuddered. “Can’t you hear? ‘Another awful
-murder!’ Now they’re saying something else.”
-
-“It is something about the Park.” Pocket stuck to his idea.
-
-“And something else about some ‘well-known’—I can’t hear what!”
-
-“No more can I.”
-
-“I’ll open the door.”
-
-She opened it on the chain as he had left it. That did not help them.
-The shouting had passed the end of their quiet road. It was dying away
-again in the distance.
-
-“I must go out and get one,” said Phillida. “Some well-known man!”
-
-“You’re not thinking of the doctor, surely?”
-
-“I don’t know! I can’t think where he is.”
-
-“But you’re worse than I am, if you jump to that!” said Pocket, smiling
-to reassure her. He did not smile when she had run out as she was; he
-had shut the door after her, and he was waiting to open it in a fever
-of impatience.
-
-Dr. Baumgartner had left the house before six o’clock in the morning;
-now it was after twelve. If some tragedy had overtaken him in his turn,
-then there was an end to every terror, and for him a better end than he
-might meet with if he lived. The boy remembered Him who desireth not
-the death of a sinner, and was ashamed of his own thought; but that did
-not alter it. Unless his fears and his surmises were all equally
-unfounded, better for everybody, and best of all for Phillida, if this
-criminal maniac came to his end without public exposure of his crimes.
-Pocket may have misconceived his own attitude of mind, as his elders
-and betters do daily; he may have been thinking of his own skin more
-than he knew, or wanted to know. In that case he had his reward, for
-the murdered man was not Dr. Baumgartner. Phillida’s first words on
-returning were to that effect; and yet she trembled as though they were
-not the truth.
-
-“Who was it, then?” the schoolboy asked suspiciously.
-
-“Sir Joseph Schelmerdine.”
-
-“So he was the well-known man!”
-
-He was well known even to the boy by name, but that was all. He had
-seen it in newspapers, and he thought he had heard it execrated by
-Baumgartner himself in one of his little digs at England. Pocket was
-not sure about this, but he mentioned his impression, and Phillida
-nodded with swimming eyes.
-
-“Did the doctor know him?”
-
-“Not personally; but he thought him a European danger.”
-
-“Why?”
-
-“I can’t tell you. It was something to do with politics and gold-mines,
-and some financial paper. I never understood.”
-
-“May I see the paper you’ve brought in?”
-
-The girl held it tight in her hand, and tighter still as he held out
-his.
-
-“I’d rather you didn’t,” she said.
-
-“Then there’s something you haven’t told me.”
-
-“There is!”
-
-“I shall know it sooner or later.”
-
-“I know you will, and I know what you’ll think! You may think what you
-like, and still be wrong!”
-
-There was a pause between the sentences, and in the pause the boy found
-the paper at his feet. There was no need to open it at the place; it
-was so folded already, the news standing out in its leaded type, and
-more of it in the late corner. Sir Joseph Schelmerdine, Bart., M.P.,
-the well-known proprietor of the _Money-maker_, had been shot dead in
-front of his house in Park Lane. The murder had been committed in the
-early hours of the morning, before anybody was about except Sir Joseph
-and his groom, and the person whom the groom described as the only
-possible murderer. The man had just seen his master mounted for the
-early morning ride, and had left him in conversation with a
-photographer representing himself as concerned with the press, and
-desirous of obtaining an equestrian photograph for his paper. The groom
-thought it was to be taken in the Park, and was himself on his way back
-to the mews when the riderless horse overtook him. Mounting the animal,
-he had galloped round to find Sir Joseph dead in the road, and no trace
-of the “photographer” but a false beard and spectacles which he had
-evidently discarded in his flight, and which unfortunately precluded a
-close description of his appearance. But a hue and cry had been
-started, and it was believed that the criminal was still in hiding in
-the immediate neighbourhood, which was being subjected to a thorough
-search under the direction of responsible officers from Scotland Yard.
-
-Such was the news which the young girl had shrunk from showing to her
-companion. She had left him, indeed, to read it by himself. And the
-next thing he remembered was finding her quite insensible in the big
-chair in the back room.
-
-The afternoon was a blank broken by no more moments such as these. It
-was a period of dull misery and gnawing dread; but the pair saw each
-other through it, they were not divided any more. Now they listened for
-his step no longer, but for more newsboys crying his capture to the
-world. And in the hours that they spent thus listening, and listening,
-the girl had much to say, that it did her good to say, about this Dr.
-Baumgartner as she had known and almost loved him in the past.
-
-Lovable, however, he had never been, though more than good and kind to
-her for all that. He had never taken her into his life, or entered into
-hers, in the many years they had been more or less together. All she
-really knew of him was from her mother, whose elder sister he had
-married soon after the Franco-Prussian War, and lost soon after
-marriage. He must have been settled in England many years before
-Phillida’s mother, herself an Englishman’s widow, came to keep house
-for him. The girl could not remember her father, but her mother had
-lived to see her in her teens, and in her lifetime Dr. Baumgartner had
-seemed much as other men. It was only of late years that he had
-withdrawn from a world in which he was justly honoured, and buried
-himself ever deeper in his books and his photographic experiments. His
-niece had never known anything of these; he had told her nothing, and
-she had always gone in awe of him. But he had sent her to school, he
-was going to send her to college, he had only just given her six
-months in Switzerland. It was during those months that all his
-eccentricities had become pronounced; that he had given up servants,
-and taken to doing half the work of the house himself, with the casual
-aid of charwomen, and saving the other half by having the meals in from
-a restaurant. Phillida had no influence with him in these or any other
-matters. She only blamed herself for not having realised the change in
-him and done more to save him from himself. He had done so much for
-her, whatever madness might have overtaken him in the end; her own
-kinsfolk so much less, for all their opulent integrity. Nothing could
-make her forget what he had done. She never could or would desert him;
-it was no use asking her again; but she took her callow champion’s
-hand, and wrung it with her final answer, which was unaccompanied by
-further prayers for his departure.
-
-And Pocket could understand her now, though it was no consecutive tale
-that he heard, but a very chaos of excuses and extenuations, regrets,
-suppositions, and not always revelant recollections, of which he had to
-make what he could in his own mind. What he made was a narrative so
-natural that he could not believe it was the life-story of a murderer.
-His own convictions became preposterous in his own eyes. What had he
-been thinking about all day? Was that the way a murderer would behave?
-Was this the way a murderer would live, in these surroundings, with
-those books about him, with that little billiard-table in the next
-room? Had those waxen murderers in the garish vault lived ordinary
-lives as well? Pocket had only thought of them as committing their
-dreadful deeds, yet now he could only think of Baumgartner as living
-this ordinary life.
-
-The mood passed, but it would recur as sure as Phillida thought of
-something else to be said for Dr. Baumgartner; it was the creature of
-her feeling for him, and of the schoolboy’s feeling for her. If he
-could have convicted himself of the fatal affair in the Park, and so
-cleared Baumgartner of all blood-guiltiness whatsoever, in that or any
-other case, he would have done it for Phillida’s sake that afternoon.
-But with every hour of the doctor’s absence suspicions multiplied.
-Phillida herself was a prey to them. She was almost as ready to recall
-symptoms of incipient insanity as instances of personal kindness; if
-one lost one’s reason, she broke a long silence to contend, there could
-be no question of regret and wrong. She was not so sure about crime and
-punishment. Pocket, of course, said there could be no question of that
-either; but in his heart he wondered how much method they must prove to
-hang a madman.
-
-The evening meal had been taken in, but that was all. The girl and boy
-had no thought of sitting down to it; she had made tea not long before;
-and strong excitement is its own meat and drink. They were sitting
-silently together in the room at the back. The scented summer dusk was
-deepening every minute. Suddenly there was a sound of small branches
-breaking in the garden. Pocket peeped out, standing back from the
-window at her entreaty.
-
-The laburnum by the wall was shaking violently, pouring its golden rain
-into both gardens, and the bush beneath it looked alive; a tall figure
-rose out of it, and came creeping towards the little conservatory, bent
-double, and brushing the soil from his clothes as he advanced with long
-and stealthy strides. It was Dr. Baumgartner, in a cap pulled down over
-his eyes, and the old alpaca jacket. He had a newspaper parcel under
-his arm.
-
-The boy and girl were in the dark angle between the window and the
-door; but it was only comparative darkness, and Baumgartner might have
-seen them; they were clasping hands as they shrank away from him with
-one accord. But he did not seem to see them at all. He stretched
-himself, as though he found it a relief to stand upright, and more
-mould trickled from his garments in the act; he took off the alpaca
-jacket, and shook it as one shakes a handkerchief. There could have
-been nothing in the pockets, certainly no weapon, and if he had a
-hip-pocket there was none in that, for his gaunt figure stood out
-plainly enough in the middle of the room. There was still the newspaper
-parcel; he had put it down on one of the walnut-tables. He now removed
-the paper; it fell at Pocket’s feet, a newspaper and nothing more; and
-nothing had come out of it but the stereoscopic camera, that either
-watcher could detect.
-
-And he passed through the room without taking the least notice of
-either of them, whether he saw them or not; and they heard him go
-upstairs, and shut the door, and then his footsteps overhead.
-
-“I’ll go up and tackle him at once,” said Pocket, through his set
-teeth; but Phillida would not hear of it.
-
-“No! I must go first and see if there’s nothing I can get him; he
-mayn’t have had anything all day. There’s no need for you to come at
-all—I believe he’s forgotten all about us both!”
-
-“Not he!” whispered Pocket, as the door opened overhead. “Here he
-comes!”
-
-He could not help gripping his revolver as the stairs creaked again
-under Dr. Baumgartner; he had gripped it more than once already with
-the hand that was not holding Phillida’s. The doctor was coming down in
-a hurry, as though he had indeed forgotten something. But he passed
-the open drawing-room door; they saw him pass, jingling a bunch of
-keys, and never so much as glancing in on the way. It was the dark-room
-door he opened. Now he would find out everything! They heard a match
-struck, and saw the faint light turn into a strong deep crimson glow.
-The door shut. The children stood listening in the dark.
-
-Running water, and the chink of glass; the tapping of a stoppered
-bottle; the opening of the dark slide; these stages the younger
-photographer followed as though he were again looking on. Then there
-was a long period without a sound.
-
-“He’s developing now!” whispered Pocket, close to the folding-doors. He
-caught the sound of laboured breathing on the other side. “There it
-is—there it is—there it is!” cried the doctor’s voice in mingled
-ecstasy and mad excitement. A deep sigh announced the blackening of the
-plate at the conclusion of the first process. A tap ran for a moment;
-interminable minutes ensued. “It’s gone! It’s gone again!” cried the
-wild voice, with a sob; “it’s gone, gone, gone like all the rest!”
-
-One listener waited for the passionate smashing of the negative as
-before; but that did not happen again; and then he wondered if it was
-being put straight into the rack with the others, if the damage to the
-locker had been discovered at last. He never knew. The door opened. The
-red glow showed for a moment in the passage, then went out. The door
-shut behind Baumgartner, and again he passed the drawing-room, a bent
-figure, without looking in. And the flagging step on the stairs bore no
-resemblance to the one which had come hurrying down not many minutes
-before.
-
-“I must go to him!” said Phillida in broken undertones, and her grief
-communicated itself to the other young sympathetic soul, for all the
-base fears he had to fight alone. Personal safety, little as she might
-think of it, was the essence of her position as opposed to his; and he
-was of the type that thinks of everything. She left him listening
-breathless in the dark. And in the dark she found him when at length
-she returned to report the doctor busy writing at his desk; but a pin’s
-head of blue gas glimmered where there had been none before, and a
-paper which had been trodden underfoot now rustled in Pocket’s hand.
-
-“Does he know I’m here?” he asked.
-
-“I don’t think so. We never mentioned you. I believe he’s forgotten
-your existence altogether; he began by looking at me as though he’d
-forgotten mine. He says he wants nothing, except time to write. He
-seems so strange—so old!”
-
-Again the break in her voice, and again the boyish sympathy in his. “I
-wonder if something would be any comfort to you?”
-
-“I don’t think so. What is it?”
-
-“Something I saw in the paper he brought in with him. I lit the gas
-while you were upstairs.”
-
-Phillida turned it out again without comment.
-
-“Nothing that you saw can make any difference to me,” she sighed.
-
-“Do you remember my saying there must be another man in
-these—mysteries?”
-
-“I think I do. What difference does it make? Besides, the man you meant
-is in prison.”
-
-“He isn’t!”
-
-“You said he was?”
-
-“He was let out early this morning! Let me light the gas while you read
-it for yourself.”
-
-But Phillida had no desire to read it for herself. “I doubt if there’s
-anything in that,” she said; “but what if there were? Does it make it
-any better if a man has an accomplice in his crimes? If he’s guilty at
-all, it makes it all the worse.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX.
-THE FOURTH CASE
-
-
-The boy and girl sat long and late in the open window at the back of
-the house. The room would have been in darkness but for a flood of
-moonlight pouring over them. The only light in the house was in the
-room above, and they only saw its glimmer on the garden when a casual
-cloud hid the moon; but once Pocket had crept out into the garden to
-steal a look at the lighted window itself; and what he saw was the
-shadow of a huge bent head smoking a huge bent pipe, and dense clouds
-of shadow floating up the wall and over the ceiling.
-
-It seemed hours since they had heard footstep or other sound upstairs
-or anywhere. There had been a brisk interval—and then an end—of more or
-less distant hansom-bells and motor-horns. There was no longer even a
-certain minute intermittent trembling of trifles on the walnut-tables,
-to which Pocket had become subconsciously accustomed in that house, so
-that he noticed its absence more than the thing itself. It was as
-though the whole town was at rest, and the tunnels under the town, and
-every single soul above or below ground, but those two white faces in
-the moonlight, and perhaps one other overhead.
-
-Pocket wondered; it was so long since a single sound had come down to
-their ears. He wanted to steal out and look up again. Phillida was
-against it; perhaps she was wondering too. Pocket, as usual, saw what
-he did see so very vividly, in his mind’s eye, that he shivered and was
-asked if he felt cold. The whispered debate that followed was the
-longest conversation they had that night. The window was not shut as a
-result of it, but Pocket fetched his overcoat on tiptoe, and it just
-went over both their shoulders, when the chairs were drawn as near
-together as they would go.
-
-The ragged little garden was brimming over with moonlight from wall to
-wall. The unkempt grass looked pale and ghostly, like the skin of some
-monstrous wolf. The moon rolled high in the sky and clouds flew above
-and below the moon, varying in pace as well. Yet it was a still night,
-and Pocket did not think that he had broken the stillness, until the
-door burst open behind them, and Baumgartner stood there, holding his
-lamp aloft. The wick was turned too high, the flame ran up the chimney
-in the draught, and for an instant a demoniac face flared up behind it.
-Then the chimney cracked, and fell in a tinkling shower, and the doctor
-was seen whirling a naked tongue of fire about his head. The boy drew
-back as the lamp flew through the open window, within an inch of his
-nose, and crashed upon the path outside.
-
-The trio stood without a word in the moonbeams; but the doctor was
-breathing hard through his teeth, like a man wrestling with himself;
-and at last he laughed sardonically as though he had won.
-
-“A lamp like that’s a dangerous thing,” said he, with a kind of forced
-solemnity and a shake of the head; “you never know what may happen when
-a lamp does that! I’m glad the window was open; it didn’t go very near
-my young fellow, I hope?”
-
-And he took Pocket playfully by the ear, but pinched it so hard that
-the boy could have screamed with pain.
-
-“It would have served you right,” continued the doctor, before Pocket
-could find his tongue, “for sitting up so late, and keeping a young
-lady from her bed to bear you company. Come, Phillida! I shall have
-another word with you, young fellow.”
-
-The two words to the girl were in a different key from all the rest.
-They were tolerant, conciliatory, tenderly persuasive. The rest was
-suavely sinister; it made her hesitate; but Pocket had the presence of
-mind to bid her a cheery good-night, and she went, closely followed by
-Baumgartner.
-
-Posted once more at the open door, the boy heard Baumgartner on the
-next flight, soothing and affectionate still, allaying her fears; and
-his own surged into his throat. He looked wildly about him, and an
-idea came. He opened the front door wide, and then stole back through
-the conservatory into the moonlight. He heard Baumgartner coming down
-before he gained the garden. He tore to the end of it, and cowered in
-the shadow of the far wall.
-
-The doctor came running into the moonlit room, but not for a minute; it
-looked as though he had run out first into the road. In the room he lit
-the gas, and Pocket saw him have a look in all the corners, but hardly
-the look of a seeker who expects to find. Some long moments he stood
-out horribly at the open window, gazing straight at the spot where the
-fugitive crouched a few inches out of the moonlight and hugged the
-revolver in his pocket. He seemed to see nothing to bring him out that
-way, for he closed that window and put out the gas. The trembling
-watcher heard the front door shut soon after, and saw another light in
-Baumgartner’s room the minute after that, and the blind drawn down. But
-on the blind there lagged a cloud-capped shadow till the doctor’s pipe
-was well in blast.
-
-There were no more shadows after that. The moon moved round to the
-right, and set behind the next house. The sky grew pale, and the
-lighted blind paler still, until Baumgartner drew it up before putting
-out his light. Pocket was now too stiff to stir; but it was not
-necessary; the doctor had scarcely looked out. There was a twitter of
-sparrows all down the road, garden answering to garden. The sun came up
-behind Pocket’s wall, behind the taller houses further back. And
-Baumgartner reappeared at his window for one instant in his cap.
-
-The front door shut again.
-
-Down the garden ran Pocket without the least precaution now. There was
-a gravel passage between the tradesmen’s entrance, on the detached side
-of the house, and the garden wall. This passage was closed by a gate,
-and the gate was locked, but Pocket threw himself over it almost in his
-stride and darted over into the open road.
-
-Just then it was a perfectly empty road, but for a gaunt black figure
-stalking away in the distance. An overwhelming curiosity urged the boy
-to follow, but an equal dread of detection kept him cowering in
-gateways, until Baumgartner took the turning past the shops without a
-backward glance. Pocket promptly raced to that corner, and got another
-glimpse of his leader before he vanished round the next. So the
-spasmodic chase continued over a zigzag course; but at every turn the
-distance between them was a little less. Neither looked round, and once
-the boy’s feet were actually on the man’s shadow; for half the streets
-were raked with level sunlight, but the other half were ladders of
-dusk with rungs of light at the gaps between the houses. All were
-dustier, dirtier, and emptier than is ever the case by night or day,
-because this was neither one nor the other, though the sun was up to
-make the most of dust, dirt, and emptiness. It was before even the
-cleansing hour of the scavenger and the water-cart. A dead cat was
-sprawling horribly in one deserted reach of wood-paving. And a
-motor-car at full speed in a thoroughfare calling itself King’s Road,
-which Pocket was about to cross, had at all events the excuse of a
-visible mile of asphalt to itself.
-
-Pocket drew back to let it pass, without looking twice at the car
-itself, which indeed was disguised out of knowledge in the promiscuous
-mire of many countries; but the red eyes behind the driver’s goggles
-were not so slow. Down went his feet on clutch and brake without a
-second’s interval; round spun the car in a skid that tore studs from
-the tyres, and fetched her up against the kerb with a shivered wheel.
-Pocket started forward with a cry; but at that moment a ponderous step
-fell close behind him; his arm was seized, and he was dragged in
-custody across the road.
-
-“Your boy, I think!” cried one whom he had never seen before, and did
-not now, being locked already in the motorist’s arms.
-
-“When did you find him?” the father asked when he was man enough, still
-patting Pocket’s shoulders as if he were a dog.
-
-“Only last night when I wired.”
-
-“And where?”
-
-“In the house where you and I couldn’t make ourselves heard.”
-
-The schoolboy flared up through all his emotion.
-
-“Why, I never saw you before this minute!”
-
-“Well, I’ve had my eye on you, more or less, for a day or two.”
-
-“Then why didn’t you wire before?” demanded Mr. Upton, quite ready to
-mask his own emotion with a little heat. “I didn’t get it till after
-nine o’clock—too late for the evening train—but I wasn’t going to waste
-three hours with a forty-horser eating its head off! So here I am, on
-my way to the address you gave.”
-
-“It was plumb opposite Baumgartner’s. I mounted guard there the very
-night you left. He came out twenty minutes ago, and your boy after
-him!”
-
-“But what does it all mean, Thrush? What on earth were you doing there,
-my dear boy?”
-
-The notes of anger and affection were struck in ludicrously quick
-succession; but the first was repeated on the boy’s hang-dog admission
-that he had been hiding.
-
-“Hiding, Tony?”
-
-Thrush himself seemed surprised at the expression. “But at all events
-we found you better employed,” he said to Pocket, “and the sooner we
-all take up the chase again the more chance we shall have of laying
-this rascal by the heels.”
-
-“Take it up, then!” snapped Mr. Upton. “Jump into the motor, and bring
-the brute to me when you’ve got him! I want to speak to my boy.”
-
-He did not realise the damage done to his car, or listen to a word that
-passed between Thrush and his chauffeur; he had eyes only for those of
-his child who had been lost but was found, and not a thought in his
-head outside the story he extracted piecemeal on the spot. Poor Pocket
-told it very volubly and ill; he would not confine himself to simple
-facts. He stated his suspicion of Baumgartner’s complicity in the Hyde
-Park affair as though he knew it for a fact; cited the murders in
-Holland Walk and Park Lane as obvious pieces of the same handiwork, and
-yet declared his conviction that the actual hand was not Dr.
-Baumgartner’s at all.
-
-“But why should you think he had an accomplice, Tony?”
-
-“He was unarmed the other morning. I’m quite positive of that. And his
-niece, who lives with him, has never seen a firearm of any kind in the
-house.”
-
-“Well, he’s villain enough to hang, if ever there was one! It’s time we
-laid hold of him. Where’s Mr. Thrush? I thought you’d taken him on in
-the car?”
-
-This to the chauffeur, now the centre of the carrion crowd that gathers
-about the body of any disabled motor. The chauffeur, a countryman like
-his master, was enjoying himself vastly with a surreptitious cigarette
-and sardonic mutterings on the cause of his scattered spokes; the facts
-being that he had nearly fallen asleep at his wheel, which Mr. Upton
-had incontinently taken into his own less experienced hands.
-
-“The car won’t take anybody anywhere to-day,” explained the chauffeur,
-with his cigarette behind his back. “I shall have to get a lorry to
-take the car.” He held his head on one side suddenly. “There’s a bit o’
-tyre trouble for somebody!” he cried, grimly.
-
-Indeed, a sharp crack had come from the direction of the river, not
-unlike the bursting of a heavy tyre; but Pocket Upton did not think it
-was that. He caught his father’s arm, and whispered in his father’s
-ear, and they plunged together into a side street broader than the
-asphalt thoroughfare, but with scarcely a break in either phalanx of
-drab mediocre dwellings, and not a creature stirring except themselves
-and a few who followed. The hog’s back of a still more deserted bridge
-arched itself at the foot of the street, its suspension cables showing
-against the sky in foreshortened curves. As they ran a peculiarly
-shrill whistle cut the morning air like a streak of sound.
-
-“P’lice!” screamed one of those bringing up the rear, and they easily
-spurted past father and son, each already contending with his own
-infirmity. Mr. Upton was dangerously scarlet in the neck, and Pocket
-panting as he had not done for days. In sad labour they drew near the
-suspension bridge, to a crescendo accompaniment on the police whistle.
-It was evidently being blown on the Embankment to the right of the
-bridge, and already with considerable effect. As the pair were about to
-pass an intermediate turning on the right, a constable flew across it
-on a parallel course, and they altered theirs with one accord. Pocket
-panted after the constable, and his father thundered after Pocket, into
-a narrow street debouching upon a fenced strip of greenery, not too
-dense to hide broad pavement and low parapet on its further side, with
-a strip of brown river beyond that, and a skyline of warehouses on the
-Surrey shore.
-
-The narrow garden had not been opened for the day. There was a gate
-opposite the end of the road, another gate leading out on the
-Embankment opposite that. Between the two gates a grimy statue rose
-upon a granite pedestal, a meditative figure clad to the heels in some
-nondescript garment, and gazing across the river as he sat with a
-number of discarded volumes under his chair. It was a peculiarly
-lifelike monument, which Pocket would have been just the boy to
-appreciate at any other time; even now it struck him for an instant,
-before his attention was attracted to the group of commonplace living
-people on the Embankment beyond the narrow garden. They were standing
-together on the far side of one of the fixed seats. There was the
-policeman who had blown the whistle, and a small but motley crew who
-had answered to the call. Conspicuous units were a gentleman in
-dressing-gown and pyjamas, a couple of chimneysweeps, and a labouring
-cyclist on his way to work. They had formed a circle about some hidden
-object on the ground; and long before the new-comers could run round
-and join them, the schoolboy had steeled himself to look upon another
-murdered man. He was in no hurry to look; apart from a natural dread of
-death, which he had seen for the first time, and then unwittingly, only
-the other morning, it was the murderer and not his victim of whom the
-boy was thinking as he arrived last upon the scene. It was Dr.
-Baumgartner whom he half expected to see swimming the river or hiding
-among the bushes in the enclosed garden; for he was not one of the
-group on the Embankment; and how else could he have made his escape?
-The point was being discussed as Pocket came into earshot; all he could
-see of the fallen man was the soles of his boots upright among living
-legs.
-
-“Is he dead?” he asked of one of the chimneysweeps, who was detaching
-himself from the group with the air of a man who had seen the best of
-the fun.
-
-“Dead as an ’erring,” replied the sweep cheerfully. “Sooicide in the
-usual stite o’ mind.”
-
-“Rats!” said the other sweep over a sooty shoulder; “unless ’e shot
-’isself first an’ swallered the shooter afterwards! Some’un’s done ’im
-in.”
-
-Pocket set his teeth, and shouldered his way into the group. His father
-was already in the thick of it, talking to the stout man in spectacles,
-who had risen miraculously from the ground and was busy brushing his
-trouser-knees. Pocket forced himself on with much the same nutter he
-had taken into the Chamber of Horrors, but with an equal determination
-to look just once upon Dr. Baumgartner’s latest victim. A loud cry
-escaped him when he did look; for the murdered man, and not the
-murderer, was Dr. Baumgartner himself.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX.
-WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP
-
-
-Phillida was prepared for anything when she beheld a motor-car at the
-gate, and the escaped schoolboy getting out with a grown man of shaggy
-and embarrassed aspect; but she was not prepared for the news they
-brought her. She was intensely shocked and shaken by it. Her grief and
-horror were not the less overwhelming for the shame and fear which they
-replaced in her mind. Yet she remained instinctively on her guard, and
-a passionate curiosity was the only emotion she permitted herself to
-express in words.
-
-“But have they no idea who did it? Are they quite sure he didn’t do it
-himself?”
-
-Mr. Upton broke through his heavy embarrassment with no little relief,
-to dispose of the question of suicide once and for all.
-
-“It’s the one thing they are sure about,” said he. “In the first place
-no weapon was to be found, and we saw no sign of a camera either,
-though this boy tells me your uncle had his with him when he went out.
-That’s more or less conclusive in itself. But there was a doctor on the
-spot before we left, and I heard him say the shot couldn’t have been
-fired at very close quarters, and that death must have been
-instantaneous. So it’s no more a suicide than the case in Park Lane
-yesterday or the one in Hyde Park last week; there’s evidently some
-maniac prowling about at dawn, and shooting down the first person he
-sees and then vanishing into thin air as maniacs seem to have a knack
-of doing more effectually than sane men. But the less we jump to
-conclusions about him—or anybody else—the better.”
-
-The girl was grateful for the covert sympathy of the last remark, and
-yet it startled her as an index of what must have passed already
-between father and son. It was a new humiliation that this big bluff
-man should know as much as the boy whom she had learnt to look upon as
-a comrade in calamity. Yet she could not expect it to be otherwise.
-
-“What must you think!” she cried, and her great eyes filled and fell
-again. “Oh! what must you think?”
-
-“It’s no good thinking,” he rejoined, with almost a jovial kindness.
-“We’re all three on the edge of a mystery; we must see each other
-through before we think. Not that I’ve had time to hear everything yet,
-but I own I can’t make head or tail of what I have heard. I’m not sure
-that I want to. I like a man’s secrets to die with him; it’s enough for
-me to have my boy back again, and to know that you stood by him as you
-did. It’s our turn to stand by you, my dear! He says it wasn’t your
-fault he didn’t come away long ago; and it shan’t be mine if you stay
-another hour alone in this haunted house. You’ve got to come straight
-back with us to our hotel.”
-
-They happened to be all three standing in the big back room, a haunted
-chamber if there was one in the house. With his battle-pictures on the
-walls, his tin of tobacco on the chimney-piece, and the scent of
-latakia rising from the carpet, the whole room remained redolent of the
-murdered man; and the window still open, the two chairs near it as they
-had been overnight, and the lamp lying in fragments on the path
-outside, brought the last scene back to the boy’s mind in full and
-vivid detail. Yet the present one was in itself more desolate and
-depressing than any in which Dr. Baumgartner had figured. It might be
-that the constant menace of that portentous presence had thrown his
-simple middle-class surroundings, at the time, into a kind of
-reassuring relief. But it was the case that the morning had already
-clouded over; the sunshine of the other mornings was sadly missing; and
-Phillida looked only too eager to fly from the scene, until she
-declared she never could.
-
-“But that’s absurd!” cried Mr. Upton bluntly. “I’m not going to leave a
-young girl like you alone in the day of battle, murder and sudden
-death! You needn’t necessarily come with us, as long as you don’t stay
-here. Have you no other relatives in London?”
-
-“None anywhere that I know much about.”
-
-“That doesn’t matter. It’s time they knew more about you. I’ll hunt
-them up in the motor, if they’re anywhere within a hundred miles, but
-you simply must let me take their place meanwhile.”
-
-He was a masterful man enough; it did not require the schoolboy’s added
-supplications to bring about an eventual compromise. The idea had
-indeed been Pocket’s originally, but his father had taken it up more
-warmly than he could have hoped. It was decided that they should return
-to their hotel without Phillida, but to send the car back for her later
-in the morning, as it would take her some time to pack her things and
-leave the deserted house in some semblance of order.
-
-But her packing was a very small matter, and she left it to the end;
-most of the time at her disposal was spent in a hurried investigation
-of the dead man’s effects, more especially of his store of negatives in
-the dark-room. The only incriminating plates, however, were the one she
-had already seen on its discovery by Pocket the day before and another
-of a man lying in a heap in the middle of a road. This one had been put
-to dry openly in the rack, the wood of which was still moist from the
-process. Phillida only held it up to the light an instant, and then not
-only smashed both these negatives, but poured boiling water on the
-films and floated them down the sink. The bits of glass she put in the
-dust-bin with those of the broken lamp, and had hardly done so when the
-first policeman arrived to report the fatality. He was succeeded by a
-very superior officer, who gained admittance and asked a number of
-questions concerning the deceased, but in a perfunctory manner that
-suggested few if any expectations from the replies. Neither functionary
-made any secret of his assumption that the latest murder was but
-another of the perfectly random series which had already thrilled the
-town, but on which no light was likely to be shed by the antecedents of
-the murdered men. A third official came to announce that the inquest
-was to be opened without delay, at two o’clock that afternoon, and to
-request Phillida to accompany him to the mortuary for the formal
-identification of the deceased.
-
-That was a dread ordeal, and yet she expected a worse. She had steeled
-herself to look upon a debased image of the familiar face, and she
-found it startlingly ennobled and refined. Death had taken away nothing
-here, save the furrows of age and the fires of madness, and it had
-given back the look of fine courage and of sane integrity which the
-girl was just old enough to associate with the dead man’s prime. She
-was thankful to have seen him like this for the last time. She wished
-that all the world could see him as he was, so noble and so calm, for
-then nobody would ever suspect that which she herself would find it
-easier to disbelieve from this hour.
-
-“You do identify him, I suppose, miss?” the officer whispered,
-impressed by her strange stare.
-
-“Oh, yes!” said Phillida. “But he looks as I have not seen him look for
-years. There are worse things than death!”
-
-She said the same thing to Mr. Upton at luncheon in his private
-sitting-room at the hotel, whereupon he again assured her that he had
-no desire to know a dead man’s secrets. He had found his boy; that was
-quite enough for him, and he was able to deliver himself the more
-freely on the subject since Pocket was not at table, but in bed making
-up for lost sleep. Not only had he succeeded in finding his son, but he
-had found him without the aid of police or press, and so not more than
-a dozen people in the world knew that he had ever disappeared. Mr.
-Upton explained why he had deemed it essential to keep the matter from
-his wife’s ears, and added almost equally good reasons for continuing
-to hush it up on the boy’s account if only it were possible to do so;
-but would it be possible to Phillida to exclude from her evidence at
-the inquest all mention of so recent a visitor at her uncle’s house?
-Phillida promised to do her best, and it proved not only possible but
-easy. She was questioned as to the habits of the deceased so far as
-they explained his presence on the Embankment at such a very early
-hour, but that was all. Asked if she knew of a single person who could
-conceivably have borne such a grudge against Dr. Baumgartner as to wish
-to take his life, the witness answered in the negative, and the coroner
-bowed as much as to say that of course they all knew the character of
-the murder, but he had put the question for form’s sake. The only one
-which caused her a moment’s hesitation arose from a previous answer,
-which connected the doctor’s early ramblings with his hobby of
-instantaneous photography. Had he his camera with him that morning?
-Phillida thought so. Why? Well, he always did take it out, and it
-certainly was not in the house. Mr. Upton wiped his forehead, for he
-knew that his boy’s name had been on the tip of the witness’s tongue.
-And there was a sensation in court as well; for here at last was a bone
-for the detectives, who obtained a minute description of the missing
-camera, but grumbled openly that they had not heard of it before.
-
-“They never told me they hadn’t got it,” explained Phillida to the
-coroner, who made her his courteous bow, and permitted her to leave the
-court on the conclusion of her evidence.
-
-On the stairs Mr. Upton paid her compliments that made her wince as
-much as the crude grip of his hand; but he was tact itself compared
-with his friend Mr. Thrush, who sought an interview in order to ply the
-poor girl there and then with far more searching questions than she had
-been required to answer upon oath. She could only look at Mr. Upton in
-a way that secured his peppery intervention in a moment. The two men
-had scarcely seen each other since the morning, and the ironmaster
-thought they had enough to say to each other without bothering Miss
-Platts just then; they accordingly adjourned to Glasshouse Street, and
-Phillida was to have gone on to the hotel; but she made them drop her
-at a shop near Sloane Square on the pretext of seeing about her
-mourning.
-
-Phillida had promised to drive straight back to Trafalgar Square and
-order tea for herself if Tony had not appeared; but she did not drive
-straight back. She had a curious desire to see the place where the
-murder had been committed. It had come upon her at the inquest, while
-listening to the constable who had found the body, her predecessor in
-the witness-box. She had failed to follow his evidence. He had
-described that portion of his beat which had brought him almost on the
-scene of the murder, almost at the moment of its commission. It
-included only the short section of Cheyne Walk between Oakley Street
-and Cheyne Row. The houses at this point are divided from the
-Embankment by the narrow garden which contains the Carlyle statue. He
-had turned up Cheyne Row, at the back of the statue, but before turning
-he had noticed a man on the seat facing the river on the far side of
-the garden. The man was sitting down, but he was said to have turned
-round and watched the policeman as he passed along Cheyne Walk. There
-might have been a second man lying on that seat, or crouching on the
-flags between the seat and the parapet, but he would have been
-invisible from the beat. Not another creature was in sight anywhere.
-Yet the policeman swore that he had not proceeded a dozen yards up
-Cheyne Row before the shot was fired. He had turned round actually in
-time to see the puff of smoke dispersing over the parapet. It was all
-he saw. He had found the deceased lying in a heap, nearer the seat than
-the parapet, but between the two. Not another soul did he see, or had
-he seen. And he had not neglected to look over the parapet into the
-river, and along the foreshore in both directions, without discovering
-sign or trace of human being.
-
-Such was the story which Phillida found so hard to credit that she
-proceeded to the spot in order to go over the ground for her own
-satisfaction. This did not make it easier to understand. It had come on
-to rain heavily while she was in the shop; the shining Embankment was
-again practically deserted, and she was able to carry out her
-experiment without exciting observation. She took a dozen steps up
-Cheyne Row, pretended she heard the shot, turned sharp round, and quite
-realised that from where she was the body could not have been seen,
-hidden as it must have been by the seat, which itself was almost hidden
-by the long and narrow island of enclosed garden. But a running man
-could have been seen through the garden, even if he stooped as he ran,
-and the murderer must have run like the wind to get away as he had
-done. The gates through the garden, back and front of the statue, had
-not been opened for the day when the murder took place, so Phillida in
-her turn made a half-circuit of the island to get to the spot where the
-body had been found, but without taking her eyes off the spot until she
-reached it. No! It was as she had thought all along; by nothing short
-of a miracle could the assassin have escaped observation if the
-policeman had eyes in his head and had acted as he swore he had done.
-He might have dashed into the garden, when the policeman was at his
-furthest point distant, if the gates had been open as they were now;
-but they had been locked, and he could not have scaled them unobserved.
-Neither would it have been possible to take a header into the river
-with the foreshore as described by the same witness. Yet the murderer
-had either done one of these things, or the flags of the Embankment had
-opened and swallowed him.
-
-The girl stood on the very spot where the murdered man must have
-fallen, and in her utter perplexity it was no longer the tragedy but
-the problem which engrossed her mind. What had happened, had happened;
-but how could it have happened? She raised her umbrella and peered
-through the rain at a red pile of many-windowed flats; had that Argus
-of the hundred eyes been sleeping without one of them open at the time?
-Her own eyes fell as far as the black statue in the narrow garden,
-standing out hi the rain, like the greenery about its granite base, as
-though the blackened bronze were polished marble. How lifelike the
-colossal scholar in his homely garb! How scornful and how shrewd the
-fixed eternal gaze across his own old Father Thames! It assumed another
-character as the girl gazed in her turn, she seemed to intercept that
-stony stare, to distract it from the river to herself, and to her
-fevered fancy the grim lips smiled contemptuously on her and her
-quandary. He knew—_he_ knew—those grim old eyes had seen it all, and
-still they stared and smiled as much as to say: “You are looking the
-wrong way! Look where I am looking; that way lies the truth you are
-poor fool enough to want to know!”
-
-And Phillida turned her back towards the shiny statue, and looked over
-the wet parapet, almost expecting to see something, but never dreaming
-of what she actually saw. The tide, which must have been coming in that
-early morning, was now going out, and between the Embankment masonry
-and the river there was again a draggled ribbon of shelving foreshore,
-black as on some volcanic coast; and between land and water, at a point
-that would necessarily have been submerged for the last eight or nine
-hours, a small object was being laid more bare by every receding
-wavelet. It was black and square, perhaps the size of two large
-cigar-boxes side by side; and it had one long, thin, reddish tentacle,
-finishing in a bulb that moved about gently in the rain-pocked water.
-
-Phillida felt the parapet strike cold and wet through her rain-coat
-sleeves as she leant far over to make doubly sure what she object was;
-but indeed she had not a moment’s doubt but that it was the missing
-camera of the murdered man.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI.
-AFTER THE FAIR
-
-
-Mr. Upton was dumfoundered when the top-floor door in Glasshouse Street
-was opened before Eugene Thrush could insert his key; for it was the
-sombre Mullins who admitted the gentleman as though nothing had
-happened to him except a fairly recent shave.
-
-“I thought he was in prison?” exclaimed the ironmaster when the two
-were closeted.
-
-“Do you ever read your paper?”
-
-“I haven’t looked at one since Plymouth.”
-
-“Well, I howked him out first thing yesterday morning.”
-
-“_You_ did, Thrush?”
-
-“Why not? I had need of the fellow, and that part of the game was up.”
-
-Mr. Upton showed symptoms of his old irritability under the Thrush
-mannerism.
-
-“My good fellow, I wish to goodness you’d explain yourself!”
-
-“If I cared to be profane,” returned Thrush, mixing drinks in the
-corner, “I should refer you to the first chapter of the Book of Job. I
-provided the prisoner, and I’d a perfect right to take him away again.
-Blessed be the song of the Thrush!”
-
-“You say you provided him?”
-
-“In other words, I laid the information against my own man, but only
-with his own consent.”
-
-“Well, well, you must have your joke, I suppose. I can afford to put up
-with it now.”
-
-“It wasn’t meant as a joke,” returned Thrush, and drank deep while his
-client sipped. “If it had come off it would have been the coup of my
-career; as it didn’t—quite—one must laugh it off at one’s own expense.
-Your son has told you what that poor old sinner made him think he’d
-done?”
-
-“Of course.”
-
-“Would it surprise you to hear that one or two others thought the same
-thing?”
-
-“Not you, Thrush?”
-
-“Not I to quite the same positive extent as my rascal Mullins. He
-jumped to it from scratch!”
-
-“He connected Tony with the Park murder?”
-
-“From the word ‘go.’ ”
-
-“On the strength of an asthma cigarette and my poor wife’s dream?”
-
-“No; he didn’t know about the dream. But he refused to believe in two
-independent mysteries at one time and on one spot. The eternal unities
-was too many measles for Mullins, though he never heard tell of ’em in
-his life.”
-
-Mr. Upton was no longer irritated by the other’s flippancy. He looked
-at Thrush with a shining face.
-
-“And you never told me what was in your minds!”
-
-“It was poison even in mine; it would have been deadly poison to you,
-in the state you were in. I say! I’ll wear batting-gloves the next time
-we shake hands!” and Thrush blew softly on his mangled fingers.
-
-“You believed he’d done it, and you kept it to yourself,” murmured Mr.
-Upton, still much impressed. “Tell me, my dear fellow—did you believe
-it after that interview with Baumgartner in his house?”
-
-Thrush emptied his glass at once.
-
-“Don’t remind me of that interview, Mr. Upton; there was the lad on the
-other side of so much lath-and-plaster, and I couldn’t scent him
-through it! But he never made a sound, confound him!”
-
-“Tony’s told me about that; they were whispering, for reasons of their
-own.”
-
-“I ought to have seen that old man listening! His ears must have grown
-before my purblind eyes! But his story was an extraordinarily
-interesting and circumstantial effort. And to come back to your
-question, it did fit in with the theory of a fatal accident on your
-boy’s part; he was frightened to show his face at school after sleeping
-in the Park, let alone what he was supposed to have done there; and
-that, he believed, would break his mother’s heart in any case.”
-
-“By Jove, and so it might! It wouldn’t take much just now,” said Mr.
-Upton, sadly.
-
-“So he thought of the ship you wouldn’t let him go out in—and the whole
-thing fitted in! Of course he had told the old ruffian—saving his
-presence elsewhere—all about the forbidden voyage; and that gentleman
-of genius had it ready for immediate use. I’m bound to say he used it
-on me with excellent effect.”
-
-“Same here,” said the ironmaster—“though I’d no idea what you
-suspected. I thought it a conceivable way out of any bad scrape, for
-that particular boy.”
-
-“It imposed upon us all,” said Thrush, “but one. I was prepared to
-believe it if you did, and you believed it because you didn’t know your
-boy as well as you do now. But Miss Upton, who seems to know him better
-than anybody else—do you remember how she wouldn’t hear of it for a
-moment?”
-
-“I do _so_, God bless her!”
-
-“That shook me, or rather it prevented me from accepting what I never
-had quite accepted in my heart. That’s another story, and you’re only
-in the mood for one at present; but after seeing Baumgartner on
-Saturday, I thought I’d like to know a little more about him, not from
-outsiders but from the inside of his own skull. So I went to the
-British Museum to have a look at his books. It was after hours for
-getting books, but I made such representations that they cut their red
-tape for once; and I soon read enough to wonder whether my grave and
-reverend seignior was quite all there. Spiritualism one knows, but here
-was spiritualism with a difference; psychic photography one had heard
-about, but here was a psychical photographer gone mad or bad! When a
-gifted creature puts into admirable English his longing to snap-shoot
-the souls of murderers coming up through the drop, like the clown at
-Drury Lane, you begin to want him elected to a fauteuil in Broadmoor.
-Will you believe me when I tell you that I stumbled mentally on the
-very thing I shall presently prove to have been the truth, and that I
-dismissed it from my mind as the wildest impossibility?”
-
-“I don’t see how you’re going to prove it now,” remarked Mr. Upton, who
-hoped there would be no such proof, for the sake of the girl who had
-been good to his boy; but that was a private consideration which there
-was no necessity to express.
-
-“I shall want another chat with your lad when he’s had his sleep out,”
-replied Thrush, significantly; “he’s told me quite enough to make me
-eager for more. But you haven’t told me anything about your own
-adventures?”
-
-And he got another drink to help him listen; for as a rule the
-ironmaster was only succinct when thoroughly irate. But now for once he
-was both brief and amiable.
-
-“What have I to tell compared with you?” he asked. “Those damned old
-wooden walls only cleared the Thames on Sunday morning, and they
-weren’t near Plymouth when I left last night; but my little aluminium
-lot broke all her records before I broke one of her wheels. What I want
-to know is what you did from the time I left on Sunday night to that
-great moment this morning.”
-
-“I sat down to watch Baumgartner, his house,” replied Thrush. “The
-merit of those quiet little streets is that there are always apartments
-of sorts, though not always the most admirable sort, to be had in half
-the houses. There was quite a choice bang opposite Baumgartner’s, and
-I’d taken a front room before you were through Hammersmith. Of course I
-explained that I had lost a last train, and the landlady’s son
-embarrassed me with pyjamas of inadequate dimensions. Well, I sat at
-the front window all night, for no better reasons than my strong
-feeling about the doctor’s writings, and your daughter’s disbelief in
-his yarn about her brother. Soon after five in the morning the old bird
-came out, and I was after him like knife. I tracked him to
-Knightsbridge without much difficulty, excepting the one of avoiding
-being spotted, but there that happened by the merest accident. He was
-passing under the scaffolding outside the church they’re pulling down
-there, and he’s so tall he knocked his hat off. I admit I was too
-close. He saw, and must have recognised me; but I shouldn’t have
-recognised him if I hadn’t seen him start out. He was wearing a false
-beard and spectacles!”
-
-“That’s proof positive,” said ingenuous Mr. Upton, under his breath.
-
-“Well, I confess it’s something like it in this case; but it was a very
-awkward moment for me. I hadn’t to let him see I knew him, nor yet that
-I was following him, and the only way was to abandon the chase as
-openly as possible. It was then I decided that it was no use leaving
-poor old Mullins in pawn to the police. I redeemed him without delay.
-We went back to my new rooms together, which I needn’t tell you I liked
-so much that I brought a suit-case and took them for a week. Of course,
-as we had lost the run of Baumgartner, the next best thing was to watch
-for his return. Mullins took that on while I got some sleep; when I
-awoke the Park Lane murder was the latest, and I won’t say I didn’t
-suspect who’d done it. Perhaps I didn’t tell you he had his camera with
-him as well as beard and goggles, and all three figured in the first
-reports.”
-
-“But all this time you had no idea my boy was in the house?”
-
-“None whatever; we saw the girl once or twice, but that was all until I
-wired last night. What I never saw myself was Baumgartner’s return; but
-in the afternoon I sent Mullins round to another road to try and get a
-room overlooking the place from the back. Well, the houses were too
-much class for that; but one was empty, and he got the key and risked
-going back to prison for the cause! Suffice it that he set eyes on both
-man and boy before I sent that wire.”
-
-“And you left my son in that murderer’s clutches a minute longer than
-you could help?” It was a previous incarnation of Pocket’s father that
-broke in with this.
-
-“You must remember in the first place that I couldn’t be in the least
-sure it was your son; in the second, if murder had been intended,
-murder would have been done with as little delay in his case as in the
-others; thirdly, that we’ve nothing to show that Dr. Baumgartner is an
-actual murderer at all, but, fourthly, that to raid his place was the
-way to make him one. Poor Mullins, too, as the original Sherlock of the
-show, was desperately against calling in the police under any
-circumstances. He assured me there was no sign of bad blood about the
-house, until the small hours, and then he saw your son make his escape.
-I told him he should have collared the lad, but he lost sight of him in
-the night and preferred to keep an eye on that poor desperate doctor.”
-
-Thrush treated this part of his narrative with the peculiar confidence
-which most counsel reserve for the less satisfactory aspects of their
-case. But Mr. Upton was not in a mood to press a point of grievance
-against anybody. And the name of Mullins reminded him that his
-curiosity on a very different point had not been gratified.
-
-“Why on earth did you have Mullins run in?” he inquired, with
-characteristic absence of finesse.
-
-“I’m not very proud of it,” replied Thrush. “It didn’t come off, you
-see.”
-
-“But whatever could the object have been?”
-
-“I must have a damn-it if I’m to tell you that,” said Thrush; and the
-ironmaster concluded that he meant a final drink, from the action which
-he suited to the oath. “It was one way that occurred to me of putting
-salt on the lad.”
-
-“Tony?”
-
-“Yes.”
-
-“You puzzle me more and more.”
-
-“Well, you see, I gathered that he was a particularly honourable boy,
-of fine sensibilities, and yet Mullins thought he had shot this man by
-accident and was lying low. I only thought that, if that were so, the
-news of an innocent man’s arrest would bring him into the open as quick
-as anything. Mullins proving amenable to terms, and having really been
-within a hundred miles of both murders at the time they were committed,
-the rest was elementary. But what’s the good of talking about it? It
-didn’t come off.”
-
-“It very nearly did! I can tell you that straight from Tony; he was
-going to give himself up yesterday morning, if he hadn’t accidentally
-satisfied himself of his own innocence.”
-
-Mr. Upton said more than this, but it was the explicit statement of
-fact that alone afforded Thrush real consolation. His spectacled eyes
-blinked keenly behind their flashing lenses; the button of a nose
-underneath twitched as though it scented battle once again; and the
-drink with the opprobrious name was suddenly put down unfinished.
-
-“If only I could find that camera!” he cried. “It’s the touchstone of
-the whole thing, mark my words. If it’s an accomplice who did this
-thing, he’s got it; even if not——”
-
-He stood silenced by a sudden thought, a gleam of light that illumined
-his whole flushed face.
-
-“Mullins!” he roared. Mullins was on the spot with somewhat suspicious
-alacrity. “Get the almanac, Mullins, and look up Time of High Water at
-London Bridge to-day!”
-
-He himself flopped down behind the telephone to ring up the cab-office
-in Bolton Street. But it takes time even for a Eugene Thrush to consume
-all but three large whiskies and sodas; and the afternoon was already
-far advanced.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII.
-THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA
-
-
-The camera had been placed upon a folded newspaper, for the better
-preservation of the hotel table-cloth. Its apertures were still choked
-with mud; beads of slime kept breaking out along the joints. And
-Phillida was still explaining to Pocket how the thing had come into her
-possession.
-
-“The rain was the greatest piece of luck, though another big slice was
-an iron gangway to the foreshore about a hundred yards up-stream. It
-was coming down so hard at the time that I couldn’t see another
-creature out in it except myself. I don’t believe a single soul saw me
-run down that gangway and up again; but I dropped my purse over first
-for an excuse if anybody did. I popped the camera under my waterproof,
-and carried it up to the King’s Road before I could get a cab. But I
-never expected to find you awake and about again; next to the rain
-that’s the best luck of all!”
-
-“Why?”
-
-“Because you know all about photography and I don’t. Suppose he took a
-last photograph, and suppose that led directly to the murder!”
-
-“That’s an idea.”
-
-“The man threw the camera into the river, but the plate would be in it
-still, and you could develop it!”
-
-The ingenious hypothesis had appealed to the eager credulity of the
-boy; but at the final proposition he shook a reluctant head.
-
-“I’m afraid there’s not much chance of there being anything to develop;
-the slide’s been open all this time, you see.”
-
-“I know. I tried to shut it, but the wood must have swollen in the
-water. Yet the more it has swollen, the better it ought to keep out the
-light, oughtn’t it?”
-
-“I’m afraid there isn’t a dog’s chance,” he murmured, as he handled the
-camera again. Yet it was not of the folding-bellows variety, but was
-one of the earlier and stronger models in box form, and it had come
-through its ordeal wonderfully on the whole. Nothing was absolutely
-broken; but the swollen slide jammed obstinately, until in trying to
-shut it by main force, Pocket lost his grip of the slimy apparatus, and
-sent it flying to the floor, all but the slide which came out bodily in
-his hand.
-
-“That settles it,” remarked Phillida, resignedly. The exposed plate
-stared them in the face, a sickly yellow in the broad daylight. It was
-cracked across the middle, but almost dry and otherwise uninjured.
-
-“I am sorry!” exclaimed Pocket, as they stood over the blank sheet of
-glass and gelatine; it was like looking at a slate from which some
-infinitely precious message had been expunged unread. “I’m not sure
-that you weren’t right after all; what’s water-tight must be more or
-less light-tight, when you come to think of it. I say, what’s all this?
-The other side oughtn’t to bulge like that!”
-
-He picked the broken plate out of the side that was already open, and
-weighed the slide in his hand; it was not heavy enough to contain
-another plate, he declared with expert conviction; yet the side which
-had not been opened was a slightly bulging but distinctly noticeable
-convexity. Pocket opened it at a word from Phillida, and an over-folded
-packet of MS. leapt out.
-
-“It’s his writing!” cried the girl, with pain and awe in her
-excitement. She had dropped the document at once.
-
-“It’s in English,” said Pocket, picking it up.
-
-“It must be what he was writing all last night!”
-
-“It is.”
-
-“You see what it is!” urged Phillida, feebly. But she watched him
-closely as he read to himself:—
-
-“_June_ 20, 190—.”
-
-
-“It is a grim coincidence that I should sit down to reveal the secret
-of my latter days on what is supposed to be the shortest night of the
-year; for they must come to an end at sunrise, viz., at 3.44 according
-to the almanac, and it is already after 10 p.m. Even if I sit at my
-task till four I shall have less than six hours in which to do justice
-to the great _ambition_ and the crowning folly of my life. I used the
-underlined word advisedly; some would substitute ‘monomania,’ but I
-protest I am as sane as they are, fail as I may to demonstrate that
-fact among so many others to be dealt with in the very limited time at
-my disposal. Had I more time, or the pen of a readier writer, I should
-feel surer of vindicating my head if not my heart. But I have been ever
-deliberate in all things (excepting, certainly, the supreme folly
-already mentioned), and I would be as deliberate over the last words I
-shall ever write, as in my final preparations for death——”.
-
-
-“What is it?” asked Phillida, for his eyes had dilated as he read, and
-he was breathing hard.
-
-“He practically says he was going to commit suicide at daybreak! He’s
-said so once already, but now he says it in so many words!”
-
-“Well, we know he didn’t do it,” said Phillida, as though she found a
-crumb of comfort in the thought.
-
-“I’m not so sure about that.”
-
-“Go on reading it aloud. I can bear it if that’s the worst.”
-
-“But it isn’t, Phillida. I can see it isn’t!”
-
-“Then let us read it together. I’d rather face it with you than
-afterwards all by myself. We’ve seen each other through so much, surely
-we can—surely——”
-
-Her words were swept away in a torrent of tears, and it was with dim
-eyes but a palpitating heart that Pocket looked upon the forlorn drab
-figure of the slip of a girl; for as yet, despite her pretext to Mr.
-Upton, she had taken no thought for her mourning, that unfailing
-distraction to the normally bereaved, but had put on anything she could
-find of a neutral tint; and yet it was just her dear disdain of
-appearance, the intimate tears gathering in her great eyes, unchecked,
-and streaming down the fresh young face, the very shabbiness of her
-coat and skirt, that made her what she was in his sight. Outside, the
-rain had stopped, and Trafalgar Square was drying in the sun, that
-streamed in through the open window of the hotel sitting-room, and
-poured its warm blessing on the two young heads bent as one over the
-dreadful document.
-
-This was the part they read together, now in silence, now one and now
-the other whispering a few sentences aloud:—.
-
-“What I have called my life’s ambition demands but little explanation
-here. I have never made any secret of it, but, on the contrary, I have
-given full and frank expression to my theories in places where they are
-still accessible to the curious. I refer to my signed articles on
-spirit photography in _Light Human Nature_, _The Occult Review_ and
-other periodicals, but particularly to the paper entitled ‘The Flight
-of the Soul,’ in _The Nineteenth Century and After_ for January of last
-year. The latter article contains my last published word on the matter
-which has so long engrossed my mind. It took me some months to prepare
-and to write, and its reception did much to drive me to the extreme
-measures I have since employed. Treated to a modicum of serious
-criticism by the scientific press, but more generally received with
-ignorant and intolerant derision, which is the Englishman’s attitude
-towards whatsoever is without his own contracted ken, my article, the
-work of months, was dismissed and forgotten in a few days. I had
-essayed the stupendous feat of awaking the British nation to a new
-idea, and the British nation had responded with a characteristic snore
-of unfathomable indifference. My name has not appeared in its vermin
-press from that day to this; it was not mentioned in the paragraph
-about the psychic photographer which went the rounds about a year ago.
-Yet I was that photographer. I am the serious and accredited inquirer
-to whom the London hospitals refused admittance to their pauper
-deathbeds, thronged though those notoriously are by the raw material of
-the British medical profession. Begin at the bottom of the British
-medical ladder, and you are afforded the earliest and most frequent
-opportunities of studying (if not accelerating) the phenomena of human
-dissolution; but against the foreign scientist the door is closed,
-without reference either to the quality of his credentials or the
-purity of his aims. I can conceive no purer and no loftier aim than
-mine. It is as high above that of your ordinary physician as heaven
-itself is high above this earth. Your physician wrestles with death to
-lengthen life, whereas I would sacrifice a million lives to prove that
-there is no such thing as death; that this human life of ours, by which
-we set such childish store, is but a fleeting phase of the permanent
-life of the spirit. One shrinks from setting down so trite a truism; it
-is the common ground of all religion, but I have reached it from the
-opposite pole. Religion is to me the unworthy triumph of instinct over
-knowledge, a lazy substitution of invention for discovery. Religion
-invites us to take her postulates on trust; but a material age is
-deserving of material proofs, and it is these proofs I have striven to
-supply. Surely it is a higher aim, and not a lower, to appeal to the
-senses that cannot deceive, rather than to the imagination which must
-and does? But I am trenching after all upon ground which I myself have
-covered before to-day; it is my function to-night to relate a personal
-narrative rather than to reiterate personal views. Suffice it that to
-me, for many years, the only path to the Invisible has been the path of
-so-called spiritualism; the only lamp that illumined that path, so that
-all who saw might follow it for themselves, the lamp of spirit
-photography. It is a path with a bad name, a path infested with quacks
-and charlatans, and by false guides who rival the religious fanatics in
-the impudence of their appeal to man’s credulity. Even those who bear
-the lamp I hold aloft are too often jugglers and rogues, to whose
-wiles, unfortunately, the simple science of photography lends itself
-all too readily. Nothing is easier than the production of impossible
-pictures by a little manipulation of film or plate; if the spiritual
-apparition is not to be enticed within range of the lens, nothing
-easier than to fabricate an approximate effect. And what spiritualist
-has yet succeeded in summoning spirits at will? It is the crux of the
-whole problem of spiritualism, to establish any sort or form of
-communication with disembodied spirits at the single will of the
-embodied; hence the periodical exposure of the paid medium, the smug
-scorn of the unbeliever, and the discouragement of genuine exploration
-beyond the environment of the flesh. There is one moment, and only one,
-at which a man may be sure that he stands, for however brief a particle
-of time, in the presence of a disembodied soul. It is the moment at
-which soul and body part company in what men call death. The human
-watcher sees merely the collapse of the human envelope; but many a
-phenomenon invisible to the human eye has been detected and depicted by
-that of the camera, as everybody knows who has the slightest
-acquaintance with the branch of physics known as ‘fluorescence.’ The
-invisible spirit of man surely falls within this category. To the
-crystal eye of science it is not so much invisible as elusive and
-intractable. Once it has fled this earth, the sovereign opportunity is
-gone; but photography may often intercept the actual flight of the
-soul.”
-
-“I say no more than ‘often’ because there are special difficulties into
-which I need not enter here; but they would disappear, or at least be
-minimised, if the practice received the encouragement it deserves,
-instead of the forbidding ban of a sentimental generation. It would
-hurt nobody; it would comfort and convince the millions who at present
-have only their Churches’ word for the existence of an eternal soul in
-their perishable bodies. It would prove more, in the course of a few
-experiments, than all the Churches have proved between them in nineteen
-centuries. Yet how are my earnest applications received, in hospitals
-where men die daily, in prisons where they are still occasionally put
-to death? I am refused, rebuffed, gratuitously reprimanded; in fact, I
-am driven ultimately to the extreme course of taking human life, on my
-own account, in order to prove the life eternal. Call it murder, call
-it what you will; in a civilisation which will not hear of a lethal
-chamber for congenital imbeciles it would be waste of time to urge the
-inutility of a life as an excuse for taking it, or the misery of an
-individual as a reason for sending him to a world which cannot use him
-worse than this world. I can only say that I have not deprived the
-State of one conceivably profitable servant, or cut short a single life
-of promise or repute. I have picked my few victims with infinite care
-from amid the moral or material wreckage of life; either they had
-nothing to live for, or they had no right to live. Charlton, the
-licensed messenger, had less to live for than any man I ever knew; in
-the course of our brief acquaintance he frequently told me how he
-wished he was dead. I came across him in Kensington, outside a house to
-which an unseemly fracas had attracted my attention as I passed.
-Charlton had just been ejected for being drunk and insolent, and
-refusing to leave without an extra sixpence. I befriended him. He was
-indeed saturated with alcohol and honeycombed with disease; repulsive
-in appearance, and cantankerous in character, his earnings were so
-slender that he was pitifully clad, and without a night’s lodging
-oftener than not. He had not a friend in the world, and was suffering
-from an incurable malady of which the end was certain agony. I resolved
-to put him out of his misery, and at the same time to try to photograph
-the escape of his soul. A favourable opportunity did not present itself
-for some time, during which Charlton subsisted largely on my bounty; at
-last one morning I found him asleep on a bench in Holland Walk, and not
-another being in sight, and I shot him with a cheap pistol which I had
-purchased second-hand for the purpose, and which I left beside him on
-the seat. Yet the weapon it was that cast a doubt upon the
-authenticity of the suicide, despite my final precaution of stuffing a
-number of cartridges into the dead man’s pocket; pot-house associates
-came forward to declare that he could never have possessed either the
-revolver or its price without their knowledge. Hence the coroner’s
-repudiation of the verdict at the inquest. Yet it is to be feared that
-the fate of such as poor Charlton excites but little public interest in
-its explanation, and that the police themselves never took more than an
-academic interest in the case.”
-
-“To me it was a bitter disappointment on other grounds. I had lost very
-few seconds between pulling the revolver trigger and pressing the bulb
-of my pneumatic shutter; but one had to get back into position for
-this, and the fact remains that I was too late. The result may be found
-among my negatives. It is dreadfully good of the dead man, if not a
-unique photograph of actual death; but it lacks the least trace of the
-super-normal. The flight of the soul had been too quick for me; it
-would be too quick again unless I hit upon some new method. I had not
-only failed to leave convincing evidence of suicide, but the fatal
-pause between pistol-shot and snap-shot was due entirely to my
-elaborate attempt in that direction. It was not worth making again. The
-next case should be a more honest breach of the Sixth Commandment; the
-shot to be fired, and the photograph taken, at the same range and all
-but at the same instant. There would be no further point in leaving the
-weapon behind, so I was free to choose the one best suited to my
-purpose, and to adapt it at my leisure to my peculiar needs. Eventually
-I evolved the ingenious engine which, no doubt, has already explained
-itself better than I could possibly explain it; if not, the discoverer
-of the camera need not hesitate to experiment with the pistol, as it
-will not be loaded when found.”
-
-There was a brief discussion here. The children could not understand
-about the pistol; but only one of them cared what had become of it. For
-Phillida it was enough to know that the writer of this shameless
-rigmarole, with its pompous periods and its callous gusto, must long
-ago have lost his reason. She had no doubt whatever about that, and
-already it had brought a new light into her eyes. She would pause to
-discuss nothing else. It was her finger that pointed the way through
-the next passages.
-
-“The perfection or completion of my device was the secret work of many
-weeks; it brings me down almost to the other day, and to what I have
-described as the supreme folly of my life. I had everything in
-readiness for another attempt to liberate and photograph a human soul
-in consecutive fractions of a second. But the right man was never in
-the right place at the right time; one saw him by the dozen in a crowd,
-but the people one met all by themselves, in the early summer mornings,
-stayed one’s hand repeatedly by the eager brightness of their eyes or a
-happy elasticity of step. Once an out-patient at the Brompton Hospital,
-whom I had dogged all the way down to Richmond Park, was cheated of a
-merciful end by dusk falling just as I had him to myself. No; the dawn
-and the drunkard were still my best chance. So it was that the wretch
-whose name I forget met with his death in Hyde Park last Tuesday
-morning. I knew him by sight as a pot-house loafer of the Charlton
-circle, but it was quite by chance that I followed his uncertain
-footsteps through the Park, and saw him go deliberately to bed in the
-drenching dew. His face filled in his tale; it was another farrago of
-privation and excess. This was the type that caused me no compunction:
-having aimed and focussed at the same time, as my invention provides, I
-despatched the poor devil as he lay on his side, with his hat over his
-eyes, and exposed my plate as he rolled over on his face. It may be
-reckoned an offensive detail, but the click of my instantaneous shutter
-coincided with the last clutter in his throat.
-
-“I need hardly say that I had looked about me pretty thoroughly before
-firing, and my first act after taking the photograph was to make
-another wary survey of the scene. It had the advantage that one could
-see a considerable distance in three directions, and in none of these,
-neither right nor left along the path, nor yet straight ahead across
-the grass on the edge of which my victim lay, was a living creature to
-be seen. This was very reassuring, as I felt that I could see a good
-deal farther than the report of my small automatic pistol was likely to
-be heard; for it is a remarkable feature of most shooting cases,
-especially where a pistol has been used, and in the open air, how
-seldom it is that a witness can be found who has actually heard the
-fatal shot. In the fourth quarter, where there was a bank of shrubbery
-behind some iron palings, I looked last, for I was standing with my
-back that way. How shall I describe my sensations on turning round?
-There was a young lad within a few feet of me, on the other side of the
-palings; and this young lad was flourishing a revolver in his right
-hand!
-
-“At first I made certain he had seen everything; but his blank and
-frank bewilderment was more reassuring at a second glance, and at a
-third I guessed what had happened to him. His crumpled clothes were
-dank with dew. His eyes were puddles of utter stupefaction. He had
-been sleeping in the Park, and walking in his sleep, and in all
-probability it was my shot which had brought him to himself; of this,
-however, I was less sure, and in my doubt I was disastrously inspired
-to accuse him of having fired the shot himself. It never struck me that
-he could mistake the body behind me for a living man; it was with a
-wild idea of being the first to accuse the other, that I asked him if
-he knew what he had done, and seized his revolver at the same moment. I
-had the wit to grasp it in my hot hand until the barrel was just warm
-enough to help me convince the child that he really had fired the shot;
-but, since he could not see it for myself, I was not going out of my
-way just then to tell him it was a fatal shot. Already I regretted that
-I had gone so far, and yet already I saw myself committed to a course
-of action as rash as it was now inevitable. The boy became convulsed
-with asthma; I could not leave him there, to tell his story when the
-body was discovered, to have it disproved perhaps on the spot, at the
-latest on a comparison of bullets, and the truth brought home to me
-through his description. Again, when I had taken him to my house, with
-all sorts of foolish precautions, and still more foolish risks, I had
-to keep him there. How could I let him loose to blurt out his story and
-implicate me more readily than ever after what he had seen of me at
-home? I had to keep him there—I repeat it—alive or dead. And I was not
-the kind of murderer (if I am one at all) to take a young and innocent
-life, if I could help it, to preserve my own; on the contrary, I had,
-and I hope I always should have had, humanity enough at least to do
-what I could for a fellow-creature battling with an attack which almost
-threatened to remove him from my path without my aid.”
-
-There followed a few remarks on Pocket’s character as the writer read
-it. They were not uncomplimentary to Pocket personally, but they
-betrayed a profound disdain for the typically British institution of
-which Pocket was too readily accepted as a representative product. His
-general ignorance and credulity received a grim tribute; they were the
-very qualities the doctor would have demanded in a chosen dupe. Yet he
-appeared to have enjoyed the youth’s society, his transparent honesty,
-his capacity for enthusiastic interest, whether in the delights of
-photography or in the horrors of war. Baumgartner seemed aware that he
-had been somewhat confidential on both subjects, and that either his
-contempt of human life, or his ambitions in the matter of psychic
-photography, would have been better kept to himself; but, on the other
-hand, he “greatly doubted whether they taught boys to put two and two
-together, at these so-called public schools”; and, after all, it was
-not detection by the boy, but through the boy, that he had to fear.
-
-“The madness of keeping him prisoner, as he had been from the
-beginning, in spite of all pretences and persuasions to the contrary,
-was another thing to which Baumgartner had been thoroughly alive all
-along. He had regarded it from the first as ‘the certain beginning of
-the end’; from the first, he had been prepared with specious
-explanations for any such inquisitor as the one who had actually
-arrived no later than the Saturday afternoon. He wrote without elation
-of his interview with Thrush, whose name he knew; the doctor had not
-been deceived as to the transitory character of his own deception. It
-was the same with the letter which he had pretended to post, which
-could only have kept the boy quiet for a day or two, if he had posted
-it, but which the boy himself had discovered never to have been posted
-at all. There was a sufficiently cool description of the desperate mood
-into which Baumgartner’s intuition of the boy’s discovery had thrown
-him on the Sunday night.”
-
-“It was then,” he wrote, “that I formed a project which I should have
-been sorry indeed to carry out, though I should certainly have done so
-if he had given me the chance I sought. It must be understood that my
-second attempt to photograph the flight of the soul had proved as great
-a fiasco as the first. Suddenly I hit upon a perfectly conceivable
-(even though it seem a wilfully grotesque) explanation of my failure.
-What if the human derelicts I had so far chosen for my experiments had
-no souls to photograph? Sodden with drink, debauched, degraded, and
-spiritually blurred or blunted to the last degree, these after all were
-the least likely subjects to yield results to the spirit photographer.
-I should have chosen saints instead of sinners such as these, entities
-in which the soul was a major and not a minor factor. I thought of the
-saintliest men I knew in London, of some Jesuit Fathers of my
-acquaintance, of a ‘light’ specialist I know of who is destroying
-himself by inches in the cause of science, of certain missioners in the
-slums; but I did not think twice of any one of them; their lives are
-much too valuable for me to cut them short on the mere chance of a
-compensating benefit to mankind at large. Last, and longest, I thought
-of the boy upstairs. I had not meant to sacrifice him; a young life, of
-some promise, is only less sacred to me than a mature life rich in
-beneficent activities. But this young fellow was going to be my ruin.
-I could see it in his eyes. He had found me out about the letter; he
-would be the means of my being found out and stopped for ever in the
-work of my life. It was his life or mine; it should be his; but I was
-not going to take it there in the house, for reasons I need not enter
-into here, and I intended to take more than his life while I was about
-it. But he never gave me the chance. I did my best to get him to go out
-with me this morning. But he refused, as a horse refuses a jump, or a
-dog the water. He said he was ill; he looked ill. But I have no doubt
-he was well enough to make his escape soon after my back was turned. I
-see he has broken into my dark-room for the clothes I took away from
-him before I went out; he would scarcely remain after that; but, to
-tell the truth, I have hardly given him a thought since my return.”
-
-The readers shuddered over this long paragraph. More than once the boy
-broke in with his own impulsive version of the awful moments on the
-Sunday night and the Monday morning, in his bedroom at the top of the
-doctor’s house. He declared that nothing short of main force would have
-dragged him out-of-doors that morning, that he felt it in his bones
-that he would never come back alive. Then he would be sorry he had said
-so much. It only increased his companion’s anguish. She was reading
-every word religiously, with a most painful fascination; it was as
-though every word drew blood. There was a brief but terrible account of
-the murder of Sir Joseph Schelmerdine outside his own house in Park
-Lane. It was the rashest of all the crimes; but, apparently, the one
-occasion on which the doctor had disguised himself before hand; and
-that only because Sir Joseph and he knew and disliked each other so
-intensely that a “straight” interview was out of the question. As it
-was he had escaped by a miracle, after lying all day in a straw-loft,
-creeping into a carriage at nightfall, and getting out on the wrong
-side when it drove round to its house. Baumgartner described the
-incident with a callous relish, as perhaps the most exciting in his
-long career; he was going on to explain his subsequent return, in
-propria persona, and yet by stealth, when he paused in the middle of a
-sentence which was never finished. And his statement concluded as
-follows, in less careful language and a more flowing hand:—
-
-“I thought the fool had cleared out long ago. The day’s excitement must
-have driven him clean out of my head. I never thought of him when I got
-back, never till I saw the damage to the darkroom window and missed his
-clothes. I didn’t waste two thoughts upon him then. I had my negative
-to develop. A magnificent negative it was, too, yet another absolute
-failure from the practical point of view, perhaps from the same reason
-as its predecessors. South African mines may produce gold and diamonds
-(licit and illicit!) but their yield in souls is probably the poorest
-to the square mile anywhere on earth. Schelmerdine never had one in his
-gross carcass. So there was an end of him, and a good riddance to
-rotten clay. I have not thought of him again all night. I have thought
-of nothing but this perhaps passionately dispassionate statement that I
-have made up my mind to leave behind me. It has given me strange
-pleasure to write, a satisfaction which I have no longer the time to
-attempt to analyse; all night long my pen has scarcely paused, and I
-not conscious of a moment’s weariness of mind, body, or hand. Only
-sometimes have I paused to light my pipe. I had made such a pause,
-perhaps half an hour ago, when in the terrible stillness of the night I
-heard a footstep in the hall. My nerves were somewhat on edge with all
-this writing; it might be my imagination. I stole to my door, and as I
-opened it the one below shut softly. I waited some time, heard nothing
-more, went down with my lamp, and threw open the drawing-room door.
-There was my young fellow, not gone at all, but sitting in the dark
-with one whose name there is no need to mention. I do not wish to be
-misunderstood. It was all innocent enough, even I never doubted that.
-But somehow the sight of that boy and girl, sitting there in the dark
-without a word, afraid to go to bed—afraid of me—made the blood boil
-over in my veins. I could have trampled on that lad, my Jonah whom I
-had pictured overboard at last, and I did hurl the lamp at his head. I
-am glad it missed him. I am glad he made good his escape while I was
-seeing his companion safe upstairs. If I had found him where I left
-him, God knows what violence I might not have done him after all. The
-boy has good in him, and more courage than he knows himself; again I
-say that I am glad he has escaped unscathed. His life was not safe, but
-now I shall only take my own.
-
-“Yes! I have made up my mind; it is better than leaving it to the
-common hangman of this besotted country. I know what to expect in
-enlightened England: either a death unfit for a dog, or existence worse
-than death in a criminal lunatic asylum. I prefer my own peculiar
-quietus; it has stood on my table all night long, ready and pointed at
-my heart; a hand upon the door, a step behind me, and I should have
-rolled over dead at their feet. So it will be if even now they are
-waiting for me outside; but, if not, I know where to go, where already
-it is broad daylight, where the wide open space will quicken and
-enhance every ray, and the broad river multiply the sun by a million
-facets of living fire. It is not the light that will fail me, there;
-and as I have served others, so also will I serve myself, and it may be
-with better fortune than they have brought me. Who knows? It would be
-in keeping with the poetic ironies of this existence. At all events,
-unless waylaid at once, I am giving it a chance. I shall place the
-camera on the parapet of the Embankment. I have fitted the shutter with
-a specially long pneumatic tube, and the bulb will do its double work
-as usual when my fingers relax. I have long had it all in my mind. I
-have written full instructions on the envelope which I shall stick by
-the flap to the open slide; if we are found by a reasonably intelligent
-person, the slide will be shut, and the camera handed over bodily to
-the police. They, I think, may be trusted to honour one’s last
-instructions, if only out of curiosity; their eyes will be the first to
-read what I fear they will describe as my ‘full confession.’ Well, it
-is ‘full,’ and the substantive must be left to them. So long as the
-document does not fall into one little pair of gentle hands, I shall
-lie easy in whatever ignominious grave they lay me. That is why I hide
-it where I do: since, if it fell first into those hands, it would never
-see the light at all.”
-
-There was a little more, but Phillida suddenly snatched the MS. away,
-and wept over the end, bitterly, and yet not altogether in bitterness,
-while Pocket picked up the camera and set it back in its place on the
-muddy newspaper. Phillida folded up the packet, and after a moment’s
-hesitation went away with it, jingling keys in her other hand. On her
-return she stood petrified on the threshold.
-
-Pocket was seated at the table, the red bulb of the pneumatic shutter
-between his finger and thumb; he pressed the bulb, and there was a loud
-metallic snap inside the camera; he released the pressure, and the
-shutter snapped like a shutter and nothing else. Phillida came forward
-with a cry. Pocket had taken the top off the camera; it was like a box
-without the lid, and on the one side there was nothing between the lens
-and the grooved carrier for the slide, but on the other there was an
-automatic pistol, fixed down with wires, as a wild beast might be
-lashed, and its muzzle pointing through the orifice intended for the
-second lens of the stereoscopic camera.
-
-Pocket pressed again, and again the mild clash of the shutter was
-preceded by the vicious one that would have been an explosion if there
-had been another cartridge in the pistol.
-
-“And we never guessed it!” said he. “That’s why he went in for this
-sort of double camera, and rigged it up to take both kinds of shot in
-quick succession. It’s the cleverest thing I ever heard of in my life.”
-
-He spoke as if it were only clever! Phillida stared at it and him
-without a word.
-
-“The cleverest part is the way you aim. I do believe he relied
-altogether on that spot about the middle of the focussing screen. I’ve
-been trying it against the window, and where that spot comes the
-pistol’s pointing every time. It’s a fixed focus, about ten to fifteen
-feet, I fancy, and the spot isn’t quite in the middle of the screen,
-but just enough to the left to allow. I don’t quite see how the one
-bulb works everything, but these springs and things are a bit
-confusing. We shan’t understand everything till we take it to pieces.”
-
-“You mean the police won’t!” said Phillida, bitterly.
-
-“The police! I never thought of them.”
-
-“What do you mean to do with this—this infernal machine?” the girl
-asked, her voice breaking over the perfectly applicable term.
-
-“What do _you_ mean to do with—the writing?” demanded Pocket in his
-turn.
-
-“Burn it! I’ve asked for a fire in my room; it’s locked away
-meanwhile.”
-
-“Well, this is yours, too,” said Pocket, deliberately, “to do what you
-like with as well.”
-
-“They wouldn’t think so!”
-
-“They’ll never know.”
-
-Phillida shook her head, and not without some scorn. “You couldn’t keep
-it to yourself,” she said. “You would _have_ to tell.”
-
-“Well, but not everybody,” said poor Pocket. “Only my father, if you
-like!” he added, valiantly.
-
-“Mr. Upton would feel bound to tell.”
-
-“I don’t see that. Didn’t you hear what he said about a man’s secrets
-dying with him?”
-
-“He’s so kind! He says that; he said it again to me; but this is the
-mystery of the day. It’ll be the talk for months, if not years. And as
-yet only you and I, in all the world, have found it out!”
-
-She looked at him so wistfully, so sweetly and sadly and
-confidentially, that he would have been either more or less than human
-boy if he had failed to see her heart’s desire, and how it was still in
-his power to save her the supreme humiliation and distress of sharing
-their secret with the world. He made up his mind on the spot; and yet
-it was a mind that looked both ways at every turn of affairs, and even
-then he saw what he was going to lose. Fred and Horace would not sit
-nearly so spellbound as they might have done, would probably back their
-penetration of the mystery against his! There would be no boasting
-about it in front of the hall fire at school, no breathing it even to
-Smith minor out for a walk; no adventure to recount all his days; and
-Pocket was one to whom the salt of an adventure would always be its
-subsequent recital. But he could “play the game” as well as Horace
-himself, when he happened to have no doubt as to the game to play. And
-now he had none whatever.
-
-“Phillida, if you wish it, I’ll never breathe a syllable of all this to
-a single soul on earth, I don’t care who they are, or what they do to
-me!”
-
-He wanted them to put him on the rack that moment.
-
-“Oh, Tony, do you mean it?”
-
-Her eyes had filled.
-
-“Of course I mean it! I’ll swear it more solemnly than I’ve ever sworn
-anything in my life so far.”
-
-“No, no! Your word’s enough. Don’t I know what that’s worth, after this
-terrible week?”
-
-And she cried again at its hideous memories, so that Pocket turned away
-and put the camera together again, and wrapped it up in her waterproof,
-so that he might not see her tears.
-
-“I’ll never breathe a single word to a single soul,” he vowed, “except
-yourself.”
-
-She caught at that through her tears. He could talk to her about it,
-always, as much as ever he liked; it would be a bond between them all
-their lives. And not until she said it, to be just to Pocket, did he
-think of a reward or look beyond those days.
-
-But what were they to do with a stereoscopic camera containing an
-automatic pistol? It was not to be burnt in a grate like a sheaf of MS.
-They thought about it for some time with anxious faces; for it was
-getting on towards evening now, though the sun was out again, and it
-was lighter than the early afternoon; but Mr. Upton might be back any
-minute. It was Phillida who at last said she knew. She would not tell
-him what she meant to do; but she put on her waterproof again, little
-as it was wanted now, and the camera under it as before; and together
-they sallied forth into the noisy and crowded Strand.
-
-Pocket did not know where he was, and Phillida would not tell him where
-she was going, neither could he question her in that alarming throng.
-He felt a frightful sense of guilt and danger, not so much to himself
-as to her, with that lethal weapon concealed about her; every man who
-looked at them was a detective in his eyes, and past the policemen at
-the corners he wanted to run. But they gained the middle of Waterloo
-Bridge undetected and ensconced themselves in a recess without creating
-a sensation.
-
-“Now, then,” said Phillida, “will you focus Westminster Bridge and the
-Houses of Parliament, or shall I?”
-
-There they were before them against the sunset, the long lithe bridge,
-the stately towers. But Pocket could not see Phillida’s drift until she
-aimed herself, and, aiming, let the square black box slip clean through
-her fingers into the depths of the river from which she had only
-retrieved it a couple of hours before, as a body is committed to the
-deep.
-
-She bewailed her stupidity; he had the wit to echo her then, and in a
-loud voice, that any eye-witness or passer-by might be struck with the
-genuine severity of their loss. But there had been no eye-witness who
-thought it worth while to rally them on the occurrence, and the busy
-townsfolk hastening past were all too much engrossed in their own
-affairs to take any interest in those of the boy and girl who seemed
-themselves in something of a hurry to get back to the Strand.
-
-And in the Strand the first thing they saw was a yellow poster bearing
-but four words in enormous black letters:—
-
-CHELSEA INQUEST
-CAMERA CLUE!
-
-
-Phillida slipped her hand within Pocket’s arm. Pocket was man enough to
-press it to his side.
-
-THE END
-
-
-Printed in Great Britain by Wyman & Sons, Ltd., London and Reading
-
-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30096 ***
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30096 *** + +[Illustration] + + + + +The Camera Fiend + +by E.W. Hornung + +London +T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd. +Adelphi Terrace +1911 + + +Contents + + I. A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS + II. A BOY ABOUT TOWN + III. HIS PEOPLE + IV. A GRIM SAMARITAN + V. THE GLASS EYE + VI. AN AWAKENING + VII. BLOOD-GUILTY + VIII. POINTS OF VIEW + IX. MR. EUGENE THRUSH + X. SECOND THOUGHTS + XI. ON PAROLE + XII. HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS + XIII. BOY AND GIRL + XIV. BEFORE THE STORM + XV. A LIKELY STORY + XVI. MALINGERING + XVII. ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH + XVIII. A THIRD CASE + XIX. THE FOURTH CASE + XX. WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP + XXI. AFTER THE FAIR + XXII. THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA + + + + +CHAPTER I. +A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS + + +Pocket Upton had come down late and panting, in spite of his daily +exemption from first school, and the postcard on his plate had taken +away his remaining modicum of breath. He could have wept over it in +open hall, and would probably have done so in the subsequent seclusion +of his own study, had not an obvious way out of his difficulty been +bothering him by that time almost as much as the difficulty itself. For +it was not a very honest way, and the unfortunate Pocket had been +called “a conscientious ass” by some of the nicest fellows in his +house. Perhaps he deserved the epithet for going even as straight as he +did to his house-master, who was discovered correcting proses with a +blue pencil and a briar pipe. + +“Please, sir, Mr. Coverley can’t have me, sir. He’s got a case of +chicken-pox, sir.” + + The boy produced the actual intimation in a few strokes of an honoured + but laconic pen. The man poised his pencil and puffed his pipe. + +“Then you must come back to-night, and I’m just as glad. It’s all +nonsense your staying the night whenever you go up to see that doctor +of yours.” + +“He makes a great point of it, sir. He likes to try some fresh stuff on +me, and then see what sort of night I have.” + +“You could go up again to-morrow.” + +“Of course I could, sir,” replied Pocket Upton, with a delicate +emphasis on his penultimate. At the moment he was perhaps neither so +acutely conscientious nor such an ass as his critics considered him. + +“What else do you propose?” inquired Mr. Spearman. + +“Well, sir, I have plenty of other friends in town, sir. Either the +Knaggses or Miss Harbottle would put me up in a minute, sir.” + +“Who are the Knaggses?” + +“The boys were with me at Mr. Coverley’s, sir; they go to Westminster +now. One of them stayed with us last holidays. They live in St. John’s +Wood Park.” + +“And the lady you mentioned?” + +“Miss Harbottle, sir, an old friend of my mother’s; it was through her +I went to Mr. Coverley’s, and I’ve often stayed there. She’s in the +Wellington Road, sir, quite close to Lord’s.” + +Mr. Spearman smiled at the gratuitous explanation of an eagerness that +other lads might have taken more trouble to conceal. But there was no +guile in any Upton; in that one respect the third and last of them +resembled the great twin brethren of whom he had been prematurely voted +a “pocket edition” on his arrival in the school. He had few of their +other merits, though he took a morbid interest in the games they played +by light of nature, as well as in things both beyond and beneath his +brothers and the average boy. You cannot sit up half your nights with +asthma and be an average boy. This was obvious even to Mr. Spearman, +who was an average man. He had never disguised his own disappointment +in the youngest Upton, but had often made him the butt of outspoken and +disastrous comparisons. Yet in his softer moments he had some sympathy +with the failure of an otherwise worthy family; this fine June morning +he seemed even to understand the joy of a jaunt to London for a boy who +was getting very little out of his school life. He made a note of the +two names and addresses. + +“You’re quite sure they’ll put you up, are you?” “Absolutely certain, +sir.” + +“But you’ll come straight back if they can’t?” + +“Rather, sir!” + +“Then run away, and don’t miss your train.” + +Pocket interpreted the first part of the injunction so literally as to +arrive very breathless in his study. That diminutive cell was garnished +with more ambitious pictures than the generality of its order; but the +best of them was framed in the ivy round the lattice window, and its +foreground was the nasturtiums in the flower-box. Pocket glanced down +into the quad, where the fellows were preparing construes for second +school in sunlit groups on garden seats. At that moment the bell began. +And by the time Pocket had changed his black tie for a green one with +red spots, in which he had come back after the Easter holidays, the +bell had stopped and the quad was empty; before it filled again he +would be up in town and on his way to Welbeck Street in a hansom. + +The very journey was a joy. It was such sport to be flying through a +world of buttercups and daisies in a train again, so refreshing to feel +as good as anybody else in the third smoker; for even the grown men in +the corner seats did not dream of calling the youth an “old ass,” much +less a young one, to his face. His friends and contemporaries at school +were in the habit of employing the ameliorating adjective, but there +were still a few fellows in Pocket’s house who made an insulting point +of the other. All, however, seemed agreed as to the noun; and it was +pleasant to cast off friend and foe for a change, to sit comfortably +unknown and unsuspected of one’s foibles in the train. It made Pocket +feel a bit of a man; but then he really was almost seventeen, and in +the Middle Fifth, and allowed to smoke asthma cigarettes in bed. He +took one out of a cardboard box in his bag, and thought it might do him +good to smoke it now. But an adult tobacco-smoker looked so curiously +at the little thin cross between cigar and cigarette, that it was +transferred to a pocket unlit, and the coward hid himself behind his +paper, in which there were several items of immediate interest to him. +Would the match hold out at Lord’s? If not, which was the best of the +Wednesday matinees? Pocket had received a pound from home for his +expenses, so that these questions took an adventitious precedence over +even such attractive topics as an execution and a murder that bade fair +to lead to one. But the horrors had their turn, and having supped on +the newspaper supply, he continued the feast in _Henry Dunbar_, the +novel he had brought with him in his bag. There was something like a +murder! It was so exciting as to detach Pocket Upton from the flying +buttercups and daisies, from the reek of the smoking carriage, the real +crimes in the paper, and all thoughts of London until he found himself +there too soon. + +The asthma specialist was one of those enterprising practitioners whose +professional standing is never quite on a par with their material +success. The injurious discrepancy may have spoilt his temper, or it +may be that his temper was at the root of the prejudice against him. He +was never very amiable with Pocket Upton, a casual patient in every +sense; but this morning Dr. Bompas had some call to complain. + +“You mean to tell me,” he expostulated, “that you’ve gone back to the +cigarettes in spite of what I said last time? If you weren’t a stupid +schoolboy I should throw up your case!” + +Pocket did not wish to have his case thrown up; it would mean no more +days and nights in town. So he accepted his rebuke without visible +resentment. + +“It’s the only way I can stop an attack,” he mumbled. + +“Nonsense!” snapped the specialist. “You can make yourself coffee in +the night, as you’ve done before.” + +“I can’t at school. They draw the line at that.” + +“Then a public school is no place for you. I’ve said so from the first. +Your people should have listened to me, and sent you on a long sea +voyage under the man I recommended, in the ship I told them about. She +sails the day after to-morrow, and you should have sailed in her.” + +The patient made no remark; but he felt as sore as his physician on the +subject of that long sea voyage. It would have meant a premature end to +his undistinguished schooldays, and goodbye to all thought of following +in his brothers’ steps on the field of schoolboy glory. But he might +have had adventures beyond the pale of that circumscribed arena, he +might have been shipwrecked on a desert island, and lived to tell a +tale beyond the dreams of envious athletes, if his people had but taken +kindly to the scheme. But they had been so very far from taking to it +at all, with the single exception of his only sister, that the boy had +not the heart to discuss it now. + +“If only there were some medicine one could take to stop an attack!” he +sighed. “But there doesn’t seem to be any.” + +“There are plenty of preventives,” returned the doctor. “That’s what we +want. Smoking and inhaling all sorts of rubbish is merely a palliative +that does more harm than good in the long run.” + +“But it does you good when the preventives fail. If I could get a good +night without smoking I should be thankful.” + +“If I promise you a good night will you give me your cigarettes to keep +until to-morrow?” + +“If you like.” + +The doctor wrote a prescription while the boy produced the cardboard +box from his bag. + +“Thank you,” said Bompas, as they made an exchange. “I don’t want you +even to be tempted to smoke to-night, because I know what the +temptation must be when you can’t get your breath. You will get this +prescription made up in two bottles; take the first before you go to +bed to-night, and the second if you wake with an attack before five in +the morning. You say you are staying the night with friends; better +give me the name and let me see if they’re on the telephone before you +go. I want you to go to bed early, tell them not to call you in the +morning, and come back to me the moment you’ve had your breakfast.” + +They parted amicably after all, and Pocket went off only wondering +whether he ought to have said positively that he was staying with +friends when he might be going back to school. But Dr. Bompas had been +so short with him at first as to discourage unnecessary explanations; +besides, there could be no question of his going back that night. And +the difficulty of the morning, which he had quite forgotten in the +train, was not allowed to mar a moment of his day in town. + + The time-table of that boy’s day must speak for itself. It was already + one o’clock, and he was naturally hungry, especially after the way his + breakfast had been spoilt by Coverley’s card. At 1.15 he was munching + a sausage roll and sipping chocolate at a pastry-cook’s in Oxford + Street. The sausage roll, like the cup of chocolate, was soon followed + by another; and a big Bath bun completed a debauch of which Dr. Bompas + would undoubtedly have disapproved. + +At 1.45, from the top of an Atlas omnibus in Baker Street, he espied a +placard with “Collapse of Middlesex” in appalling capitals. And at the +station he got down to learn the worst before going on to Lord’s for +nothing. + +The worst was so hopelessly bad that Pocket wished himself nearer the +theatres, and then it was that the terra-cotta pile of Madame Tussaud’s +thrust itself seductively upon his vision. He had not been there for +years. He had often wanted to go again, and go alone. He remembered +being taken by his sister when a little boy at Coverley’s, but she had +refused to go into the Chamber of Horrors, and he had been relieved at +the time but sorry ever afterwards, because so many of the boys of +those days had seen everything and seemed none the worse for the +adventure. It was one of the things he had always wanted not so much to + do as to have done. The very name of the Chamber of Horrors had frozen +his infant blood when he first heard it on the lips of a criminological +governess. On the brink of seventeen there was something of the budding +criminologist about Pocket Upton himself; had not a real murder and +_Henry Dunbar_ formed his staple reading in the train? And yet the boy +had other sensibilities which made him hesitate outside the building, +and enter eventually with quite a nutter under the waistcoat. + +A band in fantastic livery was playing away in the marble hall; but +Pocket had no ear for their music, though he was fond enough of a band. +And though history was one of his few strong points at school, the +glittering galaxy of kings and queens appealed to him no more than the +great writers at their little desks and the great cricketers in their +unconvincing flannels. They were waxworks one and all. But when the +extra sixpence had been paid at the inner turnstile, and he had passed +down a dungeon stair into the dim vaults below, his imagination was at +work upon the dreadful faces in the docks before he had brought his +catalogue to bear on one of them. + +Here were wretches whose vile deeds had long been familiar to the +schoolboy through a work on his father’s shelves called _Annals of Our +Time_. He recalled bad nights when certain of those annals had kept +him awake long after his attack; and here were the actual monsters, not +scowling and ferocious as he had always pictured them, but far more +horribly demure and plump. Here were immortal malefactors like the +Mannings; here were Rush and Greenacre cheek by jowl, looking as though +they had stepped out of Dickens in their obsolete raiment, looking +anything but what they had been. Some wore the very clothes their quick +bodies had filled; here and there were authentic tools of death, rusty +pistols, phials of poison with the seals still bright, and a smug face +smirking over all in self-conscious infamy. There was not enough of the +waxwork about these creatures; in the poor light, and their own +clothes, and the veritable dock in which many of them had heard their +doom, they looked hideously human and alive. One, a little old man, sat +not in the dock but on the drop itself, the noose dangling in front of +him; and the schoolboy felt sorry for him, for his silver bristles, for +the broad arrows on his poor legs, until he found out who it was. Then +he shuddered. It was Charles Peace. He had first heard of Charles Peace +from the nice governess aforesaid; and here under his nose were the old +ruffian’s revolver, and the strap that strapped it to his wrist, with +the very spectacles he had wiped and worn. The hobbledehoy was almost +as timorously entranced as he had been in infancy by untimely tale of +crime. He stood gloating over the gruesome relics, over ropes which had +hanged men whose trials he had read for himself in later days, and yet +wondering with it all whether he would ever get these things out of his +mind again. They filled it to overflowing. He might have had the horrid +place to himself. Yet he had entered it with much amusement at the +heels of a whole family in deep mourning, a bereaved family drowning +their sorrow in a sea of gore, their pilot through the catalogue a +conscientious orphan with a monotonous voice and a genius for +mis-pronunciation. Pocket had soon ceased to see or hear him or any +other being not made of wax. And it was only when he was trying to +place a nice-looking murderer in a straw hat, who suddenly moved into a +real sightseer like himself, that the unwholesome spell was broken. + +Pocket was not sorry to be back in the adulterated sunshine and the +comparatively fresh air of the Marylebone Road. He was ashamed to find +that it was after four o’clock. Guy and Vivian Knaggs would be home +from Westminster in another hour. Still it was no use getting there +before them, and he might as well walk as not; it was pleasant to rub +shoulders with flesh and blood once more, and to look in faces not made +of wax in the devil’s image. His way, which he knew of old, would +naturally have led him past Miss Harbottle’s door; but, as she was only +to be his second string for the night, he preferred not to be seen by +that old lady yet. Such was the tiny spring of an important action; it +led the wanderer into Circus Road and a quite unforeseen temptation. + +In the Circus Road there happens to be a highly respectable +pawnbroker’s shop; in the pawnbroker’s window the chances are that you +might still find a motley collection of umbrellas, mandolines, family +Bibles, ornaments and clocks, strings of watches, trays of purses, +opera-glasses, biscuit-boxes, photograph frames and cheap jewellery, +all of which could not tempt you less than they did Pocket Upton the +other June. There were only two things in the window that interested +him at all, and they were not both temptations. One was an old rosewood +camera, and Pocket was interested in cameras old and new; but the thing +that tempted him was a little revolver at five-and-six, with what +looked like a box of cartridges beside it, apparently thrown in for the +price. A revolver to take back to school! A revolver to fire in picked +places on the slow walks with a slow companion which were all the +exercise this unfortunate fellow could take! A revolver and cartridges +complete, so that one could try it now, in no time, with Guy and Vivian +at the end of their garden in St. John’s Wood Park! And all very +likely for five bob if one bargained a bit! + +Pocket took out his purse and saw what a hole the expenditure of any +such sum would make. But what was that if it filled a gap in his life? +Of coure it would have been breaking a school rule, but he was prepared +to take the consequences if found out; it need not involve his notion +of dishonour. Still, it must be recorded that the young or old as was +conscientious enough to hesitate before making his fatal plunge into +the pawnbroker’s shop. + + + + +CHAPTER II. +A BOY ABOUT TOWN + + +The young Westminsters had not come in when Pocket finally cast up in +St. John’s Wood Park. But their mother was at home, and she gave the +boy a cup of tepid tea out of a silver tea-pot in the drawing-room. +Mrs. Knaggs was a large lady who spoke her mind with much freedom, at +all events to the young. She remarked how much Upton (so she addressed +him) had altered; but her tone left Pocket in doubt as to whether any +improvement was implied. She for one did not approve of his luncheon in +Oxford Street, much less of the way he had spent a summer’s afternoon; +indeed, she rather wondered at his being allowed alone in London at +all. Pocket, who could sometimes shine in conversation with his elders, +at once reminded Mrs. Knaggs that her own Westminster boys were allowed +alone in London every day of their lives. But Mrs. Knaggs said that was +a very different thing, and that she thought Pocket’s public school +must be very different from Westminster. Pocket bridled, but behaved +himself; he knew where he wanted to stay the night, and got as far +towards inviting himself as to enlarge upon Mr. Coverley’s misfortune +and his own disappointment. Mrs. Knaggs in her turn did ask him where +he meant to and even the conscientious Pocket caught himself declaring +he had no idea. Then the boys were heard returning, and Mrs. Knaggs +said of course he would stop to schoolroom supper, and Pocket thanked +her as properly as though it were the invitation he made sure must +follow. After all, Vivian Knaggs had stayed at Pocket’s three weeks one +Christmas, and Guy a fortnight at Easter; the boys themselves would +think of that; it was not a matter to broach to them, or one to worry +about, prematurely. + +Vivian and Guy were respectively rather older and rather younger than +Pocket, and they came in looking very spruce, the one in his Eton +jacket, the other in tails, but both in shiny toppers that excited an +unworthy prejudice in the wearer of the green tie with red spots. They +seemed very glad to see him, however, and the stiffness was wearing off +even before Pocket produced his revolver in the basement room where the +two Westminsters prepared their lessons and had their evening meal. + +The revolver melted the last particle of ice, though Vivian Knaggs +pronounced it an old pin-firer, and Guy said he would not fire it for a +thousand pounds. This only made Pocket the more eager to show what he +and his revolver were made of, then and there in the garden, and the +more confident that it never would be heard in the house. + +“It would,” answered Vivian, “and seen as well. No, if you want to have +a shot let’s stick up a target outside this window, and fire from just +inside.” + +The window was a French one leading into the back garden; but, +unhappily, Mrs. Knaggs’s bedroom was only two floors higher, and it +also looked out on the back; and Mrs. Knaggs herself was in her room +and near her window when the report startled her, and not less because +she little dreamt what it was until she looked out in time to see a +cloud of smoke escaping from the schoolroom window, and Pocket +examining the target, weapon in hand. + +There was a great scene about it. Mrs. Knaggs shrieked a prohibition +from aloft, and having pacified an incoherent cook upon the stairs, +descended to extract a solemn promise which might well have ended the +matter. Pocket was very contrite, indeed, drew his weapon’s teeth with +a promptitude that might have been his death, and offered it and them +to be placed under lock and key until he left. But Mrs. Knaggs +contented herself with promoting a solemn promise into a Sacred Word of +Honour—which rather hurt poor Pocket—and with sending him a very +straight message by Vivian after supper. + +“The mater’s awfully sorry,” said Vivian, returning from a mission +which Pocket had been obliged to instigate after all. “There’s not a +spare bed in the house.” + +Guy incontinently declared there was. A fraternal frown alone prevented +him from going into particulars. + +“A sofa would do me all right,” suggested Pocket, who had long ago lost +his last train, and would have preferred a bare plank where there were +boys to fussy old Miss Harbottle’s best bed. But Vivian Knaggs shook +his head. + +“The mater says she couldn’t sleep with firearms in the house.” + +“I’ll bury them in the garden if she likes.” + +“Then you smoke in the night, and at Coverley’s you once walked in your +sleep,” pursued Vivian, who certainly seemed to have been urging the +interloper’s cause. “And the mater’s afraid you might walk out of a +window or set the house on fire.” + +“I shouldn’t do either to-night,” protested Pocket, with a grin. “I’ve +not got anything to smoke, and I have got something to keep me quiet.” + +And with further information on both points the son of the house went +upstairs again, only to return in quicker time with a more embarrassed +gravity. + +“She’s awfully sorry,” he said unconvincingly, “but she can’t undertake +the responsibility of putting you up with your asthma.” + +Oddly enough, for he was only too sensitive on some points, Pocket was +not really hurt by his treatment at the hands of these people; he felt +he had made rather a mistake, but not that he had been most inhumanly +cast adrift at sixteen among the shoals and quicksands of London. Nor +was this quite the case as yet; there was still old Miss Harbottle in +Wellington Road. But to her he was not going until decency compelled +him; he was going to have another game of bagatelle with Guy Knaggs +first. It will be seen that with all his sensibilities the youngest +Upton was a most casual and sanguine youth. He took a great deal for +granted, prepared only for the best, and although inclined to worry +over the irrevocable, took no thought for the morrow until he was +obliged. He was sorry he had been so positive with Spearman on the +subject of his friend’s hospitality. He was sorry he had asked and been +refused, rather sorry he had not caught that last train back from St. +Pancras. Yet he left poor Miss Harbottle the best part of another hour +to go to bed in; and that was neither the first nor the last of his +erratic proceedings. + +“What about your luggage?” asked the elder Knaggs, as he put on his hat +to walk round with Pocket. + +“Good Lord!” cried that worthy, standing still in the hall. + +“Haven’t you got any?” + +“I left it at Madame Tussaud’s!” + +“Left your luggage there?” + +“It was only a handbag. How long are they open?” + +Young Knaggs looked in _Whitaker_ and said they closed at ten. There +was still time to recover the bag with a taxicab, but in that case it +was not much use his going too. So they said goodbye at the Swiss +Cottage, and the adventures of Pocket Upton began in earnest. + +Old Miss Harbottle, his mother’s great friend, would have none of him +either! He stopped on the way to Baker Street to make sure. The garden +gate was one that only opened by a catch and a cable manipulated +indoors. The downstairs lights were out. The gate opened at last, a +light shone through the front door, and the door opened a few inches on +the chain. Pocket confronted a crevice of quilted dressing-gown and +grey curls; but his mother’s friend’s mastiff was making night so +hideous within, and trying so hard to get at his mother’s son, that it +was some time before he could exchange an intelligible word with the +brute’s mistress. It was not a satisfactory interchange then, for Miss +Harbottle at first flatly refused to believe that this was Tony Upton, +whom she had not seen since his preparatory schooldays, and she seemed +inclined to doubt it to the end. Upton or no Upton, she could not take +him in. She had no sheets aired, no fire to air them at, and the cook +had just left. Miss Harbottle’s cook had always just left, except when +she was just leaving. The rejected visitor got an instant’s fun out of +the reflection as he returned to his palpitating taxicab. + +His position was now quite serious. He had not many shillings in his +purse. The only thing to do was to put up at Shaw’s Hotel, Trafalgar +Square; that was where his people always stayed, where every servant +was supposed to know them all. He pushed on at once through the cool +June night, and paid away three of his last shillings for the drive. +Alas! not a bed to be had at Shaw’s; it was the worst time of the year, +they told him, and he supposed they meant the best. He also supposed +there had been changes in the staff, for nobody seemed to know his name +as well as he had been led to expect at home. + +They were quite nice about it. They pointed out the big hotels +opposite, and recommended more than one of the little ones in Craven +Street. But the big hotels were all full to overflowing; and at the +only little one he tried the boy lost his temper like a man on being +requested to deposit six shillings before proceeding to his room. +Pocket had not got it to deposit, and the galling reflection caused him +to construe the demand as a deliberate reflection upon his outward +respectability—as if he could not have borrowed the money from Dr. +Bompas in the morning! + +“I’ll see you blowed,” was his muttered reply, and he caught up his bag +in a passion. + +“All right, little man! I shouldn’t be rude about it,” said the dapper +cashier. “If I couldn’t pay my shot I should sleep in the Park, on a +nice fine night like this.” + +“I shall!” shouted Pocket through his teeth, as though that would +prevent the brute of a cashier from sleeping soundly in his bed. And it +was his own idle and childish threat that set him presently wondering +what else he was to do. He had the spirit of adventure, as we have +seen. + +He had the timorous, or let us say, the imaginative temperament, which +lends to adventure its very salt. He wished to have done dangerous or +heroic things, if not to have to do them. He had so little to boast +about; his brothers, and so many other fellows of his own age, had so +much. It would make a great yarn some day, how he had come up from +school to see a doctor—and slept in the Park! + +Meanwhile he had only a vague idea of his way there; he knew hardly +anything of London except St. John’s Wood and his present landmark of +the Nelson column and the Landseer lions. He knew them from having +stayed some time (under another doctor) as a child at Shaw’s Hotel. +But, I say! What would Bompas say to his sleeping out, and what sort of +night could he expect in the open air? + +He had an overcoat. It had been in his way all day; it would come in +more than handy for the night. And it suddenly struck Pocket, with all +the force of a forgotten novelty, that he had a revolver and cartridges +as well. + +That decided him. Not that he seriously thought himself the kind of +person to use a revolver with resolution or effect; but it made him +feel doughty and even truculent to find the means of heroic defence all +ready to his hand. He began to plume himself on his providential +purchase. He would sell his young life dearly if he fell among London +thieves; in his death he would not be unhonoured at school or at home. +Obituary phrases of a laudatory type sprang like tears to a mind still +healthy enough to dash them away again, as though they had been real +tears; but it was with all the nervous exaltation of the unsuspected +desperado that he inquired his way of a colossal constable at the +corner of Pall Mall and the Haymarket. + +The man wanted to know if he meant Hyde Park Corner. “Yes,” said +Pocket, hastily, because his heart was in his mouth and the policeman +looked as though he had seen it there. And he overshot the mark in the +motor omnibus through being ashamed to ask again, only alighting at +Albert Gate; but here there was quite a little stream of decent people +to follow without further tremors into the indubitable Park. + +He followed them across the drive and across Rotten Row, gaining +confidence as he went. In a minute it was all delightful; his eyes were +turned outward by all there was to see; and now his chief fear was lest +some one or other of the several passers should stand in his path and +ask what he was doing there. He was still afraid of speaking or being +spoken to, but no longer unreasonably so. Detection as an escaped +schoolboy was his one great dread; he felt he was doing something for +which he might be expelled. + +But nobody took any notice of him; this gradually encouraged him to +take more notice of other people, when he found, not altogether to his +surprise, that the majority of those passing through the Park at that +late hour were hardly of his own class. So much the more infinitesimal +were the chances of his being recognised or even suspected for what he +was. There were young men in straw hats, there were red-coated +soldiers, and there were girls. They all filled the schoolboy with +their fascinating possibilities. They were Life. The boy’s heart beat +at what he heard and saw. The couples were hilarious and unrefined. One +wench, almost under his nose, gave her soldier a slap with such a +remark as Pocket had never heard from a woman’s lips before. He turned +away, tingling, and leant upon the parapet of a bridge he had been in +the act of crossing, and thought of school and home and Mr. Coverley. + +It was not really a bridge at all. It was only the eastern extremity of +the Serpentine; but as the boy leant over the stone balustrade, and +gazed upon the artificial flood, broadening out indefinitely in the +darkness, it might have been the noblest river in the world. Its banks +were muffled in a feather boa of trees, bedizened by a chain of many +lights; the lights of a real bridge made a diadem in the distance; and +between these sped the lamps of invisible vehicles, like fretful +fireflies. And the still water gave back every glimmer with its own +brilliance, unchallenged and undimmed by moon or star, for not a trace +of either was in the sky; and yet it was the most wonderful sky the boy +had ever seen—a black sky tinged with sullen rose, or a red sky seen +through smoked glasses, he hardly knew which he would have called it. +But he did know that warm and angry glow for the reflection of London’s +light and life; he could not forget he was in London for a moment. Her +mighty machinery with its million wheels throbbed perpetually in his +ears; and yet between the beats would come the quack of a wild duck +near at hand, the splash of a leaping fish, the plaintive whistle of +water-fowl: altogether such a chorus of incongruities as was not lost +upon our very impressionable young vagabond. The booming strokes of +eleven recalled him to a sense of time and his immediate needs. His +great adventure was still before him; he pushed on, bag in hand, to +select its scene. Another road he crossed, alive with the lamps of +cyclists, and came presently upon a wide space intersected with broad +footpaths from which he shrank; it was altogether too public here; he +was approaching an exposed corner in an angle of lighted streets, with +the Marble Arch at its apex, as a signboard made quite clear. He had +come right across the Park; back over the grass, keeping rather more to +the right, in the direction of those trees, was the best thing now. + +It was here that he found the grass distinctly damp; this really was +enough to deter an asthmatic, already beginning to feel asthmatical. +Pocket Upton, however, belonged to the large class of people, weak and +strong alike, who are more than loth to abandon a course of action once +taken. It would have required a very severe attack to baulk him of his +night out and its subsequent description to electrified ears. But when +bad steering had brought him up at the bandstand, the deserted chairs +seemed an ordained compromise between prudence and audacity, and he had +climbed into the fenced enclosure when another enormous policeman rose +up horribly in its midst. + +“What are you doing here?” inquired this policeman, striding upon +Pocket with inexorable tread. + +“No harm, I hope,” replied our hero humbly, but with unusual readiness. + +“Nor no good either, I’ll be bound!” said the policeman, standing over +him. + +“I was only going to sit down,” protested Pocket, having satisfied his +conscience that in the first place that was all he really had been +going to do. + +“There are plenty of places to sit down,” rejoined the policeman. +“You’re not allowed in here. And unless you look sharp about it you +won’t have time to sit down at all.” + +“Why not?” + +“The Park closes at twelve.” + +“Closes?” + +“At twelve o’clock, and it’s half-past eleven now.” The boy’s heart +sank into his wet boots. Here was an end of all his dashing plans. He +was certain he had heard or read of people sleeping in the Park; he had +looked upon it as a vast dormitory of the houseless; that was the only +reason he was there. The offensive clerk in the hotel had evidently +entertained the same belief. This idiot of a policeman must be wrong. +But he seemed quite clear about it. + +“Did you think we were open all night?” he inquired with a grin. + +“I did,” said Pocket; and he was inspired to add, “I even thought a lot +of loafers used to sleep here all night!” + +The policeman chuckled aloud. + +“They may if they get up the trees; that’s about their only chance,” +said he. + +“You search the whole place so thoroughly?” + +“We keeps our eyes open,” said the policeman significantly, and Pocket +asked no more questions; he scaled the forbidden fence and made off +with the alacrity of one who meant to go out before he was put out. +Such was his then sincere and sound intention. But where next to turn, +to what seat on the Embankment, or what arch in the slums, in his +ignorance of London he had no idea. + +Meanwhile, to increase the irony of his dilemma, now that he was bent +on quitting the Park he found himself striking deeper and deeper into +its heart. He skirted a building, left it behind and out of sight, and +drifted before the wind of destiny between an upright iron fence on one +hand and a restricted open space upon the other. He could no longer see +a single light; but the ground rose abruptly across the fence, and was +thick with shrubs. Men might have been lying behind those shrubs, and +Pocket could not possibly have seen them from the path. Did the +policeman mean to tell him that he or his comrades were going to climb +every fence and look behind every bush in Hyde Park? + +Pocket came to anchor with a new flutter at his heart. This upright +fence was not meant for scaling; it was like a lot of area palings, as +obvious and intentional an obstacle. And the whole place closed at +twelve, did it? The flutter became a serious agitation as Pocket saw +himself breaking the laws of the land as well as those of school, saw +himself not only expelled but put in prison! Well, so much the better +for his story so long as those penalties were not incurred; even if +they were, so much the greater hero he! + +No wonder his best friends called him disparaging names; he was living +up to the hardest of them now, and he with asthma on him as it was! But +the will was on him too, the obstinate and reckless will, and the way +lay handy in the shape of a row of Park chairs which Pocket had just +passed against the iron palings. He went back to them, mounted on the +first chair, wedged his bag between two of the spikes, set foot on the +back of the chair, and somehow found himself on the other side without +rent or scratch. Then he listened; but not a step could he hear. So +then the cunning dog put his handkerchief through the palings and wiped +the grit from the chair on which he had stood. And they called him a +conscientious ass at school! + +But then none of these desperate deeds were against his conscience, and +they had all been thrust on Pocket Upton by circumstances over which he +had lost control when the last train went without him from St. Pancras. +They did not prevent him from kneeling down behind the biggest bush +that I he could find, before curling up underneath it; neither did his +prayers prevent him from thinking—even on his knees—of his revolver, +nor yet—by the force of untimely association—of the other revolvers in +the Chamber of Horrors. He saw those waxen wretches huddled together +in ghastly groups, but the thought of them haunted him less than it +might have done in a feather bed; he had his own perils and adventures +to consider now. One thing, however, did come of the remembrance; he +detached the leather strap he wore as a watch-guard. And used it to +strap a pin-fire revolver, loaded in every chamber, to his wrist +instead. + +That was the last but one of the silly boy’s proceedings under the +bush; the last of all was to drain the number-one draught prescribed by +Bompas in the morning, and to fling away the phial. The stuff was sweet +and sticky in the mouth, and Pocket felt a singular and most grateful +warmth at his extremities as he curled up in his overcoat. It was +precisely then that he heard a measured tread approaching, and held his +breath until it had passed without a pause. Yet the danger was still +audible when the boy dropped off, thinking no more about it, but of Mr. +Coverley and Charles Peace and his own people down in Leicestershire. + + + + +CHAPTER III. +HIS PEOPLE + + +It so happened that his people in Leicestershire were thinking of him. +They had been talking about him at the very time of the boy’s +inconceivable meanderings in Hyde Park. And two of them were at it +still. + +On a terrace outside lighted windows a powerful young fellow, in a +butterfly collar and a corded smoking jacket, was walking up and down +with a tall girl not unlike him in the face; but their faces were only +to be seen in glimpses as they passed the drawing-room windows, and at +not less regular intervals when a red light in the sky, the source of +which was concealed by the garden foliage, became positively brilliant. +The air was sweet with the scent of honeysuckle and musk-roses and mown +grass; midges fretted in and out of the open windows. But for the lurid +lighting of the sky, with its Cyclopean suggestion of some mammoth +forge, you were in the heart of England undefiled. + +“It’s no use our talking about Tony,” the tall girl said. “I think +you’re frightfully down on him; we shall never agree.” + +“Not as long as you make a fool of the fellow,” said the blunt young +man. + +“Tony’s no fool,” remarked Lettice Upton, irrelevantly enough. + +“You know what I mean,” snapped her brother Horace. “He’s being +absolutely spoilt, and you’re at the bottom of it.” + +“I didn’t give him asthma!” + +“Don’t be childish, Letty.” + +“But that’s what’s spoiling his life.” + +“I wasn’t talking about his life. I don’t believe it, either.” + +“You think he enjoys his bad nights?” + +“I think he scores by them. He’d tell you himself that he never even +thinks of getting up to first school now.” + +“Would you if you’d been sitting up half the night with asthma?” + +“Perhaps not; but I don’t believe that happens so often as you think.” + +“It happens often enough to justify him in making one good night pay +for two or three bad ones.” + +“I don’t call that playing the game. I call it shamming.” + +“Well, if it is, he makes up for it. They were doing Ancient Greek +Geography in his form at early school last term. Tony tackled it in his +spare time, and got most marks in the exam.” + +“Beastly young swot!” quoth his elder brother. “I’m glad he didn’t +buck to me about that.” + +“I don’t think there’s much danger of his bucking to you,” said +Lettice, smiling in the red light. She did not add as her obvious +reason that Horace, like many another athletic young man, was quite +incapable of sympathising with the non-athletic type. But he guessed +that she meant something of the sort, and having sensibilities of his +own, and a good heart somewhere in his mesh of muscles, he felt hurt. +“I looked after him all right,” said Horace, “the one term we were +there together. So did Fred for the next year. But it’s rather rough on +Fred and myself, who were both something in the school at his age, to +hear and see for ourselves that Tony’s nobody even in the house!” + +Lettice slipped a sly hand under the great biceps of her eldest +brother. + +“But don’t you see, old boy, that it makes it the worse for Tony that +you and Fred were what you were at school? They measure him by the +standard you two set up; it’s natural enough, but it isn’t fair.” + +“He needn’t be a flyer at games,” said Horace, duly softened by a +little flattery. “But he might be a tryer!” + +“Wait till we get a little more breath into his body.” + +“A bag of oxygen wouldn’t make him a cricketer.” + +“Yet he’s so keen on cricket!” + +“I wish he wasn’t so keen; he thinks and talks more about it than Fred +or I did when we were in the eleven, yet he never looked like making a +player.” + +“I should say he thinks and talks more about most things; it’s his +nature, just as it’s Fred’s and yours to be men of action.” + +“Well, I’m glad he’s not allowed to cumber the crease this season,” +said Horace, bowling his cigarette-end into the darkness with a +distinct swerve in the air. “To have him called our ‘pocket edition,’ +on the cricket-field of all places, is a bit too thick.” + +Lettice withdrew her sympathetic hand. + +“He’s as good a sportsman as either of you, at heart,” she said warmly. +“And I hope he may make you see it before this doctor’s done with him!” + +“This doctor!” jeered Horace, quick to echo her change of tone as well. +“You mean the fool who wanted to send that kid round the world on his +own?” + +“He’s no fool, Horace, and you know nothing whatever about him.” + +“No; but I know something about our Tony! If he took the least care of +himself at home, there might be something to be said for letting him +go; but he’s the most casual young hound I ever struck.” + +“I know he’s casual.” + +Lettice made the admission with reluctance; next moment she was sorry +her sense of fairness had so misled her. + +“Besides,” said Horace, “he wouldn’t be cured if he could. Think what +he’d miss!” + +“Oh, if you’re coming back to that, there’s no more to be said.” + +And the girl halted at the lighted windows. + +“But I do come back to it. Isn’t he up in town at this moment under +this very doctor of yours?” + +“He’s not my doctor.” + +“But you first heard about him; you’re the innovator of the family, +Letty, so it’s no use trying to score off me. Isn’t Tony up in London +to-night?” + +“I believe he is.” + +“Then I’ll tell you what he’s doing at this moment,” cried Horace, with +egregious confidence, as he held his watch to the windows. “It’s after +eleven; he’s in the act of struggling out of some theatre, where the +atmosphere’s so good for asthma!” Lettice left the gibe unanswered. It +was founded on recent fact which she had been the first to deplore when +Tony made no secret of it in the holidays; indeed, she was by no means +blind to his many and obvious failings; but they interested her more +than the equally obvious virtues of her other brothers, whose +unmeasured objurgations drove her to the opposite extreme in special +pleading. She tried to believe that there was more in her younger +brother than in any of them, and would often speak up for him as though +she had succeeded. It may have been merely a woman’s weakness for the +weak, but Lettice had taught herself to believe in Tony. And perhaps of +all his people she was the only one who could have followed his +vagaries of that night without thinking the worse of him. + +But she had no more to say to Horace about the matter, and would have +gone indoors without another word if Mr. Upton had not come out hastily +at that moment. He had been looking for her everywhere, he declared +with some asperity. Her mother could not sleep, and wished to see her; +otherwise it was time they were all in bed, and what there was to talk +about till all hours was more than he could fathom. So he saw the pair +before him through the lighted rooms, a heavy man with a flaming neck +and a smouldering eye. Horace would be heavy, too, when his bowling +days were over. The girl was on finer lines; but she looked like a +woman at her worst; tired, exasperated, and clearly older than her +brother, but of other clay. + +That young man smoked a last cigarette in his father’s library, and +unhesitatingly admitted the subject of dissension and dissent upon the +terrace. + +“I said he wasn’t doing much good there,” he added, “and I don’t think +he is. Letty stood up for him, as she always does.” + +“Do you mean that he’s doing any harm?” asked Mr. Upton plainly. + +“Not for a moment. I never said there was any harm in Tony. I—I +sometimes wish there was more!” + +“More manhood, I suppose you’d call it?” + +Mr. Upton spoke with a disconcerting grimness. + +“More go about him,” said Horace. He could not say as much to his +father as he had to Letty. That was evident. But he was not the boy to +bolt from his guns. + +“Yet you know how much he has to take all that out of him?” continued +Mr. Upton, with severity. + +“I know,” said Horace hastily, “and of course that’s really why he’s +doing no good; but I must say that doctor of his doesn’t seem to be +doing him any either.” + +Mr. Upton got excitedly to his feet, and Horace made up his mind to the +downright snub that he deserved. But by a lucky accident Horace had +turned the wrath that had been gathering against himself into quite +another quarter. + +“I agree with you there!” cried his father vehemently. “I don’t believe +in the man myself; but he was recommended by the surgeon who has done +so much for your poor mother, so what could one do but give him a +trial? The lad wasn’t having a fair chance at school. This looked like +one. But I dislike his going up to town so often, and I dislike the +letters the man writes me about him. He’d have me take him away from +school altogether, and pack him off to Australia in a sailing ship. But +what’s to be done with a boy like that when we get him back again? He’d +be too old to go to another school, and too young for the University: +no use at the works, and only another worry to us all.” + +Mr. Upton spoke from the full heart of an already worried man, not with +intentional unkindness, but yet with that unimaginative want of +sympathy which is often the instinctive attitude of the sound towards +the unsound. He hated sickness, and seemed at present surrounded by it. +His wife had taken ill the year before, had undergone a grave operation +in the winter, and was still a great anxiety to him. But that was +another and a far more serious matter; he had patience and sympathy +enough with his wife. The case of the boy was very different. Himself a +man of much bodily and mental vigour, Mr. Upton expected his own +qualities of his own children; he had always resented their apparent +absence in his youngest born. The others were good specimens; why +should Tony be a weakling? Was he such a weakling as was made out? Mr. +Upton was often sceptical on the point; but then he had always heard +more about the asthma than he had seen for himself. If the boy was not +down to breakfast in the holidays, he was supposed to have had a bad +night; yet later in the day he would be as bright as anybody, at times +indeed the brightest of the party. That, however, was usually when +Lettice drew him out in the absence of the two athletes; he was another +creature then, excitable, hilarious, and more capable of taking the +busy man out of himself than any of his other children. But Lettice +overdid matters; she made far too much of the boy and his complaint, +and was inclined to encourage him in random remedies. Cigarettes at his +age, even if said to be cigarettes for asthma, suggested a juvenile +pose to the man who had never studied that disorder. The specialist in +London seemed another mistake on the part of that managing Lettice, who +had quite assumed the family lead of late. And altogether Mr. Upton, +though he saw the matter from a different point of view, was not far +from agreeing with his eldest son about his youngest. + +And what chance was there for a boy whose own father thought he posed, +whose brothers considered him a bit of a malingerer, and his +schoolfellows “a conscientious ass,” while his sister spoilt him for +_un enfant incompris?_ You may say it would have taken a miracle to +make an ordinary decent fellow of him. Well, it was a night of strange +happenings to the boy and his people; perhaps it was the one authentic +type of miracle that capped all in the morning. + +The father had gone to bed at midnight, after an extra allowance of +whisky-and-water to take the extra worry off his mind; it did so for a +few hours only to stretch him tragically awake in the early morning. +The birds were singing down in Leicestershire as in Hyde Park. The +morning sun was slanting over town and country, and the father’s +thoughts were with his tiresome son in town. Suddenly a shrill cry came +from the adjoining room. + +In a trice the wakeful man was at his sick wife’s side, supporting her +in bed as she sat up wildly staring, trembling in his arms. + +“Tony!” she gasped. “My Tony!” + +“I was just thinking of him!” he cried. “What about him, dear?” + +“I saw him,” she quavered. “I saw him plainer than I see you now. And +I’m almost positive I heard—a shot!” + + + + +CHAPTER IV. +A GRIM SAMARITAN + + +Though he afterwards remembered a shout as well, it actually was the +sound of a shot that brought the boy to his senses in Hyde Park. He +opened his eyes on a dazzle of broad daylight and sparkling grass. The +air was strangely keen for the amount of sunshine, the sunshine +curiously rarefied, and the grass swept grey where it did not sparkle. + +Pocket’s first sensation was an empty stomach, and his next a heavy +head into which the puzzle of his position entered by laborious steps. +He was not in bed. He was not at school. He was not even under the +shrub he now remembered in a mental flash which lit up all his +adventures overnight. He was wandering ankle deep in the dew, towards a +belt of poplars like birch-rods on the skyline, and a row of spiked +palings right in front of his nose. He had walked in his sleep for the +first time for years, and some one had fired a shot to wake him. + +Slow as these automatic discoveries had seemed, they had been in +reality so swift that the report was still ringing in his ears when he +who must have made it sprang hideously into being across the palings. A +hand darted through them and caught Pocket’s wrist as in a vice. And +he looked up over the spikes into a gnarled face tinged with fear and +fury, and working spasmodically at the suppression of some +incomprehensible emotion. + +“Do you know what you did?” the man demanded in the end. The question +seemed an odd one, but a very slight foreign accent, not to be +reproduced phonetically, corresponded with the peculiarity of tense, +reminding Pocket of the music-masters at his school. It was less easy +to account for the tone employed, which was low in pitch and tremulous +with passion. And the man stood tall and dominant, with a silver +stubble on an iron jaw, and a weird cloak and hat that helped to invest +him with the goblin dignity of a Spanish inquisitor; no wonder his eyes +were like cold steel in quivering flesh. + +“I must have been walking in my sleep,” began Pocket, shakily; further +explanations were cut very short. + +“Sleep!” echoed the other, in bitter unbelief. + +Pocket felt his prime quality impugned. + +“Well? I can’t help it! I’ve done it before to-day; you needn’t believe +me if you don’t like! Do you mind letting go of my hand?” + +“With that in it!” + +The scornful tone made the boy look down, and there was the pistol he +had strapped to his wrist, not only firm in his unconscious clasp, but +his finger actually on the trigger. + +“You don’t mean to say I let it off?” cried Pocket, horrified. + +“Feel the barrel.” + +The tall man had done so first. Pocket touched it with his left hand. +The barrel was still warm. + +“It was in my sleep,” protested Pocket, in a wheezy murmur. + +“I’m glad to hear it.” + +“I tell you it was!” + +The tall man opened his lips impulsively, but shut them on a second +impulse. The daggers in his eyes probed deeper into those of the boy, +picking his brains, transfixing the secrets of his soul. No master’s +eye had ever delved so deep into his life; he felt as though the very +worst of him at school was known in an instant to this dreadful +stranger in the wilds of London. He writhed under the ordeal of that +protracted scrutiny. He tugged to free his imprisoned wrist. His captor +was meanwhile fumbling with a penknife in his unoccupied hand. A blade +was slowly opened; the leather watch-guard was sliced through in a +second; the revolver dropped harmlessly into the dew. The man swooped +down and whipped it through the railings with a snarl of satisfaction. + +“And now,” said he, releasing Pocket, but standing by with his weapon, +“I suppose you know that, apart from everything else, you had no right +to spend the night in here at all?” + +The boy, already suffering from his humiliating exertions, gasped out, +“I’m not the only one!” He had just espied a recumbent figure through +the palings; it was that of a dilapidated creature lying prone, a +battered hat beside him, on the open grass beyond the path. The tall +man merely redoubled his scrutiny of the face in front of, him, without +so much as a glance behind. + +“That,” said he, “is the sort that staggers in as soon as the gates are +open, and spends the day sleeping itself sober. But you are not that +sort at all, and you have spent the night here contrary to the rules. +Who are you, and what’s the matter with you?” + +“Asthma,” wheezed Pocket, clinging to the palings in dire distress. + +“So I thought. Yet you spend your night on the wet grass!” + +“I had nowhere else to go.” + +“Have you come up from the country?” + +“To see a doctor about it!” cried Pocket bitterly, and told the whole +truth about himself in a series of stertorous exclamations. It scarcely +lessened the austerity of the eyes that still ran him through and +through; but the hard mouth did relax a little; the lined face looked +less deeply slashed and furrowed, and it was a less inhuman voice that +uttered the next words. + +“Well, we must get you out of this, my young fellow! Come to these +chairs.” + +Pocket crept along the palings towards the chairs by which he had +climbed them. His breathing was pitiful now. The stranger accompanied +him on the other side. + +“If I lift one over, and lend you a hand, do you think you can manage +it?” + +“I did last night.” + +“Here, then. Wait a bit! Can you tell me where you slept?” + +Pocket looked round and pointed. + +“Behind that bush.” + +“Have you left nothing there?” + +“Yes; my bag and hat!” + +In his state it took him some time to go and fetch them; he was nearly +suffocating when he came creeping back, his shoulders up to his ears. + +“Stop! I see something else. Is that medicine-bottle yours? +There—catching the sun.” + +“It was.” + +“Bring it.” + +“It’s empty.” + +“Bring it!” + +Pocket obeyed. The strange man was standing on a chair behind the +palings, waiting to help him over, with a wary eye upon the path. But +no third creature was in sight except the insensate sprawler in the +dew. Pocket surmounted the obstacle, he knew not how; he was almost +beside himself in the throes of his attack. Later, he feared he must +have been lifted down like a child; but this was when he was getting +his breath upon a seat. They had come some little distance very slowly, +and Pocket had received such support from so muscular an arm as to lend +colour to his humiliating suspicion. + +His grim companion spoke first. + +“Well, I’m sorry for you. But I feel for your doctor too. I am one +myself.” + +Pocket ignored the somewhat pointed statement. + +“I’ll never forgive the brute!” he panted. + +“Come, come! He didn’t send you to sleep in the Park.” + +“But he took away the only thing that does me any good.” + +“What’s that?” + +“Cigarettes d’Auvergne.” + +“I never heard of them.” + +“They’re the only thing to stop it, and he took away every one I had.” + +But even as he spoke Pocket remembered the cigarette he had produced +from his bag, but lacked the moral courage to light, in the train. He +had slipped it into one of his pockets, not back into the box. He felt +for it feverishly. He gave a husky cheer as his fingers closed upon the +palpable thing, and he drew forth a flattened cylinder the size of a +cigarette and the colour of a cigar. The boy had to bite off both ends; +the man was ready with the match. Pocket drank the crude smoke down +like water, coughed horribly, drank deeper, coughed the tears into his +eyes, and was comparatively cured. + +“And your doctor forbids a sovereign remedy!” said his companion. “I +cannot understand him, and I’m a doctor myself.” His voice and look +were deliberate even for him. “My name is Baumgartner,” he added, and +made a pause. “I don’t suppose you know it?” + +“I’m not sure I don’t,” replied Pocket, swelling with breath and +gratitude; but in truth the name seemed vaguely familiar to him. + +“A schoolboy in the country,” observed Dr. Baumgartner, “is scarcely +likely to have heard of me; but if you inquire here in London you will +find that I am not unknown. I propose to carry you off to my house for +breakfast, and a little rest. That is,” added the doctor, with his +first smile, “if you will trust yourself to me first and make your +inquiries later.” + +Pocket scouted the notion of inquiries in an impulsive outburst; but +even as he proceeded to mumble out his thanks he could not help feeling +it would have been less embarrassing to know more exactly whom he was +thanking and must needs accompany now. Dr. Baumgartner? Where was it he +had come across that name? And when and where had anybody ever seen +such a doctor as this unshaven old fellow in the cloak and hat of a +conspirator by limelight? + +But the schoolboy had still to learn the lesson of naked personality as +the one human force; and he learnt it now unknown to himself. The gaunt +grey man stood up in his absurd and rusty raiment, and Pocket thought, +“How the chaps would rag him at school!” because the dreadful old hat +and cloak suggested a caricature of a master’s cap and gown. But there +was no master at Pocket’s school whom he would not sooner have +disobeyed than this shabby stranger with the iron-bound jaw and the +wintry smile; there was no eye on the staff that had ever made him +quail as he had quailed that morning before these penetrating eyes of +steel. Baumgartner said they must hurry, and Pocket had his asthma back +in the first few yards. Baumgartner said they could buy more cigarettes +on the way, and Pocket kept up, panting, at his side. + +In the cab Baumgartner said, “Try sitting with your head between your +knees.” Pocket tried it like a lamb. They had encountered a young man +or so hurrying into the Park with towels round the neck but no collar, +an early cavalcade who never looked at them, and that was about all +until the hansom had been hailed outside. During the drive, which +seemed to Pocket interminable, his extraordinary attitude prevented him +from seeing anything but his own boots, and those only dimly owing to +the apron being shut and indeed pressing uncomfortably against his +head. Yet when Dr. Baumgartner inquired whether that did not make him +easier, he said it did. It was not all imagination either; the posture +did relieve him; but it was none the less disagreeable to be driven +through London by an utter stranger, and not to see the names of the +streets or a single landmark. Pocket had not even heard the cabman’s +instructions where to drive; they had been given after he got in. His +ear was more alert now. He noted the change from wood-paving to rough +metal. Then more wood, and an indubitable omnibus blundering by; then +more metal, in better repair; quieter streets, the tinkle of cans, the +milkman’s queer cry; and finally, “Next to the right and the fifth +house on your left,” in the voice with the almost imperceptibly foreign +accent. + +The fifth house on the left was exactly like the fourth and the sixth +from the little Pocket saw of any of them. He was hurried up a tiled +path, none too clean between swarthy and lack-lustre laurels; the steps +had not been “done”; the door wore the nondescript complexion of +prehistoric paint debased by the caprices of the London climate. One +touch of colour the lad saw before this unpromising portal opened and +shut upon him: he had already passed through a rank of pollard trees, +sprouting emeralds in the morning sun, that seemed common to this side +of the road, and effectually hid the other. + +Within the doctor held up a finger and they both trod gently. The +passage was dark and short. The stairs began abruptly on the right. +Baumgartner led the way past a closed door on the left, into an +unexpectedly bright and large room beyond it. “Sit down,” said he, and +shut the door softly behind him. + +Pocket took observations from the edge of his chair. The room was full +of walnut trivialities that looked aggressively obsolete in the +sunshine that filled it and flooded a green little garden at the back +of the house. Dr. Baumgartner had pulled up a blind and opened a +window, and he stood looking out in thought while Pocket hurriedly +completed his optical round. A set of walnut chairs were dreadfully +upholstered in faded tapestry; but a deep, worn one looked comfortable +enough, and a still more redeeming feature was the semi-grand piano. +There were books, too, and in the far corner by the bow-window a glass +door leading into a conservatory as minute as Pocket’s study at school, +and filled with geraniums. On the walls hung a series of battle +engravings, one representing a bloody advance over ridged fields in +murderously close formation, others the storming of heights and +villages. + +Baumgartner met his visitor’s eyes with the faint cold smile that +scarcely softened the hoary harshness of his visage. + +“I was present at some of those engagements,” said he. “They were not +worse than disarming a man who has just fired a revolver in his sleep!” + +He flung his cloak upon one of the walnut chairs, and Pocket heard the +pistol inside it rattle against the back; but his attention was +distracted before he had time to resent the forgotten fact of its +forcible confiscation. Under his cloak the doctor had been carrying all +this time, slung by a strap which the boy had noticed across his chest, +a stereoscopic camera without a case. Pocket exclaimed upon it with the +instructed interest of a keen photographer. + +“Do you take photographs?” asked Baumgartner, a reciprocal note in his +unemotional voice. + +“Rather!” cried the schoolboy, with considerable enthusiasm. “It’s the +only thing I have to do instead of playing games. But I haven’t got an +instantaneous camera like that. I only wish I had!” + +And he looked with longing eyes at the substantial oblong of wood and +black morocco, and duplicate lenses like a pair of spectacles, which +the doctor had set between them on one of the fussy little walnut +tables. + + + + +CHAPTER V. +THE GLASS EYE + + +Dr. Baumgartner produced a seasoned meerschaum, carved in the likeness +of a most ferocious face, and put a pinch of dark tobacco through the +turban into the bowl. “You see,” said he, “I must have my smoke like +you! I can’t do without it either, though what is your misfortune is my +own fault. So you are also a photographer!” he added, as the fumes of a +mixture containing latakia spiced the morning air. + +“I am only a beginner,” responded Pocket, “but a very keen one.” + +“You don’t merely press the button and let them do the rest?” +suggested the doctor, smiling less coldly under the influence of his +pipe. + +“Rather not! I develop, print, tone, and all the rest of it; that’s +half the fun.” + +“Plates or films?” inquired Baumgartner, with an approving nod. + +“Only plates, I’m afraid; you see, the apparatus is an old one of my +father’s.” + +And honest Pocket was beginning to blush for it, when the other made a +gesture more eloquent and far more foreign than his speech. + +“It’s none the worse for that,” said he. “So far we have much in +common, for I always use plates myself. But what we put upon our +plates, there’s the difference, eh?” + +“I should imagine so,” said Pocket, smiling. + +Dr. Baumgartner was smiling too, and still less coldly than before, but +yet darkly to himself, and at the boy rather than with him. + +“You take portraits of your friends, perhaps?” + +“Yes; often.” + +“In the body, I presume?” + +Pocket looked nonplussed. + +“You only take them in the flesh?” + +“Of course.” + +“Exactly! I take the spirit,” said the doctor; “that’s the difference.” + +Pocket watched the now wonderfully genial countenance of Baumgartner +follow the brutal features of the meerschaum Turk through a melting +cloud of smoke. The boy had been taken aback. But his bewilderment was +of briefer duration than might have been the case with a less ardent +photographer; for he took a technical interest in his hobby, and read +the photographic year-books, nearly as ravenously as _Wisden’s +Almanacke_. + +“I see,” he said, lukewarmly. “You go in for psychic photography.” + +“Psychic,” said Baumgartner; for the public schoolboy, one regrets to +report, had pronounced the word to rhyme with sly-chick. The doctor +added, with more disdain: “And you don’t believe in it?” + +“I didn’t say so.” + +“But you looked and sounded it!” + +“I don’t set myself up as a believer or unbeliever,” said the boy, +always at his ease on a subject that attracted him. “But I do say I +don’t believe in the sort of thing I read somewhere last holidays. It +was in a review of a book on that sort of photography. The chap seemed +to have said you could get a negative of a spirit without exposing the +plate at all; hide away your plate, never mind your lens, only conjure +up your spirit and see what happens. I’ll swear nothing ever happened +like that! There may be ghosts, you may see them, and so may the +camera, but not without focusing and exposing like you’ve got to do +with ordinary flesh and blood!” + +The youth had gone further and flown higher than he meant, under the +stimulus of an encouragement impossible to have foreseen. And the +doctor had come to his feet, waving eloquently with his pipe; his grey +face beamed warmly; his eyes were lances tipped with fire. + +“Well said, my young fellow!” cried he. “I agree with every syllable +you have spoken.” + +“It’s a question of photography, not of spiritualism,” concluded +Pocket, rounding off his argument in high excitement. + +“I agree, I agree! All that is rubbish, pure moonshine; and you see it +even at your age! But there’s much more in it than that; you must see +the rest as well, since you see so far so clearly.” The boy blushed +with pleasure, determined to see as far as anybody. “You admit there +may be such things as ghosts, as you call them?” he was asked as by an +equal. + +“Certainly, sir.” + +“Visible shapes, in the likeness of man? As visible and yet as tangible +as that sunbeam?” + +“Rather!” + +“You allow that the camera can see them if we can?” + +Pocket allowed it like the man he was being made to feel; the +concession gave him a generous glow. Promotion had come to him by giant +leaps. He felt five years older in fewer minutes. + +“Then,” cried the doctor, with further flattery in his air of triumph, +“then you admit everything! You may not see these images, but I may. I +may not see them, but my lens may! Think how much that glass eye throws +already upon the retina of a sensitised film that our living lenses +fail to throw upon ours; think of all that escapes the eye but the +camera catches. Take two crystal vases, fill one with one acid and the +other with another; one comes out like water as we see it; the other, +though not less limpid in our sight, like ink. The eye sees through it, +but not the lens. The eye sees emptiness as though the acid itself were +pure crystal; the lens flings an inky image on the plate. The trouble +is that, while you can procure that acid at the nearest chemist’s, no +money and no power on earth can summon or procure at will the spirit +which once was man.” + +His voice was vibrant and earnest as it had been when Pocket heard it +first an hour earlier in the Park. It was even as passionate, but this +was the passion of enthusiastic endeavour. If the man had a heart at +all, it was in this wild question without a doubt. Even the schoolboy +perceived this dimly. There was something else which had become clearer +to him with each of these later remarks. Striking as they seemed to +him, they were not wholly unfamiliar. The ring of novelty was wanting +to his ear. + +Suddenly he exclaimed, “I knew I knew your name!” + +“You do know it, do you?” + +Baumgartner spoke ungraciously, as though the announcement was +discounted by the interruption it entailed. + +“It was in connection with the very book I mentioned. I knew I had come +across it somewhere.” + +“You read the correspondence that followed the review?” + +“Some of it.” + +“My letter among others?” + +“Yes! I remember every word of it now.” + +“Then you recall my view as to the alleged necessity of a medium’s +co-operation in these spirit-photographs?” + +“You said it wasn’t necessary, if I remember,” replied Pocket somewhat +tentatively, despite his boast. + +“It was the pith and point of my contention! I mentioned the two +moments at which I hold that a man’s soul may be caught apart, may be +cut off from his body by no other medium than a good sound lens in a +light-tight camera. You cannot have forgotten them if you read my +letter.” + +“One,” said the boy, “was the moment of death.” + +“The moment of dissolution,” the doctor corrected him. “But there is a +far commoner moment than that, one that occurs constantly to us all, +whereas dissolution comes but once.” + +Pocket believed he remembered the other instance too, but was not sure +about it, the fact being that the whole momentous letter had struck him +as too fantastic for serious consideration. That, however, he could not +and dared not say; and he was not the less frightened of making a +mistake with those inspired eyes burning fanatically into his. + +“The other moment,” the doctor said at last, with a pitying smile, “is +when the soul returns to its prison after one of those flights which +men call dreams. You know that theory of the dream?” Baumgartner asked +abruptly. The answer was a nod as hasty, but the doctor seemed +unconvinced, for he went on didactically: “You visit far countries in +your dreams; your soul is the traveller. You speak to the absent or the +dead; it is your soul again; and we dismiss the miracle as a dream! I +fix the moment as that of the soul’s return because its departure on +these errands is imperceptible, but with its return we awake. The +theory is that in the moment of waking the whole experience happens +like the flash of an electric spark.” + +The boy murmured very earnestly that he saw; but he was more troubled +than enlightened, and what he did see was that he had picked up a very +eccentric acquaintance indeed. He was not a little scared by the man’s +hard face and molten eyes; but there was a fascination also that could +not be lost upon an impressionable temperament, besides that force of +will or character which had dominated the young mind from the first. He +began to wish the interview at an end—to be able to talk about it as +the extraordinary sequel of an extraordinary adventure—yet he would not +have cut it short at this point if he could. + +“I grant you,” continued the doctor, “that the final flight of soul +from body is infinitely the more precious from my point of view. But +how is one to be in a position to intercept that? When beloved spirits +pass it would be cold-blooded desecration; and public opinion has still +to be educated up to psychical vivisection! I have myself tried in vain +to initiate such education. I have applied for perfectly private +admission to hospital deathbeds, even to the execution-shed in prisons. +My applications have been peremptorily refused.” + +Pocket’s thoughts went off at a gruesome tangent. + +“You could see a man hanged!” he shuddered, and himself saw the little +old effigy on the model drop in Marylebone Road. + +“Why not?” asked the other in wide wonder. “But as I am not allowed,” +he continued in lighter key, “I have to do the best I can. If I cannot +be in at the death, I may still by luck be in at a dream or two! And +now you may guess why I wander with my camera where men come in to +sleep in broad daylight. I prowl among them; a word awakens them; and +then I take my chance.” + +“They’re not all like that man this morning, then,” remarked Pocket, +looking back on the inanimate clod reclining in the dew. + +The doctor deliberated with half-shut eyes that seemed to burn the +brighter for their partial eclipse. + +“This morning,” he rejoined, “was like no other. I owe you some +confidence in the matter. I had the chance of a lifetime this +morning—thanks to you!” + +“Thanks to me?” repeated Pocket. A flash enlightened him. “Do you mean +to say I—you took me—walking——?” + +“You shall see my meaning,” replied Baumgartner, rising. “Wait one +minute.” + +He was not gone longer. Pocket heard him on the other side of double +doors in an alcove; but he had gone out into the passage to get there. +Running water and the chink of porcelain were specially audible in his +absence, but the boy was thinking of another sound. The doctor before +leaving had discarded a black alpaca jacket, light as a pocket +handkerchief, which had fallen so softly as to recall by contrast the +noise made by the revolver in the pocket of the cloak. The lad was +promptly seized with a strong desire to recover his property; he was +within an ace of doing so, the cloak containing it being actually in +his hands and only dropped as Baumgartner returned to announce that all +was ready. + +Sharp to the left, at the end of the passage, was a door which would +simply have been a second way into the drawing-room had the double +doors within been is use; these being shut, the space behind made a +separate chamber which again reminded the schoolboy of his study, that +smallest of small rooms. This one was as narrow, only twice the length. +One end was monopolised by the door that admitted them, the other by a +window from floor to ceiling. And this window was in two great sheets +of ruby glass, so that Pocket looked down red-hot iron steps into a +crimson garden, and therefrom to his companion dyed from head to foot +like Mephistopheles. + +“This is something like a dark-room!” exclaimed the lad as the door was +shut and locked behind him. The folding doors were permanently barred +by shelves and lockers; opposite was a long porcelain trough, pink as +the doctor’s shirt-sleeves in the strong red light; racks of negatives +and stoppered bottles glimmered over brass taps stained to an angry +copper. + +Everything was perfection from a photographer’s standpoint; the boy +felt instantaneously spoilt for his darkened study and his jugs of +water. All he had ever sighed for in the prosecution of his hobby was +here in this little paradise of order and equipment. The actual work, +he felt, would be a secondary consideration in such a workshop; the +mere manipulation of such stoppered bottles as his host was handling +now, the choice of graduated phials, the wealth of trays and dishes, +would have been joy enough for him. He watched the favoured operator +with a watering mouth. A crimson blind had been lowered to reduce the +light; the doctor had turned up his shirt-cuffs; his wrists were +muscular and furry, as it now seemed with a fiery fur, yet they +trembled with excitement as he produced his plate. And Pocket +remembered how extravagant an image was expected on that plain pink +surface. + +He did not know whether to expect it or not himself. It was difficult +to believe in that sort of thing, difficult to disbelieve in this sort +of man, who entertained no shadow of doubt himself, whose excitement +and suspense were as infectious as everything else about him. Pocket +had come into the dark-room wheezing almost as much as ever; he was not +to be heard breathing as the plate was rocked to and fro as in +raspberry-juice, and gradually the sky showed sharp and black. But the +sky it was that puzzled Pocket first. It was broken by perpendicular +objects like white torpedoes. He was photographer enough to know what +these were almost at once; they were those poplars in the park. But how +could Baumgartner have photographed Pocket with those poplars behind +him when they had been behind Baumgartner all the time? + +Pocket said to himself, “Where am I, by the way?” and bent lower to +see. His ear touched the doctor’s; it heard the doctor breathing as +though he were the asthmatic; and now a human shape was visible, but +not walking in its sleep, lying in it like the man in the wet grass. +“When did you get me?” asked Pocket aloud. But the tense crimson face +paid no attention; in the ruby light it was glistening as though with +beads of blood. + +“There! there! there!” croaked a voice, husky and yet staccato. Pocket +could scarcely believe it was the voice of his host—the one gentle +thing about him. “You saw the figure? Surely you saw something else, +hovering over it? I did, I swear I did! But now we shall have to wait.” + +The plate had blackened all over, as though the uncanny thing had +choked out its life. It was meticulously held under a tap, between +fingers that most distinctly trembled now. Then he plunged it in the +hyposulphite, and pulled up the blind. The sun shone again through the +tall window, blood-red as before; grass and sky were as richly +incarnadined. Baumgartner babbled while he waited for the fixing-bath +to clear the plate. The chance of his life, he still pronounced it. +“And I owe it to you, my young fellow!” This he said again and again, +aloud but chiefly to himself. He picked up the plate at last and held +it to the flaming window. He cried out in German to himself, a cry the +schoolboy never forgot. + +“Open the window!” he ordered. “It opens like a door.” + +Pocket did as he was told. The pure white sunlight struck him +momentarily blind. Baumgartner had the plate under the tap again. +Pocket thought him careless with it, thought the tap on too full; it +was held up an instant to the naked sun, and then dashed to a hundred +fragments in the porcelain trough. + +Pocket knew better than to ask a question. He followed his leader back +into the drawing-room, and watched him pick up his coat. It might have +been a minute before their eyes met again; the doctor’s were calm and +cold and critical as in the earlier morning. It was another failure, he +said, and nothing more. Breakfast would be ready soon; they would go +upstairs; and if his young fellow felt equal to a warm bath, he thought +as a physician it might do him good. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. +AN AWAKENING + + +It was a normal elderly gentleman, with certain simple habits, but no +little distinction of address, who welcomed the schoolboy at his +breakfast-table. The goblin inquisitor of Hyde Park had vanished with +his hat and cloak. The excited empiric of the dark-room was a creature +of that ruby light alone. Dr. Baumgartner was shaved and clad like +other men, the iron-grey hair carefully brushed back from a lofty +forehead, all traces of strong acids removed from his well-kept hands. +There was a third person, and only a third, at table in the immature +shape of a young lady whom the doctor introduced as his niece Miss +Platts, and addressed as Phillida. + +Pocket thought he had never heard of nobler atonement for unmitigable +surname. He could not help thinking that this Phillida did not look the +one to flout a fellow, after the fashion of the only other Phillida he +had ever heard of, and then that it was beastly cheek to start thinking +of her like that and by her Christian name. But he was of the age and +temperament when thoughts will come of contact with young animals of +the opposite sex. He looked at her sidelong from time to time, but all +four eyes dropped directly they met; she seemed as shy and +uninteresting as himself; her conversation was confined to table +attentions to her uncle and his guest. + +Pocket made more valiant attempts. A parlour billiard-table, standing +against the wall, supplied an irresistible topic. “We have a full-size +table at home,” he said, and could have mutilated his tongue that +instant. “I like a small one best,” he assured the doctor, who shook +his head and smiled. + +“Honestly, sir, and snob-cricket better than the real thing! I’m no +good at real games.” + +The statement was too true, but not the preference. + +“That must be awkward for you, at an English public school,” was the +doctor’s comment. + +Pocket heaved an ingenuous sigh. It was hateful. He blamed the asthma +as far as modesty would permit. He was modest enough in his +breakfast-table talk, yet nervously egotistical, and apt to involve +himself in lengthy explanations. He had two types of listener—the dry +and the demure—to all he said. + +“And they let you come up to London alone!” remarked Dr. Baumgartner +when he got a chance. + +“But it wasn’t their fault that I——” + +Pocket stopped at a glance from his host, and plunged into profuse +particulars exonerating his house-master, but was cut short again. +Evidently the niece was not to know where he had spent the night. + +“I suppose there are a number of young men at your—establishment?” said +the doctor, exchanging a glance with Miss Platts. + +“There are over four hundred boys,” replied Pocket, a little puzzled. + +“And how many keepers do they require?” + +A grin apologised for the word. + +“There must be over thirty masters,” returned Pocket more pointedly +than before. He was not going to stand chaff about his public school +from a mad German doctor. + +“And they arm you for the battle of life with Latin and Greek, eh?” + +“Not necessarily; there’s a Modern Side. You can learn German if you +like!” said Pocket, not without contempt. + +“Do you?” + +“I don’t like,” said the boy gratuitously. + +“Then we must stick to your excellent King’s English.” + +Pocket turned a trifle sulky. He felt he had not scored in this little +passage. Then he reflected upon the essential and extraordinary +kindness which had brought him to a decent breakfast-table that +morning. That made him ashamed; nor could he have afforded to be too +independent just yet, even had he been so disposed in his heart. His +asthma was a beast that always growled in the background; he never knew +when it would spring upon him with a roar. Breakfast pacified the +brute; hot coffee always did; but the effects soon wore off, and the +boy was oppressed again, yet deadly weary, long before it was time for +him to go to Welbeck Street. + +“Is there really nothing you can take?” asked Dr. Baumgartner, standing +over him in the drawing-room, where Pocket sat hunched up in the big +easy-chair. + +“Nothing now, I’m afraid, unless I could get some of those cigarettes. +And Dr. Bompas would kick up an awful row!” + +“But it’s inhuman. I’ll go and get them myself. He should prescribe for +such an emergency.” + +“He has,” said Pocket. “I’ve got some stuff in my bag; but it’s no use +taking it now. It’s meant to take in bed when you can have your sleep +out.” + +And he was going into more elaborate details than Dr. Bompas had done, +when the other doctor cut him short once more. + +“But why not now? You can sleep to your heart’s content in that chair; +nobody will come in.” + +Pocket shook his head. + +“I’m due in Welbeck Street at twelve.” + +“Well, I’ll wake you at quarter to, and have a taxi ready at the door. +That will give you a good two hours.” + +Pocket hesitated, remembering the blessed instantaneous effect of the +first bottle under the bush. + +“Would you promise to wake me, sir? You’re not going out?” + +“I shall be in again.” + +“Then it is a promise?” + +Pocket would have liked it in black and white. + +“Certainly, my young fellow! Is the stuff in your bag?” + +It was, and the boy took it with much the same results as overnight. It +tasted sweeter and acted quicker; that was the only difference. The +skin seemed to tighten on his face. His fingers tingled at the ends It +was not at all an unpleasant sensation, especially as the labour in his +breast came to an end as if by magic. The faintly foreign accents of +Dr. Baumgartner sounded unduly distant in his last words from the open +door. It was scarcely shut before the morning’s troubles ceased +deliciously in the cosy chair. + +Yet they seemed to begin again directly, and this was a horrid crop! Of +course he was back in Hyde Park; but the sky must have rained red paint +in his absence, or else the earth was red-hot and the sky reflected it. +No! the grass was too wet for that. It might have been wet with blood. +Everything was as red as beet-root, as wet and red and one’s body +weltering in it like the slain! Reddest of all was the old +photographer, who turned into Mr. Spearman in cap and gown, who turned +into various members of the Upton family, one making more inconsequent +remarks than the other, touching wildly on photography and the flitting +soul, and between them working the mad race up to such a pace and pitch +that Pocket woke with a dreadful start to find Dr. Baumgartner standing +over him once more in the perfectly pallid flesh. + +“I’ve had a beast of a dream!” said Pocket, waking thoroughly. “I’m in +a cold perspiration, and I thought it was cold blood! What time is it?” + +“A quarter to six,” said the doctor, who had invited the question by +taking out his watch. + +“A quarter to twelve, you mean!” + +“No—six.” + +And the boy was shown the dial, but would not believe it until he had +gaped at his own watch, which had stopped at half-past three. Then he +bounded to his feet in a puerile passion, and there lay the little +garden, a lake of sunlight as he remembered it, swallowed up entirely +in the shadow of the house. + +“You promised to wake me!” gasped Pocket, almost speechless. “You’ve +broken your word, sir!” + +“Only in your own interest,” replied the other calmly. + +“I believe you were waiting for me to wake—to catch my soul, or some +rot!” cried the boy, with bitter rudeness; but he looked in vain for +the stereoscopic or any other sort of camera, and Dr. Baumgartner only +shrugged his shoulders as he opened an evening paper. + +“I apologise for saying that,” the boy resumed, with a dignity that +sounded near to tears. “I know you meant it for the best—to make up for +my bad night—you’ve been very kind to me, I know! But I was due in +Welbeck Street at twelve o’clock, and now I shall have to bolt to catch +the six-thirty from St. Pancras.” + +“You won’t catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras,” replied Baumgartner, +scarcely looking up from his paper. + +“I will unless I’m in some outlandish part of London!” cried Pocket, +reflecting for the first time that he had no idea in what part of +London he was. “I must catch it. It’s the last train back to school. +I’ll get into an awful row if I don’t!” + +“You’ll get into a worse one if you do,” rejoined the doctor, looking +over his paper, and not unfeelingly, at the boy. + +“What about?” + +Pocket held his breath instinctively as their eyes met. Baumgartner +answered with increased compassion and restraint, a grey look on his +grey face: + +“Something that happened this morning. I fear you will be wanted here +in town about it.” + +“Do tell me what, sir!” + +“Can you face things, my young fellow?” + +“Is it about my people—my mother?” the boy cried wildly, at her funeral +in a flash. + +“No—yourself.” + +“Then I can!” + +The doctor overcame his final hesitation. + +“Do you remember a man we left behind us on the grass?” + +“Perfectly; the grass looked as wet as it felt just now in my dream.” + +“Exactly. Didn’t it strike you as strange that he should be lying there +in the wet grass?” + +“I thought he was drunk.” + +“He was dead!” + +Pocket was shocked; he was more than shocked, for he had never +witnessed death before; but next moment the shock was uncontrollably +mitigated by a sudden view of the tragic incident as yet another +adventure of that adventurous night. No doubt one to retail in +reverential tones, but a most thrilling adventure none the less. He +only failed to see why it should affect him as much as the doctor +suggested. True, he might be called as witness at the inquest; his very +natural density was pierced with the awkward possibility of that. But +then he had not even known the man was dead. + +Had the doctor? + +Yes. + +Pocket wondered why he had not been told at the time, but asked another +question first. + +“What did he die of?” + +“A bullet!” + +“Suicide?” + +“No.” + +“Not murder?” + +“This paper says so.” + +“Does it say who did it?” + +“It cannot.” + +“Can you?” + +“Yes!” + +“Tell me.” + +The doctor threw out both hands in a despairing gesture. + +“Have I to tell you outright, my young fellow, that you did it +yourself?” + + + + +CHAPTER VII. +BLOOD-GUILTY + + +His overwhelming horror was not alleviated by a moment’s doubt. He +marvelled rather that he had never guessed what he had done. The +walking in his sleep, the shot that woke him, the first words of Dr. +Baumgartner, his first swift action, and the warm pistol in his own +unconscious hand: these burning memories spoke more eloquently than any +words. They would have told their own tale at once, if only he had +known the man was dead. Why had he been deceived? It was cruel, it was +infamous, to have kept the truth from him for a single instant. Thus +wildly did the stricken youth turn and rend his benefactor for the very +benefaction of a day’s rest in ignorance of his deed. The doctor +defended himself firmly, frankly, with much patience and some cynicism. +Pocket was reminded of the state he himself had been in at the time. He +also might have been a dying man, he was assured, and could well +believe on looking back. Baumgartner had actually opened his lips to +tell him the truth, but had checked himself in sheer humanity. Again +the boy could confirm the outward detail out of his own recollection. +To have told him later in the morning, the doctor went on to say, with +an emphasis not immediately understood, could have undone nothing. He +acknowledged a grave responsibility, but rightly or wrongly he had put +the living before the dead. + +How had he known the man was dead? Baumgartner smiled at the question. +He was not only a doctor, but an old soldier who had fought in one at +least of the bloodiest battles in European history. He had seen too +many men fall shot through the heart to be mistaken for a moment; but +in point of fact he had confirmed his conviction by brief examination +while Pocket was fetching his things from behind the bush. Pocket +pressed for earlier details with a morbid appetite which was not +gratified without reluctance, and out of a laconic interchange the deed +was gradually reconstructed with appealing verisimilitude. It was +Baumgartner who had first caught sight of the somnambulist, treading +warily like the blind, yet waving the revolver as he went, as though +any moment he might let it off. The moment came with a wretched reeling +man who joined Baumgartner on the path, and would not be warned. The +poor man had raised a drunken shout and been shot pointblank through +the heart. The doctor described him as leaping backward from the +levelled barrel, then into the air and down in the dew upon his face. + +The boy buried his face and wept; but even in his anguish he now +recalled the shout before the shot. The enforced description had been +so vivid in the end that he beheld the scene as plainly as though he +had been wide awake. Then he dwelt upon the dead man, looking nothing +else as he now remembered him, and that sent him off at a final +tangent. + +He cried, looking up with a shudder for all his tears, “What about that +negative you smashed? It was the poor dead man all the time!” + +“It was,” replied Baumgartner; “but it was never meant to be. I had you +in focus when you fired. What I did was done instinctively, but with +time to think I should have done just the same. You had given me the +chance of a lifetime, though nothing has come of it so far. And that +was another reason for saving you, ill as you were, from the immediate +consequences of an innocent act.” + +Pocket was passionately honest, as his worst friends knew; he had an +instinctive admiration for downright honesty in another. His young +soul was torn with grief and pity for the dead; he was already haunted +by the inevitable and complex consequences of his fatal misadventure, +and yet he could dimly appreciate the candid declaration of one who had +attempted to turn that tragedy to instantaneous and inconceivable +account. It was the mistaken kindness to himself that he still found +most difficult to forgive. + +“It’s got to come out,” he groaned; “this will make it all the worse.” + +“You mean the delay?” + +“Yes! Who’s to tell them I didn’t do it on purpose, and run away, and +then think better of it?” + +Baumgartner smiled. + +“Surely I am,” said he; but his smile went out with the words. “If only +they believe me!” he added as though it was a new idea to him. + +It was a terrifying one to Pocket. + +“Why shouldn’t they?” was his broken exclamation. + +“I don’t know. I never thought of it before. But what can I swear to, +after all? I can swear you shot a man, but I can’t swear you shot him +in your sleep!” + +“You said you saw I did!” + +“So I did, my young fellow,” replied the doctor, with a kinder smile; +“at least I can swear that you were walking with your eyes shut, and I +thought you were walking in your sleep. It’s not quite the same thing. +It is near it. But we are talking about my evidence on oath in a court +of justice.” + +“Shall I be tried?” asked the schoolboy in a hoarse whisper. + +“Perhaps only by the magistrate,” replied the other, soothingly; “let +us hope it will stop at that.” + +“But it must, it must!” cried Pocket wildly. “I’m absolutely innocent! +You said so yourself a minute ago; you’ve only to swear it as a doctor? +They can’t do anything to me—they can’t possibly!” + +The doctor stood looking into the sunless garden with a troubled face. + +“Dr. Baumgartner!” + +“Yes, my young fellow?” + +“They can’t do anything to me, can they?” + +Baumgartner returned to the fireside with his foreign shrug. + +“It depends what you call anything,” said he. “They cannot hang you; +after what I should certainly have to say I doubt if they could even +detain you in custody. But you would only be released on bail; the case +would be sent for trial; it would get into every paper in England; your +family could not stop it, your schoolfellows would devour it, you +would find it difficult to live down both at home and at school. In +years to come it will mean at best a certain smile at your expense! +That is what they can do to you,” concluded the doctor, apologetically. +“You asked me to tell you. It is better to be candid. I hoped you would +bear it like a man.” + +Pocket was not even bearing it like a manly boy; he had flung himself +back into the big chair, and broken down for the first time utterly. +One name became articulate through his sobs. “My mother!” he moaned. +“It’ll kill her! I know it will! Oh, that I should live to kill my +mother too!” + +“Mothers have more lives than that; they have more than most people,” +remarked Baumgartner sardonically. + +“You don’t understand! She has had a frightful illness, bad news of any +kind has to be kept from her, and can you imagine worse news than this? +She mustn’t hear it!” cried the boy, leaping to feet with streaming +eyes. “For God’s sake, sir, help me to hush it up!” + +“It’s in the papers already,” replied Baumgartner, with a forbearing +shrug. + +“But my part in it!” + +“You said it had got to come out.” + +“I didn’t realise all it meant—to her!” + +“I thought you meant to make a clean breast of it?” + +“So I did; but now I don’t!” cried Pocket, vehemently. “Now I would +give my own life, cheerfully, rather than let her know what I’ve +done—than drag them all through that!” + +“Do you mean what you say?” + +Baumgartner appeared to be forming some conditional intention. + +“Every syllable!” said Pocket. + +“Because, you know,” explained the doctor, “it is a case of now or +never so far as going to Scotland Yard is concerned.” + +“Then it’s never!” + +“I must put it plainly to you. It’s not too late to do whatever you +decide, but you must decide now. I would still go with you to Scotland +Yard, and the chances are that they would still accept the true story +of to-day. I have told you what I believe to be the worst that can +happen to you; it may be that rather more may happen to me for +harbouring you all day as I have done. I hope not, but I took the law +into my own hands, and I I am prepared to abide by the law if you so +decide this minute.” + +“I have decided.” + +“Mind you, it would mean putting yourself unreservedly in my hands, at +any rate for the present,” said Baumgartner, impressively. “Better +come to Scotland Yard this minute than go back to school and blab about +the whole thing there!” + +“I shouldn’t do that.” + +“I’m not so sure,” replied the acute doctor. “I believe I know you +better than you know yourself; one learns more of a person in an hour +like this than in a whole humdrum lifetime. I believe you would find it +very difficult not to tell somebody.” + +Pocket admitted it with a natural outburst of his leading quality. In +truth no previous act or word of Baumgartner’s had inspired such +confidence as this unerring piece of insight. It seemed to the boy a +perfect miracle of discernment. He was not old enough to know that what +he would have done, in his weakness, most grown-up men and women of his +temperament would have done in theirs. + +“Remember,” resumed the doctor, “you would have the whole of to-day to +account for; it’s not as though you wouldn’t have some very awkward +questions to answer the moment you got back to school.” + +And again the lad marvelled at this intuition into public-school +conditions on the part of one who could have no first-hand knowledge of +those insular institutions. But this fresh display of understanding +only confirmed him in his resolve. + +“I trust you, sir,” said he; “haven’t you done enough for me to make +me? I put myself, as you say, absolutely in your hands; and I’m +grateful to you for all you’ve done and whatever you mean to do!” + +“Even though it comes to hiding with us here in London?” + +“No matter what it comes to,” cried Pocket, strangely exalted now, “so +long as my people never know!” + +“They may think you dead.” He thought of saying that he wished he was; +but it would not have been true; even then it would have been a lie, +and Pocket was not the boy to tell one if he knew it. + +“That would be better than knowing what I have done,” was what he said; +and in his exaltation he believed no less. + +“You quite see that you are taking a step which must be final?” + +“It is final—absolutely—so far as I am concerned.” + +And it was meant to be, in all good faith; the very fulness and +fairness of the doctor’s warnings served but to strengthen that +resolve. But Baumgartner, as if to let well or ill alone, dropped the +matter with a clinching shrug; and presently he left his visitor, less +wisely, to brood on it alone. + +Pocket was a dab at brooding! That is the worst of your conscientious +ass; he takes his decision like a man; he means to stick to it like a +sportsman; but he cannot help wondering whether he has decided for the +best, and what would have happened if he had decided otherwise, and +what his world will say about him as it is. + +This one went much further in the unique stress of his extraordinary +position. He pictured his people dressing for dinner at home; he +pictured his form sitting down to private-work in his form-master’s +hall; there was no end to his mental pictures, for they included one of +himself on the scaffold in the broad-arrows of the little old waxwork +at Madame Tassaud’s! He could not help himself; his mind was crumbling +with his dreadful deed and its awful possibilities. Now his heart bled +honestly for the poor dead man, now for his own mother and sister, and +now not less freely for himself. He had been so innocent in the whole +matter; he had only been an innocent and rather sporting fool. And now +one of these lives was ended by his hand, and all the rest would be +darkened for ever after! + +It was too great a burden for a boy to bear; but Pocket bore it far +into the long June twilight, scarcely stirring in the big soft chair, +yet never leaning back in it again. He sat hunched up as though once +more battling for breath, but curiously enough his bodily distress had +flown before that of the mind. Pocket would thankfully have changed +them back again, for his brain was as clear as his bronchial tubes, its +capacity for suffering undimmed by a single physical preoccupation. +Between seven and eight the young lady of the house came in with +candles and a kind of high-tea on a tray; she also brought a box of +d’Auvergne Cigarettes and the latest evening paper, which her uncle +thought that Mr. Upton would like to see. That was how the girl +addressed the boy, and the style always made him feel, and wish to +seem, something of a man. But his present effort in that direction was +sadly perfunctory: he almost ejected little Miss Platts in his +eagerness to shut the door on her and see the news. + +It was neither unimportant nor at first sight reassuring. The dead man +had been identified by the police, who knew him of old, and were +reported as hopeful of obtaining a clue through his identity. The clue +was the point that stuck like a burr in the boyish brain; his idea of a +clue was one leading straight to himself; it took Dr. Baumgartner to +explain the true value of the identity clause, and bid the boy eat his +meal. + +“Trust the police!” said he. “They’re on a false scent already; they +may try at that end till it turns their hair grey!” + +Pocket disliked this tone; he had begun to think almost as +reverentially of his victim as of a dead member of his own family. It +appeared thus early, however, that in life the defunct had been by no +means worthy of respect. Rowton Houses had been his only home, except +when his undistinguished offences got him into gaol; the surreptitious +practices of the professional mendicant, his sole means of livelihood. +So much was to be read between the few brief lines in the stop-press +column of the latest evening paper. Again it required Baumgartner to +extract comfort from such items. + +“At all events,” said he, “you cannot reproach yourself with the +destruction of a valuable life! The man was evidently the worthless +creature that he looked. You talk about your undesirable aliens, but +here in England you breed undesirables enough to manure the world! It’s +a public service to reduce their number.” + +This pitch of nauseous cynicism had not been reached at a bound; the +doctor had been working up to it all the evening, and this was the +climax of his cold-blooded consolation as the schoolboy mechanically +undressed himself for bed. His host had accompanied him up two pairs of +stairs, carrying candles, and his meerschaum pipe in aromatic blast. +Pocket felt a new chill through his veins, but he was not revolted as +he would have been at first. This extraordinary man had shown him still +more extraordinary kindness; the die was cast for them to stand or fall +together; and there was something about the gaunt old visionary, a +confidential candour, a dry intellectual plausibility, which could not +but stimulate respect for his ungodliest views. Whether they really +were his views, or only a tortuous attempt at comfort, the sympathy +underlying their expression was undoubted and indubitable. But the +doctor spoke as though he meant every word, and the boy only longed to +agree with him: his conscientious failure to do so declared itself in a +series of incoherent expostulations to which Baumgartner himself gave +articulate shape in order to demolish them in the next breath. + +“You say his life was as much to him as yours to you? Is that it, my +young fellow?” + +Pocket acknowledged the interpretation, and watched the Turk’s head +wreathed in cool blue clouds. + +“You might as well compare withered weed with budding flower!” cried +the poetic doctor. “You have an honourable life before you; he had a +disreputable one behind him. You were bred and nurtured in the lap of +luxury; he finds it for the first time in his——” + +But here even Baumgartner broke off abruptly. The boy was writhing in +his bed; the man sat down on the end of it. + +“You do such poor devils a service,” said he, “in sending them to a +world that cannot use them worse than this one. They are better under +the ground than lying on it drenched and drunk!” + +“It was a human life,” groaned the boy, shutting his eyes in pain. + +“Human life!” cried Baumgartner, leaping to his feet, his huge shadow +guying him on the ceiling. “What is this human life, and who are you +and I, that we set such store by it? The great men of this world never +did; it’s only the little people and the young who pule and whine about +human life. The ancient Roman sacrificed his weaklings as on an altar; +there are some of us in these days who would prescribe a Tarpeian Rock +for modern decadence. So much in pious parenthesis! Napoleon thought +nothing of your human life. Von Moltke, Bismarck, and our staff in +Germany thought as little of it as Napoleon; the Empire of my +countrymen was founded on a proper appreciation of the infinitesimal +value of human life, and your British Empire will be lost through +exaggerating its importance. Blood and Iron were our watchwords; +they’re on the tip of every Fleet Street pen to-day, but I speak of +what I know. I’ve heard the Iron shriek without ceasing, like the wind, +and I’ve felt the Blood like spray from a hot spring! I fought at +Gravelotte; as a public schoolboy you probably never heard the name +before this minute. I fought in the Prussian Guard. I saw you looking +at the pictures downstairs. I was in that charge across those hellish +ridges. Over two thousand of us fell dead in half an hour, but we +gained the victory. More Germans were killed that day—that sweltering +August afternoon—than English in your whole South African War that took +you years! The flower of Germany fell at Gravelotte; that was human +life with a vengeance! But an Empire rose out of my comrades’ ashes. +And that’s all it’s for, this human life of yours: for the +master-builders to lay out in their wisdom on the upward road.” + +The schoolboy was carried away. In the sudden eloquence of this strange +outburst, with its poetic frenzy, its ruthless idealism, its wild +bloodthirsty nobility, the youthful listener lost sight of its +irrelevancy, or rather it was the irrevelant features that flared up +first in his brain. It was a childish question, but here was a very +child, and he could not help asking the fierce old soldier whether he +had escaped without a wound. + +“Without a scratch,” was the reply. “I come home. I leave the army. I +ally my human life with one that is all but divine. My Queen is struck +down dead at my side within a year. And you expect me to pity the +veriest pawn in the game!” + +The boy was never to forget these bitter speeches altogether; there was +not a single sentence of them that he failed to recall at one time or +another word for word. He would see a wild arm waving, wisps of smoke +from a waving pipe, a core of nicotine in a curve of amber, and the +Turk’s face glistening in its heat like that of the hard old man +himself. He would hear the cynical and scornful voice softening in a +breath to the simple, tender, and domestic humanity of his race. The +voice and the face were with him throughout that night of his own +manifold misery; but the time had not come for so young a boy to +realise that Dr. Baumgartner had begun to say one thing, and been +carried away like his listener. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. +POINTS OF VIEW + + +On the following morning, the ominous Friday of this disastrous week, +there was a letter for Mr. Upton on the breakfast-table down in +Leicestershire. This circumstance was not so usual as it sounds, +because Mr. Upton conducted all his correspondence from his office at +the works. If you simply put the name of the village, as he did on his +stationery, to the works it went; it was necessary to direct your +letter to the hall if you wished it to be delivered there; and few +there were who had anything to say to Mr. Upton, on paper, unless it +was on business too. His youngest son, however, had furnished the more +impressive address to Dr. Bompas, whose hurried hand it was that dealt +the first blow. + +It so happened that a letter from Dr. Bompas had been expected; this +made the letter he wrote especially upsetting, and for the following +reason. Mrs. Upton had been so shaken by her vivid dream on the +Thursday morning, that her husband had telegraphed to Bompas, somewhat +against his own judgment, to know how he found their son. The reply had +been: “Better expecting him again to-day will write”—which prepared the +family for still more reassuring accounts in the morning. Lettice felt +relieved as the original discoverer of Dr. Bompas. Horace found his +views confirmed as to the systematic exaggeration of a touch of asthma, +and Fred was only prevented by absence from entirely agreeing with +Horace. Mr. Upton thought no more about the matter. But poor Mrs. Upton +lay upstairs looking forward to a letter which it was quite impossible +to show her now that it had come. + +Mr. Upton read it more than once without a word; and it was not his way +to keep a family matter to himself at his own table; but on this +occasion he triumphed over temperament with an extraordinary instinct +for what was in the air. + +“The most infernal letter I ever had in my life!” was his only comment +as he thrust it in his pocket out of sight. Lettice, however, might +have seen that her father was far more distressed than angry had not +Horace promptly angered him by saying he was not surprised. The young +fellow’s face and the old one’s neck were redder before the last was +heard of that remark. A garbled paraphrase of the letter was eventually +vouchsafed; the boy had made very little improvement, and was not +likely to make more while he remained at a school where he was allowed +to use any remedy he liked; in fact, until he was taken away from +school, and placed under his own immediate control in town, Dr. Bompas +declined to persevere with the case. + +“Blighter!” said Horace impartially, as though now there were two of +them. Such was, in fact, the sum of his observations to Lettice when +their father had taken himself and his letter upstairs. Young Tony was +not “playing the game”; but then he never did play it to the expert +satisfaction of Fred and Horace. + +Upstairs the husband gave a more elaborate version of his letter, and +told a lie. He said he had destroyed the letter in his indignation. He +had destroyed it, but solely to escape any question of his showing it +to his wife. He said a happier thing by chance; he said that for two +pins he would motor over to the school and see for himself how the boy +really was; then perhaps he would be in a position to consider the +entreaty which Mrs. Upton added to the specialist’s demand, that his +patient should be placed under his eye in town. Mr. Upton went so far, +however, without much immediate intention of taking so strong a +measure. + +He wished to discuss the matter with Horace; he might be quite +justified in his fears. He was sorry he had let them lead to words with +his eldest son. There were aspects of the case, as it presented itself +to his mind, which he could hardly thresh out with Lettice, and her +mother must not know of his anxiety on any account. Horace, however, +had gone off earlier than usual in his dudgeon. + +Mr. Upton was not long in following him to the works. + +It was a charming garden that he passed through on his way; it charmed +its owner all the more from his having made it himself out of a few +rolling meadows. The rhododendrons were at the climax of their June +glory. The new red gravel (his own colouring to a shade) appealed to an +eye which had never looked longer than necessary in the glass. +Lawn-tennis courts were marked out snowily on a shaven lawn; the only +eyesore the good man encountered was poor Pocket’s snob-wickets painted +on a buttress in the back premises; his own belching blast-furnaces, +corroding and defiling acres and acres within a few hundred yards of +his garden wall, were but another form of beauty to the sturdy Briton +who had made them too. + +Horace was called into the private office and speedily propitiated. “I +was more anxious than I could tell you at the time,” his father said; +“the fact is, I concealed half the fellow’s letter on account of +Lettice. But it’s a man’s matter, and you ought to know.” + +Of course the letter had stated that the erratic patient had failed to +keep his appointment on the morning of writing; but if it had drawn the +line of information there, it is highly improbable that Mr. Upton would +have exercised so wise a discretion at table and in his wife’s room. +It now appeared that as a busy professional man the outspoken Bompas +had gone far out of his way to play Mahomet to his patient’s mountain. +Tony had told him where he hoped to stay in London, which Bompas +particularly wished to know on account of some special prescription the +boy was to try that night. On his failure to appear at the appointed +time, the doctor had telephoned to the address in question, only to +learn that the boy had not stayed there at all. He had been given +another address with the same result, except that from the second house +he gathered that the young gentleman had gone on to some hotel. Horace +was left to imagine a professional opinion of such proceedings, and +asked for his own on the facts as a man of the world. + +“Exactly like young Tony!” quoth Horace, never afraid to say what he +thought. + +“What! Like a lad of sixteen to go and put up at some hotel?” + +“Like Tony,” repeated Horace significantly. “Trust him to do what +nobody else ever did.” + +“But how could Spearman give him the chance?” + +“Heaven knows! Fred and I never got it.” + +“I thought he was to stay at Coverley’s?” + +“So I heard.” + +“I don’t like it! It’s all wrong at his age,” said Mr. Upton. He had +his notions of life and its temptations, and he was blunt enough with +his elder sons, yet it was not without some hesitation that he added: +“You don’t think there’s any question of bad company, do you?” + +And though Horace had “no use for” his so-called pocket edition, he +answered without any hesitation at all: “Not for a moment, from what I +know of Tony.” + +Mr. Upton was sorry he had said so much. He excused himself by +mentioning his wife’s dream, now family property, which had been on his +mind all this time. Horace, however, had no hesitation in informing him +that nobody nowadays believed in dreams. + +“Well, I never have, certainly,” said Mr. Upton. “But what can it be?” + +“He probably went up to Lord’s, and forgot all about his doctor.” + +“I hope not! You’re too down on him, Horace.” + +“If there was nobody to put him up it was the game to go back to +school.” + +“But he’s said to have gone to some hotel.” + +“I don’t suppose he did,” said Horace. “I expect he got back somehow.” + +The question was still under discussion when a telegram from Mr. +Spearman settled it. Where was Tony? He had not returned when due the +day before, and his friends in London wired that they knew nothing +about him. + +“What friends?” cried Mr. Upton, in a fury. “Why the devil couldn’t +Spearman give their names or Bompas the addresses he talked about?” + +Horace could only think of Mr. Coverley or “that Knaggs crowd.” Neither +he nor Fred had been at Coverley’s school, and young Tony’s friends +were by no means theirs. + +Mr. Upton thought Lettice would know, and was going to speak to her on +the telephone when Horace reminded him of his own remark about its +being “a man’s matter”; it was beginning to look, even to Horace, like +a serious one as well, and in his opinion it was much better that +neither his mother nor his sister should know anything at all about it +before it was absolutely necessary. Horace now quoted his mother’s +dream as the devil did Scripture, but adduced sounder arguments +besides; he was speaking quite nicely of them both, for instance, when +he declared that Lettice was wrapped up in Tony, and would be beside +herself if she thought any evil had overtaken him. It would be simply +impossible for her to hide her anxiety from the mother on whom she also +waited hand and foot. Mr. Upton disagreed a little there; he had good +reason to believe in Lettice’s power of suppressing her own feelings; +but for her own sake, and particularly in view of that discredited +dream, he now decided to keep his daughter in the dark as long as his +wife. + +It was his first decision; his next was to motor over to the school, as +he had fortunately told his wife he might, and have a word with Mr. +Spearman, who deserved hanging for the whole thing! The mischief was +done, however, and it was now a matter in which home and school +authorities must act together. A clerk was instructed to telephone to +the garage for the car to come straight to the works. And the +ironmaster stood waiting at his office window in a fever of anxiety. + +The grimy scene on which he looked had a constant charm for him, and +yet to-day it almost added to the bitterness of his heart. His was the +brain that had conceived those broad effects of smoke and flame, and +blackened faces lit by the light of molten metal; his the strong hand +and the stout heart which had brought his conception into being. Those +were his trucks bringing in his ore from his mines; that was his +consequential little locomotive fussing in front of them. His men, +dwellers in his cottages on the brow of that hill, which was also his, +happened to be tapping one of his furnaces at the moment; that was his +pig-iron running out into the moulds as magically as an electric +advertisement writes itself upon the London sky at night. The sense of +possession is the foible of many who have won all they have; the +ironmaster almost looked upon the hot air dancing over the white-hot +bars as his too. The whole sulphurous prospect, once a green pasture, +had long been his to all intents and purposes, and no second soul would +ever take his pride in it; to his children it would never be more than +the means of livelihood; and how had it repaid even him for a life’s +devotion? With a house of sorrow in the next valley! With a stricken +wife, and sons whose right hands kept their cunning for the +cricket-field, and one of whom the very thought had become a sudden +madness! + +Yet he could think of nothing else, except his wife, even in the great +green car that whisked him westward in a dancing cloud of dust; for he +did not drive himself, and the rush through the iced fragrance of the +summer’s day was a mental stimulant that did its work only too well. +Now it recalled the ailing infancy of the missing boy—bronchitis it had +been in the early stages—and how his mother had taken him to Hastings +three successive winters, and wrapped him up far too much. Old family +jokes cropped up in a new light, dimming the eyes without an instant’s +warning. On one of those flittings south the solicitous mother had +placed the uncomplaining child on a footwarmer, and forgotten him until +a cascade of perspiration apprised her of the effect: poor Mr. Upton +had never thought of the incident without laughter, until to-day. +Without doubt she had coddled him, and all for this, and she herself +too ill to hear a word about it! + +His mind harked back to his wife. In her sad case there was no +uncertainty. He thought of thirty years ago when he had seen her first. +There had been drama and colour in their meeting; the most celebrated +of the neighbouring packs had run a fox to earth on his works, indeed +in his very slag-heap! The author of cancerous furnaces in the green +heart of a grass country had never been a popular personage with the +hunting folk; but he was master of the situation that memorable day. It +was his terrier that went into the slag-heap like a ferret, and came +out bloody with a moribund fox; his pocket-knife that shore through the +brush, his hand that presented it across the wall to the only young +lady in at the death. The men in pink looking over, the hunt servants +with their work cut out on the other side, the tongue of molten slag +sticking out of the furnace mouth—the momentary contact of the +industrial and the sporting world—it was that strange and yet +significant scene which had first endeared its dingy setting to the +ironmaster’s heart. But he had made the contact permanent by falling in +love with the young lady of the brush and marrying her under all the +guns of her countified kith and kin. And now she was a stricken +invalid, and their youngest-born was God knew where! + +Of course there were no tidings of him at the school, where the now +distracted father spent a more explosive hour than he cared to think +about as he flew on to town in the car. He was afraid he had been very +rude to Mr. Spearman; but then Spearman had been rash enough to +repudiate his obvious responsibility in the matter. It was not his +fault that the boy went up to town so often to see his doctor and stay +the night. He had his own opinion of that arrangement, but it had +become his business to see it carried out. Mr. Upton got in a sharp +thrust here, to which the house-master retorted that if a boy of +seventeen could not be trusted to keep his word, he should like to know +who could! Tony had promised him faithfully to return that same night, +failing friends whom he had mentioned as certain to put him up; their +names Mr. Upton was able to demand at last as though they were so much +blood; and he could not have cursed them more freely if Spearman had +been a layman like himself. But that was all the information +forthcoming from this quarter; for, happening to ask what the head +master thought of the affair, Mr. Upton was calmly informed that it had +still to reach his ears; at which he stared, and then merely remarked +that he was not surprised, but in such a tone that Spearman sprang up +and led him straight into the presence. + +Now the Benevolent Despot of this particular seat of learning was an +astute pedagogue who could handle men as well as boys. He explained to +Mr. Upton that the safe-keeping of the unit was the house-master’s +concern, but agreed it was time that he himself was made acquainted +with the present case. He took it as seriously, too, as Mr. Upton could +have wished, but quite as frankly from his own point of view as his two +visitors did from each of theirs. He had no doubt the boy would turn +up, but when he did it would be necessary for him to give a +satisfactory account of his proceedings before he could be received +back into the school. + +“Bother the school!” cried Mr. Upton, diluting the anathema with +difficulty. “Let me find my lad alive and well; then you can do what +you like.” + +“But how do you propose to find him?” inquired the head master, with +only a dry smile (which disappointed Spearman) by way of rejoinder. + +“First I shall have a word with these infernal people who, on their own +showing, refused the boy a bed. I’ll give them a bit of my mind, I +promise you! Then there’s the hotel they seem to have driven him to; it +may be the one we always stay at, or one they’ve recommended. If I +can’t hear anything of him there, I suppose there’ll be nothing for it +but to call in the police.” + +“My dear sir,” exclaimed the head master, “you may as well call in the +public at once! It will be in the papers before you know where you are; +and that, I need hardly point out to you, is as undesirable from our +point of view as I should have thought it would be from yours.” + +“It’s more so from mine!” cried Mr. Upton, in fresh alarm and +indignation. “You think about your school. I think about my wife and +boy; it might kill her to hear about this before he’s found. But if I +don’t go to the police, who am I to go to?” The head master leant back +in his chair, and joined his finger-tips judicially. + +“There was a man we had down here to investigate an extraordinary case +of dishonesty, in which I was actually threatened with legal +proceedings on behalf of a certain boy. But this man Thrush came down +and solved the mystery within twenty-four hours, and saved the school a +public scandal.” + +“He may save you another,” said Mr. Upton, “if he can find my boy. What +did you say the name was?” + +“Thrush—Eugene Thrush—quite a remarkable man, and, I think, a +gentleman,” said the head master impressively. Further particulars, +including an address in Glasshouse Street, were readily supplied from +an advertisement in that day’s _Times_, in which Mr. Thrush was +described as an “inquiry agent,” capable alike of “delicate +investigations” and “confidential negotiations.” + +That was the very man for Mr. Upton, as he himself agreed. And he +departed both on speaking terms with Mr. Spearman, who said a final +word for his own behaviour in the matter, and grimly at one with the +head master on the importance of keeping it out of the papers. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. +MR. EUGENE THRUSH + + +The remarkable Mr. Thrush was a duly qualified solicitor, who had never +been the man for that orderly and circumscribed profession. The tide of +events which had turned his talents into their present channel, was +known to but few of his many boon companions, and much nonsense was +talked about him and his first career. It was not the case (as anybody +might have ascertained) that he had been struck off the rolls in +connection with the first great scandal in which he was professionally +concerned. Nor was there much more truth in the report that he drank, +in the ordinary interpretation of the term. + +It is true, however, that Mr. Thrush had a tall tumbler on his +dressing-table, to help him shave for the evening of that fateful +Friday. He was dressing for an early dinner before a first night. His +dressing-room, in which he also slept in Spartan simplicity, was the +original powder-closet of the panelled library out of which it led. +There was a third room in which his man Mullins prepared breakfast and +spent the day. But the whole was a glorified garret, at the top of such +stairs as might have sent a nervous client back for an escort. + +Mullins, with the expression of an undertaker’s mute (a calling he had +followed in his day), was laying out his master’s clothes as mournfully +as though his master were in them, instead of chatting genially as he +shaved. + +“I’m sorry to have missed your evidence, Mullins, but if we go into +this case it’s no use letting the police smell the competitive rat too +soon. Inquests are not in my line, and they’d have wondered what the +devil I was doing there, especially as you refrained from saying you +were in my service.” + +“I had no call, sir.” + +“Quite right, Mullins! An ideal witness, I can see you were. So you’d +only to describe the finding of the body?” + +“That was all, sir.” + +“And your description was really largely founded on fact?” + +Mullins stood like a funereal grenadier at his gentleman’s shaving +elbow. “I told the truth, sir, and nothing but the truth,” said he, +with sombre dignity. + +“But not the whole truth, eh, Mullins! What about the little souvenirs +you showed me yesterday?” + +“There was no call to name them either, sir. The cheroot-end I must +have picked up a hundred yards away, and even the medicine-cork wasn’t +on the actual scene of the murder.” + +“That’s all right, Mullins. I don’t see what they could possibly have +to do with it, myself; and really, but for the fluke of your being the +one to find the body, and picking the first-fruits for what they’re +worth, it’s the last kind of case that I should dream of touching with +a ten-foot pole. By the way, I suppose they won’t require you at the +adjourned inquest?” + +“They may not require me, sir, but I should like to attend, if quite +convenient,” replied Mullins deferentially. “The police were very +stingy with their evidence to-day; they’ve still to produce the fatal +bullet, and I should like a sight of that, sir.” + +Mr. Thrush did not continue the conversation, possibly because he took +as little real interest as he professed in the case which was being +thrust upon him, but more obviously owing to the necessary care in +shaving the corners of a delightfuly long and mobile mouth. Indeed, the +whole face emerging from the lather, as a cast from its clay, would +have delighted any eye but its own. It was fat and flabby as the rest +of Eugene Thrush; there was quite a collection of chins to shave; and +yet anybody but himself must have recognised the invincible freshness +of complexion, the happy penetration of every glance, as an earnest of +inexhaustible possibilities beneath the burden of the flesh. Great +round spectacles, through which he stared like a wise fish in an +aquarium, were caught precariously on a button of a nose which in +itself might have prevented the superficial observer from taking him +any more seriously than he took himself. + +Mr. Upton, who arrived before Thrush was visible, was an essentially +superficial and antipathetic observer of unfamiliar types; and being +badly impressed by the forbidding staircase, he had determined on the +landing to sound his man before trusting him. In the rank undergrowth +of his prejudices there was no more luxuriant weed than an innate +abhorrence of London and all Londoners, which neither the cause of his +visit nor the murky mien of Mullins was calculated to abate. The +library of books in solid bindings, many of them legal tomes, was the +first reassuring feature; another was the large desk, made +business-like with pigeon-holes and a telephone; but Mr. Upton was only +beginning to recover confidence when Eugene Thrush shook it sadly at +his first entry. + +It might have been by his face, or his fat, or his evening clothes seen +from the motorist’s dusty tweeds, almost as much as by the misplaced +joviality with which Thrush exclaimed: “I’m sorry to have kept you +waiting, sir, and the worst of it is that I can’t let you keep me!” + +This touched a raw nerve in the ironmaster, as the kind of reception +one had to come up to London to incur. “Then I’ll clear out!” said he, +and would have been as good as his word but for its instantaneous +effect. + +Thrush had pulled out a gold watch after a stare of kindly +consternation. + +“I really am rather rushed,” said he; “but I can give you four minutes, +if that’s any good to you.” + +Now, at first sight, before a word was spoken, Mr. Upton would have +said four hours or four days of that boiled salmon in spectacles would +have been no good to him; but the precise term of minutes, together +with a seemlier but not less decisive manner, had already quickened the +business man’s respect for another whose time was valuable. This is by +no means to say that Thrush had won him over in a breath. But the +following interchange took place rapidly. + +“I understand you’re a detective, Mr. Thrush?” + +“Hardly that, Mr.——I’ve left your card in the other room.” + +“Upton is my name, sir.” + +“I don’t aspire to the official designation, Mr. Upton, an inquiry +agent is all I presume to call myself.” + +“But you do inquire into mysteries?” + +“I’ve dabbled in them.” + +“As an amateur?” + +“A paid amateur, I fear.” + +“I come on a serious matter, Mr. Thrush—a very serious matter to me!” + +“Pardon me if I seem anything else for a moment; as it happens, you +catch me dabbling, or rather meddling, in a serious case which is none +of my business, but strictly a matter for the police, only it happens +to have come my way by a fluke. I am not a policeman, but a private +inquisitor. If you want anything or anybody ferreted out, that’s my job +and I should put it first.” + +“Mr. Thrush, that’s exactly what I do want, if only you can do it for +me! I had reason to fear, from what I heard this morning, that my +youngest child, a boy of sixteen, had disappeared up here in London, or +been decoyed away. And now there can be no doubt about it!” + +So, in about one of the allotted minutes, Thrush was trusted on grounds +which Mr. Upton could not easily have explained; but the time was up +before he had concluded a briefly circumstantial report of the facts +within his knowledge. + +“When can I see you again?” he asked abruptly of Thrush. + +“When? What do you mean, Mr. Upton?” + +“The four minutes must be more than up.” + +“Go on, my dear sir, and don’t throw good time after bad. I’m only +dining with a man at his club. He can wait.” + +“Thank you, Mr. Thrush.” + +“More good time! How do you know the boy hasn’t turned up at school or +at home while you’ve been fizzing in a cloud of dust?” + +“I was to have a wire at the hotel I always stop at; there’s nothing +there; but the first thing they told me was that my boy had been for a +bed which they couldn’t give him the night before last. I did let them +have it! But it seems the manager was out, and his understrappers had +recommended other hotels; they’ve just been telephoning to them all in +turn, but at every one the poor boy seems to have fared the same. Then +I’ve been in communication with these infernal people in St. John’s +Wood, and with the doctor, but none of them have heard anything. I +thought I’d like to do what I could before coming to you, Mr. Thrush, +but that’s all I’ve done or know how to do. Something must have +happened!” + +“It begins to sound like it,” said Thrush gravely. + +“But there are happenings and happenings; it may be only a minor +accident. One moment!” + +And he returned to the powder-closet of its modish day, where Mullins +was still pursuing his ostensibly menial avocation. What the master +said was inaudible in the library, but the man hurried out in front of +him, and was heard clattering down the evil stairs next minute. + +“In less than an hour,” explained Thrush, “he will be back with a list +of the admissions at the principal hospitals for the last forty-eight +hours. I don’t say there’s much in it; your boy had probably some +letter or other means of easier indentification about him; but it’s +worth trying.” + +“It is, indeed!” murmured Mr. Upton, much impressed. + +“And while he is trying it,” exclaimed Eugene Thrush, lighting up as +with a really great idea, “you’ll greatly oblige me by having a +whisky-and-soda in the first place.” + +“No, thank you! I haven’t had a bite all day. It would fly to my head.” + +“But that’s its job; that’s where it’s meant to fly,” explained the +convivial Mr. Thrush, preparing the potion with practised hand. Baited +with a biscuit it was eventually swallowed, and a flagging giant +refreshed by his surrender. It made him like his new acquaintance too +well to bear the thought of detaining him any more. + +“Go to your dinner, man, and let me waylay you later!” + +“Thank you, I prefer to keep you now I’ve got you, Mr. Upton! My man +begins his round by going to tell my pal I can’t dine with him at all. +Not a word, I beg! I’ll have a bite with you instead when Mullins gets +back, and in a taxi that won’t be long.” + +“But do you think you can do anything?” + +The question floated in pathetic evidence on a flood of inarticulate +thanks. + +“If you give me time, I hope so,” was the measured answer. “But the +needle in the hay is nothing to the lost unit in London, and it will +take time. I’m not a magazine detective, Mr. Upton; if you want a +sixpenny solution for soft problems, don’t come to me!” + +At an earlier stage the ironmaster would have raised his voice and +repeated that this was a serious matter; even now he looked rather +reproachfully at Eugene Thrush, who came back to business on the spot. + +“I haven’t asked you for a description of the boy, Mr. Upton, because +it’s not much good if we’ve got to keep the matter to ourselves. But is +there anything distinctive about him besides the asthma?” + +“Nothing; he was never an athlete, like my other boys.” + +“Come! I call that a distinction in itself,” said Mr. Thrush, smiling +down his own unathletic waistcoat. “But as a matter of fact, nothing +could be better than the very complaint which no doubt unfits him for +games.” + +“Nothing better, do you say?” + +“Emphatically, from my point of view. It’s harder to hide a man’s +asthma than to hide the man himself.” + +“I never thought of that.” + +It was impossible to tell whether Thrush had thought of it before that +moment. The round glasses were levelled at Mr. Upton with an +inscrutable stare of the marine eyes behind them. + +“I suppose it has never affected his heart?” he inquired nonchalantly; +but the nonchalance was a thought too deliberate for paternal +perceptions quickened as were those of Mr. Upton. + +“Is that why you sent round the hospitals, Mr. Thrush?” + +“It was one reason, but honestly not the chief.” + +“I certainly never thought of his heart!” + +“Nor do I think you need now, in the case of so young a boy,” said +Thrush earnestly. “On the other hand, I shouldn’t be surprised if his +asthma were to prove his best friend.” + +“It owes him something!” + +“Do you know what he does for it?” + +“Yes, I do,” said Mr. Upton, remembering the annoying letter he seemed +to have received some weeks before. “He smokes, against his doctor’s +orders.” + +“Do you mean tobacco?” + +“No—some stuff for asthma.” + +“In cigarettes?” + +“Yes.” + +“Do you know the name?” + +“I have it here.” + +The offensive letter was not only produced, but offered for inspection +after a precautionary glance. Thrush was on his feet to receive it in +outstretched hand. Already he looked extraordinarily keen for his bulk, +but the reading of the letter left him alive and alert to the last +superfluous ounce. + +“But this is magnificent!” he cried, with eyes as round as their +glasses. + +“I confess I don’t see why.” + +“Cigarettes d’Auvergne!” + +“Some French rubbish.” + +“The boy has evidently been dependent on them?” + +“It looks like it.” + +“And this man Bompas made him give them all up?” + +“So he has the impudence to say.” + +“Is it possible you don’t see the importance of all this?” + +Mr. Upton confessed incompetence unashamed. + +“I never heard of these cigarettes before; they’re an imported article; +you can’t get them everywhere, I’ll swear! Your boy has got to rely on +them; he’s out of reach of the doctor who’s forbidden them; he’ll try +to get them somewhere! If he’s been trying in London, I’ll find out +where before I’m twenty-four hours older!” + +“But how can you?” asked Mr. Upton, less impressed with the possibility +than by this rapid if obvious piece of reasoning. + +“A. V. M.!” replied Eugene Thrush, with cryptic smile. + +“Who on earth is he?” + +“Nobody; it’s the principle on which I work.” + +“A. V. M.?” + +“Otherwise the old nursery game of Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral.” + +Again Mr. Upton had to prevent himself by main force from declaring it +all no laughing matter; but his silence was almost bellicose. + +“You divide things into two,” explained Thrush, “and go on so dividing +them until you come down to the indivisible unit which is the answer to +the riddle. Animal or Vegetable? Vegetable or Mineral? Northern or +Southern Hemisphere? Ah! I thought your childhood was not so very much +longer ago than mine.” + +Mr. Upton had shrugged an impatient recognition of the game. + +“In this case it’s Chemists Who Do Sell D’Auvergne Cigarettes and +Chemists Who Don’t. Then—Chemists Who Do and Did Yesterday, and +Chemists Who Do but Didn’t! But we can probably improve on the old game +by playing both rounds at once.” + +“I confess I don’t quite follow,” said Mr. Upton, “though there seems +some method in the madness.” + +“It’s all the method I’ve got,” rejoined Thrush frankly. “But you shall +see it working, for unless I’m much mistaken this is Mullins back +sooner than I expected.” + +Mullins it was, and with the negative information expected and desired, +though the professional melancholy of his countenance might have been +the precursor of the worst possible news. The hospitals on his rapid +round had included Charing Cross, St. Thomas’s, St. George’s, and the +Royal Free; but he had telephoned besides to St. Mary’s and St. +Bartholomew’s. At none of these institutions had a young gentleman of +the name of Upton, or of unknown name, been admitted in the last +forty-eight hours. Mullins, however, looked as sympathetically +depressed as though no news had lost its proverbial value; and he had +one of those blue-black faces that lend themselves to the look, his +chin being in perpetual mourning for the day before. + +“Don’t go, Mullins! I’ve another job for you,” said Eugene Thrush. +“Take the telephone directory and the London directory, and sit you +down at my desk. Look up ‘chemists’ under ‘trades’; there are pages of +them. Work through the list with the telephone directory, and ring up +every chemist who’s on the telephone, beginning with the ones nearest +in, to ask if he keeps d’Auvergne Cigarettes for asthma. Make a note of +the first few who do; go round to them all in turn, and be back here at +nine with a box from each. Complain to each of the difficulty of +getting ’em elsewhere—say you wonder there’s so little demand—and with +any luck you should find out whether and to whom they’ve sold any since +Wednesday evening.” + +“But surely that’s the whole point?” suggested the ironmaster. + +“It’s the next point,” said Thrush. “The first is to divide the +chemists of London into the Animals who keep the cigarettes and the +Vegetables who don’t. I should really like to play the next round +myself, but Mullins must do something while we’re out.” + +“While we’re out, Mr. Thrush?” + +“My dear Mr. Upton, you’re going to step across into the Café Royal +with me, and have a square meal before you crack up!” + +“And what about your theatre?” asked Mr. Upton, to whom resistance was +a physical impossibility, when they had left the sombre Mullins +entrenched behind telephone and directories. + +“The theatre! I was only going out of curiosity to see the sort of +tripe that any manager has the nerve to serve up on a Friday in June; +but I’m not going to chuck the drama that’s come to me!” + +The ironmaster dined with his head in a whirl. It was a remarkably good +dinner that Thrush ordered, if as inappropriate to the occasion as to +his own weight. His guest, however, knew no more what he was eating or +drinking than he knew the names of the people in diamonds and white +waistcoats who stared at the distraught figure in the country clothes. +It even escaped his observation that the obese Thrush was an unblushing +gourmet with a cynical lust for Burgundy. The conscious repast of Mr. +Upton consisted entirely of the conversation of Eugene Thrush, and of +that conversation only such portions as exploited his professional +theories, and those theories only as bearing on the case in hand. He +was merely bored when Thrush tried to distract him with some account +of the murder in which he himself was only interested because his +myrmidon happened to have discovered the body. What was the murder of +some ragamuffin in Hyde Park to a man from the country who had lost his +son? + +“I don’t see how your theory can work there,” he sighed, out of pure +politeness, when Thrush paused to punish the wine. + +“It should work all right,” returned Thrush. “You take an absolutely +worthless life; what do you do it for? It must be one of two motives: +either you have a grudge against the fellow or his existence is a +menace to you. Revenge or fear; he wants your money, or he’s taken your +wife! But what revenge can there be upon a poor devil without the price +of a bed on his indescribable person? He hasn’t anything to bless +himself with, and he makes it a bit too hot for somebody who has, eh? +So you whittle it down. And then perhaps by sheer luck you run your +blade into the root of the matter.” + +Thrush gave up trying to take the other out of himself, since his +boldest statements were allowed to pass unchallenged, unless they dealt +with the one subject on the poor man’s mind. The cessation of his +voice, however, caused a twinge of conscience in the bad listener; he +made a mental grab at the last phrase, and was astonished to find it +germane to his own thoughts. + +“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned luck, Mr. Thrush!” + +“When was the first?” + +“You spoke of Friday as an unlucky day, as God knows this one is to me! +Are you of a superstitious turn of mind?” + +“Not seriously.” + +“You don’t believe in dreams, for example?” + +“That’s another question,” said Thrush, his spectacles twinkling to +colossal rubies as he sipped his Santenay. “Why do you ask?” + +“If you’re a disbeliever it’s no use my telling you.” + +“Perhaps I’m neither one thing nor the other.” + +“Have you ever known a mystery solved through a dream?” + +“I’ve heard of one,” said Thrush, with a significant stress upon the +verb; “that’s the famous old murder in the Red Barn a hundred years +ago. The victim’s mother dreamed three nights running that her missing +daughter was buried in the Red Barn, and there she was all the time. +There _may_ have been other cases.” + +“Cases in which a parent has dreamt of an absent child, at the very +time at which something terrible has happened to that child?” + +“Any amount of those.” + +The father’s voice had trembled with the question. Thrush put down his +glass as he gave his answer, and his spectacled eyes fixed themselves +in a more attentive stare. + +“Do you think they’re all coincidences?” demanded Mr. Upton hoarsely. + +“Some of them may be, but certainly not all,” was the reply. “That +would be the greatest coincidence of the lot!” + +“I hardly like to tell you why I ask,” said Mr. Upton, much agitated; +for he could be as emotional as most irascible men. + +“You’ve been dreaming about the boy?” + +“Not I; but my poor wife has; that was one reason why I daren’t tell +her he had disappeared.” + +“Why? What was the dream?” + +“That she saw him—and heard a shot.” + +“A shot!” + +Thrush looked as though he had heard one himself, but only until he had +time to think. + +“She says she did hear one,” added Mr. Upton, “and that she wasn’t +dreaming at all.” + +“But when was this?” + +“Between six and seven yesterday morning.” This time Thrush did not +move a muscle of his face; it only lit up like a Chinese lantern, and +again he was quick to quench the inner flame; but now the coincidence +was complete. Coincidences, however, had nothing to say to the A. V. M. +system, neither was Eugene Thrush the man to jump to wild conclusions +on the strength of one. He asked whether the boy was very fond of +shooting in the holidays, as though that might have accounted for the +dream, but his father was not aware that he had ever smelt powder in +his life. He little dreamt what Thrush was driving at! The tone of +subsequent inquiries concerning Mrs. Upton’s health (already mentioned +as the great reason for keeping the affair as long as possible a +secret) sounded purely compassionate to an ear unconsciously aching for +compassion. + +“Then that accounts for it,” said Thrush, when he had heard the whole +sad story. There was the faintest ring of disappointment in his tone. +“What do you mean?” + +“That anybody as ill as that, more particularly a lady, is naturally +fanciful, I’m afraid.” + +“Then you think it a mere delusion, after all?” + +“My dear Mr. Upton, it would be presumption to express an opinion +either way. I only say, don’t think too much about that dream. And +since you won’t keep me company in my cups, we may as well rejoin the +faithful Mullins.” + +They ran into Mullins, as it happened, in Glasshouse Street, and Mr. +Upton for one would not have recognised him as the same being. His +sepulchral face was alight with news—it was the transformation of the +undertaker’s mute into the wedding guest. And yet he had only one box +of the d’Auvergne Cigarettes to show for his evening’s work, and that +chemist had declared it was the first he had sold for weeks. + +Thrush ordered his man upstairs, and took his late guest’s hand as soon +as ever he dared. + +“You need a good night’s rest, my dear sir, and it’s no use climbing to +my masthead for nothing. Mullins and I will do best if you don’t mind +leaving us to ourselves for the night; but first thing tomorrow morning +I shall be at your service again, and I hope there will be some +progress to report.” + +Mullins was waiting for him with all the lights on, his solemn face +still more strikingly illuminated. + +“Look at this, sir, look at this! These are the d’Auvergne Cigarettes!” + +“So I perceive.” + +“This stump is the stump of a d’Auvergne Cigarette.” + +“I hope you enjoyed it, Mullins.” + +“I didn’t smoke it, sir!” + +“Who did?” + +“That’s for you to say, sir; but it’s one of the little things I +collected near the scene of the murder, but took for a common cheroot, +yesterday morning in Hyde Park.” + +“Near the actual place?” + +Thrush had pounced upon the stump, and was holding it under the +strongest of the electric lamps. + +“Under a seat, sir, not above a hundred yards away!” + + + + +CHAPTER X. +SECOND THOUGHTS + + +Pocket had been dreaming again. What else could he expect? Waking, he +felt that he had got off cheaply; that he might have been through the +nightmare of battle, as described by one who had, and depicted in the +engravings downstairs, instead of on a mercifully hazy visit to the +Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s. The trouble was that he had +seen the one and not the other, and what he had seen continued to haunt +him as he lay awake, but quite horribly when he fell back into a doze. +There was nothing nebulous about the vile place then; it was as light +and bright as the room in which he lay. The sinister figures in the +panelled pens were swathed in white, as he had somewhere read that they +always were at nights. Their evil faces were shrouded out of sight. But +that only made their defiant, portly figures the more humanly inhuman +and terrifying; it was as though they had all risen, in their +winding-sheets, from their murderer’s graves. Better by far their +beastly faces, that you knew were wax! So he reasoned with himself, and +screwed up his courage, and laid hands on one of the shorter figures +that he could reach. It rocked stiffly in its place, a most palpable +and reassuring waxwork. He unwound the cerements from the hollow and +unyielding head; and the face was new to him; it had not been there the +other afternoon. It was a young face like his own, as ill-mounted on +high shoulders, with thickish lips ajar, and only a pair of intelligent +eyes to redeem an apparent heaviness: one and all his own identical +characteristics. And no wonder, for the last recruit to the waxen army +of murderers was a faithful model of himself. + +There was no awaking from this dream: the dreamer was not positive that +he had been asleep. The veiled sunlight in his room was just what it +had seemed in that deserted dungeon of swaddled malefactors. The boy +shuddered till the bed shook under him. But after that he still lay on, +facing himself as he had seen himself, and his deed as others must see +it soon or late. Not the actual accident in the Park; but this hiding +in the heart of London, this skulking among strangers, this leaving his +own people to mourn him as the dead! + +The thought of them drew scalding tears. Never had they seemed so dear +to him before. It was not only Lettice and their parents. Fred and +Horace, how good they had been to him at school, and how proud he had +been of them! What would they think of him if he went on skulking like +this? What would they have done in his place? Anything but lie low like +that, thought Pocket, and resolved forthwith to play the game as +preached and practised by his brothers. It was strange that he should +have been so dense about so plain a duty overnight; this morning he saw +it as sharp as an image in perfect focus on the ground-glass screen…To +think that a mad photographer should have talked him into an attitude +as mad as his own! This morning he saw the common sense of the +situation as well as its right and wrong. Nothing would happen to him +if he gave himself up, but anything might if he waited till he was +caught. As for the consequences to his poor mother, surely in the end +suspense and uncertainty would eat deeper into the slender cord of her +life than the shock of the truth would cut. + +Having made up his mind, however, as to the only thing to do, the boy +behaved characteristically in not hastening to do it. The ordeal in +front of him, beginning in certain conflict with Baumgartner, and +ending in a blaze of wretched notoriety, was a severe one to face; +meanwhile he lay in such peace and safety as it was only human to +prolong a little. That night, for all his moral innocence, he might +lie in prison; let him make the most of a good bed while he had one, +especially as he was still mysteriously free from asthma. The last +consideration took his mind off the ethical dilemma for quite a little +time. He remembered the doctor at home telling him that he himself had +suffered from chronic asthma, but had lost it after a carriage accident +in which he was nearly killed. + +“My accident may have done the same for me,” thought Pocket—and was +bitterly ashamed next moment to catch himself thinking complacently of +any aspect of his deed. Its other aspects were a sufficient punishment. + +To get up, and raise the green linen blind, flooding with sunshine the +plain upstairs room to which Baumgartner had conducted his guest, was +to conjure uncomfortable visions of the eccentric doctor, with his +ferocious meerschaum, his bloodthirsty battle-talk, and all his +arguments in favour of the course which Pocket had now determined to +abandon. The boy fully realised that he had been given his chance, and +had refused it. And of all the interviews before him, that with Dr. +Baumgartner was the one that he most dreaded, and would have given most +to escape. + +Could he escape it? That was an idea; others came of it. If he did +escape, and did give himself up for what he had done, there was no +reason why he should involve Baumgartner in that voluntary confession. +Suppose he hailed the first cab he saw, and drove over to St. John’s +Wood to borrow money (they could scarcely refuse him that), and then +took the first train home to tell his father everything in the first +instance, that father would never hear of his incriminating a stranger +who had befriended him according to his lights. He himself need never +say where he had spent the twenty-four hours after the tragedy, even if +he were ever to know. And so far he had no notion, thanks to the +ridiculous posture prescribed by Baumgartner in the cab; he could only +suppose the motive had been to keep him out of sight, the benefit to +his breathing a mere pretext; and yet it was a curious result that +after a day and a night he should still be in total ignorance of his +whereabouts. + +He opened his window and looked out; but it was a back window, and the +sunny little strip of garden below was one of many in a row. Old +discoloured walls divided them from each other and from the gardens of +a parallel block of bigger houses, whose slates and chimneys towered +above the intervening trees. The street in front of those houses was +completely hidden, but the hum of its traffic travelled pleasantly to +the ear, and there were other reassuring sights and sounds. In one of +the contiguous gardens a very small boy was wheeling a doll’s +perambulator; on the other side, where the fine, warm gravel reminded +Pocket of the carroty kind at home, a man was mowing an equally trim +lawn. Pocket listened to the murmur of the machine, and watched the +green spray playing over the revolving knives, and savoured the +curiously countrified smell of cut grass; the combined effect was a +still stronger reminiscence of his father’s garden, where his own old +pony pulled the machine in leather shoes. + +Because such associations filled his eyes again, there seemed no end to +them. Somebody was playing the piano near some open window, and playing +almost as well as Lettice did, and playing one of her things! Pocket +could not bear to listen or look out any longer, and he dressed as +quietly as he could. He had almost resolved to slip out without a word, +whatever else he did, if the opportunity offered. It simply never +occurred to him, until he made the discovery, that anybody would dare +to lock him in his room! + +Yet they had done it; that infernal old German doctor had had the cheek +to do it; and the effect on the boy, who so expressed the situation to +himself, was rather remarkable. A wholly ineffectual tug or two told +him he was on the wrong side of the door for applying mere bodily +strength, that either he must raise an ignominious shout for freedom or +else achieve it for himself by way of the window. Unathletic as he +always had been, he was sportsman enough not to hesitate an instant +between the two alternatives; and on again looking out of the window, +saw his way down at a glance. + +Immediately underneath was another window, opening on a leaded balcony +over the bow-window in the drawing-room. To shift his bedstead with the +least possible noise, to tie a sheet to it, and to slide down the sheet +till he had but a few feet to drop into the balcony, was the work of a +very few minutes to one as excitedly determined as Pocket had become on +finding himself a prisoner. Thought they would lock him in, did they? +They would just find out their mistake! It was exactly the same mood in +which he had scaled the upright palings in defiance of the policeman +who said he might not sleep in the Park. + +The balcony window was open, the room within empty. It was obviously +Baumgartner’s bedroom. There was a camp bedstead worthy of an old +campaigner, a large roll-top desk, and a waste-paper basket which +argued either a voluminous correspondence or imperfect domestic +service; it would have furnished scent for no short paper-chase. +Otherwise the room was tidy enough, and so eloquent of Baumgartner +himself, in its uncompromising severity, that Pocket breathed more +freely on the landing. And in the hall he felt absolutely safe, for he +had gained it without the creaking of a stair, and there on the pegs +hung his hat, but neither the cloak nor the weird wide-awake affected +by his host. + +Baumgartner out. That was a bit of luck; and it was just like Pocket to +lose a moment in taking advantage of it; but the truth was that he had +made an interesting discovery. It was in that house the piano was being +played. He heard it through the drawing-room door; he had heard it on +the balcony up above; it had never stopped once, so silent had he been. +It was that Phillida, with the large dark eyes, and she was playing +something that Lettice sometimes played, and very nearly, though +naturally not quite, as well. Pocket would have said that it was +Mendelssohn, or Chopin, “or something,” for his love of music was +greater than his knowledge. But it was not exactly the music that +detained him; he was thinking more of the musician, who had shown him +kindness, after all. It would be only decent to thank her before he +went, and the doctor himself through his niece. If she knew he had been +locked in, and he had to tell her how he had made his escape and yet +not a sound—well, she would not think the less of him at all events, +and so they would part for ever. Or perhaps not for ever! The juvenile +instinct for romance was not to be stifled at such a stimulating +moment. The girl would be sorry for him when she knew all; she might +know enough to be sorry for him as it was; in any case it was the game +to say goodbye. + +The girl sprang from the music-stool in extraordinary excitement. Her +large eyes were larger than ever, as it were with fear, and yet they +blazed at the intruder. Pocket could not understand it, unless she +already knew the truth. + +“I’m so sorry for starting you,” he apologised. “I just came in to say +goodbye.” + +And he held out a hand which she never seemed to see. + +“To say goodbye!” she gasped. + +“Yes, I’ve got to go. I’m afraid the doctor’s out?” + +“Yes, he is. Won’t you wait?” + +“I’m afraid I can’t.” + +She was shrinking from him, shrinking round towards the door. He stood +aside, to let her bolt if that was her desire. And then she in turn +took her stand, back to the door. + +“He’ll be very sorry to miss you,” she said more firmly, and with a +smile. + +“And I’m very sorry to miss him,” said Pocket, unconscientiously enough +for anybody. “He’s been most awfully good to me, and I wish you’d tell +him how grateful I am.” + +“I’m afraid he won’t believe me,” the girl said dryly, “if he finds you +gone.” + +“I must go—really I must. I shall get into an awful row as it is. Do +you mind giving him one other message?” + +“As many as you like.” + +“Well, you might tell him from me that I’ll give myself away, but I’ll +never give him! He’ll know what I mean.” + +“Is that all?” + +She was keeping him very cleverly, putting in her word always at the +last moment, and again refusing to see his hand; but again it was the +boy who helped to waste his own golden opportunity, this time through +an indefensible bit of boyish braggadocio. + +“No; you may tell the doctor that if he wanted to detain me he went the +worst way about it by locking me into my room!” + +She looked mystified at first, and then astounded. + +“How did you get out?” + +“How do you suppose?” + +“I never heard anything!” + +“I took care you shouldn’t.” + +And he described the successful adventure with pardonable unction in +the end. After that he insisted on saying goodbye. And the young girl +stood up to him like a little heroine. + +“I’m very sorry, but I can’t let you go, Mr. Upton.” + +“Can’t let me?” + +“I really am sorry—but you must wait to see my uncle.” + +He stood aghast before the determined girl. She was obviously older +than himself, yet she was only a slip of a girl, and if he forced his +way past—but he was not the fellow to do it—and that maddened him, +because he felt she knew it. + +“Oh, very well!” he cried, sarcastically. “If you won’t let me out that +way, I’ll go this!” + +And he turned towards the tiny conservatory, which led down into the +garden; but she was on him, and there was no hesitation about her; she +held him firmly by the hand. + +“If you do I’ll blow a police-whistle!” she said. “We have one—it won’t +take an instant. You shan’t come out the front way, and you’ll be +stopped if you climb the wall!” + +“But why? Do you take me for a lunatic, or what?” he gasped out +bitterly. + +“Never mind what I take you for!” + +“You’re treating me as though I were one!” + +“You’ve got to stay and see my uncle.” + +“I shan’t! Let me go, I tell you! You shall you shall! I hate your +uncle, and you too!” But that was only half true, even then while he +was struggling almost as passionately as though the girl had been +another boy. He could not strike her; but that was the only line he +drew, for she would grapple with him, and release himself he must. Over +went walnut whatnots, and out came mutterings that made him hotter than +ever for very shame. But he did not hate her even for what she made him +say; all his hatred and all his fear were of the dreadful doctor whose +will she was obeying; and both were at their highest pitch when the +door burst open, and in he sprang to part them with a look. But it was +a look that hurt more than word or blow; never had poor Pocket endured +or imagined such a steady, silent downpour of indignation and contempt. +It turned his hatred almost in a moment to hatred of himself; his fear +it only increased. + +“Leave us, Phillida,” said Baumgartner at last. Phillida was in tears, +and Pocket had been hanging his head; but now he sprang towards her. + +“Forgive me!” he choked, and held the door open for her, and shut it +after her with all the gallantry the poor lad had left. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. +ON PAROLE + + +“So,” said Dr. Baumgartner, “you not only try to play me false, but you +seize the first opportunity when my back is turned! Not only do you +break your promise, but you break it with brutal violence to a young +lady who has shown you nothing but kindness!” + +Pocket might have replied with justice that the young lady had brought +the violence upon herself; but that would have made him out a greater +cad than ever, in his own eyes at any rate. He preferred to defend his +honour as best he could, which was chiefly by claiming the right to +change his mind about what was after all his own affair. But that was +precisely what Baumgartner would not allow for a moment; it was just as +much his affair as accessory after the fact, and in accordance with +their mutual and final agreement overnight. Pocket could only rejoin +that he had never meant to give the doctor away at all. + +“I daresay not!” said Baumgartner sardonically. “It would have been +dragged out of you all the same. I told you so yesterday, and you +agreed with me. I put it most plainly to you as a case of then or never +so far as owning up was concerned. You made your own bed with your +eyes open, and I left you last night under the impression that you were +going to lie on it like a man.” + +“Then why did you lock me in?” cried Pocket, pouncing on the one point +on which he did not already feel grievously in the wrong. The doctor +flattered him with a slight delay before replying. + +“There were so many reasons,” he said, with a sigh; “you mustn’t forget +that you walk in your sleep, for one of them. We might have had you +falling downstairs in the middle of the night; but I own that I was +more prepared for the kind of relapse which appears to have overtaken +you. I was afraid you had more on your soul than you could keep to +yourself without my assistance, and that you would get brooding over +what has happened until it drove you to make a clean breast of the +whole thing. I tell you it’s no good brooding or looking back; take one +more look ahead, and what do you see if you have your way? Humiliating +notoriety for yourself, calamitous consequences in your own family, +certain punishment for me!” + +“The consequences at home,” groaned Pocket, “will be bad enough +whatever we do. I can’t bear to think of them! If only they had taken +Bompas’s advice, and sent me round the world in the _Seringapatam!_ I +should have been at sea by this time, and out of harm’s way for the +next three months.” + +“The _Seringapatam?_” repeated the doctor. “I never heard of her.” + +“You wouldn’t; she’s only a sailing vessel, but she carries passengers +and a doctor, a friend of Dr. Bompas’s, who wanted to send me with him +for a voyage round the world. But my people wouldn’t let me go. She +sails this very day, and touches nowhere till she gets to Melbourne. If +I could only raise the passage-money, or even stow away on board, I +could go out in her still, and that would be the last of me for years +and years!” + +It was not the last of him in his own mind; suddenly as the thought had +come, and mad as it was, it flashed into the far future in the boy’s +brain; and he saw himself making his fortune in a far land, turning it +up in a single nugget, and coming home to tell of his adventures, +bearded like the pard, another “dead man come to life,” after about as +many years as the dream took seconds to fashion. And Baumgartner looked +on as though following the same wild train of thought, as though it did +not seem so wild to him, but extremely interesting; so that Pocket was +quite disappointed when he shook his head. + +“A stowaway with an attack of asthma! I think I see my poor young +fellow! Why, they’d hear you wheezing in the hold, and you’d gasp out +your whole story before you were in the Bay of Biscay! No, no, my +fellow; you’ve taken your line, and you must stick to it, and stop with +me till we can think of something better than a long sea voyage. If you +say you won’t, I say I’ll make you—to save you from yourself—to save us +both.” + +There was no mistaking the absolute intention in this threat; it was +fixed and final, and the boy accepted it as he accepted his oppressor’s +power to make good his words. It was true that he might have escaped +already; the nearer he had been to it, the less chance was he likely to +be given again. So reasoned Pocket from the face and voice now +dominating him more powerfully than ever; but it is an interesting fact +that his conclusion neither cowed nor depressed him as it might have +done. There was actually an element of relief in his discomfiture. He +had done his best to do his duty. It was not his fault that +responsibility had been wrested from his shoulders, and an evil hour +delayed. And yet there was a certain, an immediate, a creature comfort +in such delay, which was all the greater because unsought by him; it +was a comfort that he had both ways, as the saying is, and from all +points of view but that of his poor people wondering what had become of +him. + +“If only they knew!” he cried; “then I shouldn’t care. Let me write to +one of them! My mother needn’t know; but I must write to one of the +others, and at least let them know I am alive and well. My sister would +keep my secret; she’d play the game all right, I promise you! And I’d +play any game you like if only you let me write a line to her!” + +The doctor would not hear of it at first. Eventually he said he should +have to inspect the letter before it went; and this proved the thin +edge of consent. In the end it was arranged that Pocket should write +what he liked to his sister only, and that Baumgartner should read and +enclose it in a covering letter, so that everybody need not know it was +a letter from the missing boy. Baumgartner was to have it posted from +St. Martin’s-le-Grand, to destroy all trace of a locality which he now +refused point-blank to disclose even to the writer. And in return for +the whole concession the schoolboy was to give his solemn word and +sacred promise on the following points. + +He was not to set foot outside the house without Baumgartner, nor to +show himself for a moment at the windows back or front. + +On no account was he to confide in the doctor’s niece Phillida, to give +her the slightest inkling of his connection with the latest of London +mysteries, or even of the scene, or any of the circumstances of his +first meeting with Baumgartner. + +“You are bound to see something of each other; the less you say about +yourself the better.” + +“But what can she think?” + +“What she likes, my young fellow! I am a medical man; medical men may +bring patients to their houses even when they have ceased to practise +in the ordinary way. It is no business of hers, and what she chooses to +think is no affair of ours. She has seen you very ill, remember, and +she had your doctor’s orders not to let you out of the house in his +absence.” + +“She obeyed them like a little brick!” muttered Pocket, with a wistful +heaviness. + +“She did what she was told; think no more about it,” said the doctor. +“Give me your hand on these your promises, and die on your feet rather +than break one of them! Now I trust you, my young fellow; you will play +the game, as you call it, even as the poor lads in these pictures +played it at Gravelotte, and die like them rather than go back an inch. +Look at this one here. No, not the one with the ridges, but here where +we come to bayonets and the sword. See the poor devils of the Prussian +Guard! See the sheet-lightning pouring into us from the walls of St. +Privat! Look at that fellow with his head bound up, and this one with +no head to bind. That’s meant for our colonel on the white horse. See +him hounding us on to hell! And there’s a drummer drumming as though we +could hear a single beat! Our very colours were blown to ribbons, you +see, and we ourselves to shreds; but the shreds hung together, my young +fellow, and so will you and I in our day of battle!” Baumgartner might +have known his boy for years, so sure was his touch upon the strings of +a responsive nature, to strike the chords of a generous enthusiasm, and +to wake the echoes of noble deeds. Pocket attacked his letter with the +heart of a soldier, hardened and yet uplifted for the fight; it was +only when he found himself writing down vague words, which nevertheless +brought his innocent deed home to him as nothing had done before, that +the artificial frost broke up, and real tears ran with his ink. He +begged Lettice not to think too hardly of him, still less to be anxious +about him, or to make anybody else; they must not fret for him, he +wrote more than once, without seeing the humour of the injunction. He +was better than he had been for years, and in the best of hands. But +something terrible had happened; something he could not help, but would +bitterly repent all his days, especially as it might prevent him from +ever seeing any of them again. It was this monstrous remark, and others +to which it led, that were literally blotted with the writer’s tears. +But just then he saw himself in all vivid sincerity as an outcast who +could never show himself at home or at school again. And it required +the spell of Baumgartner’s presence to make the prospect such as could +be borne with the least degree of visible manhood. + +Be it remembered that he was not a man at all, but a boy in many ways +younger than most boys of sixteen and three quarters, albeit older in +some few. He was old in imagination, but young in common sense. One may +be imaginative and still have a level head, but it is least likely in +one’s teens. The particular temperament does not need a label; but none +who know it when they see it, and who see it here, will be surprised to +learn that this emotional writer for one was enormously relieved and +lightened in spirit when he had got his letter off his mind and hands. + +True to his warning, Dr. Baumgartner began to glance at it with a +kindly gravity; it was with something else that he shook his head over +the second leaf. + +“This is not for me to read!” said he. “I’d rather run the risk of +trusting your discretion.” + +No words could have enslaved poor Pocket more completely; he clasped +the hand that proceeded to write the covering note, and then the +address, all openly before his eyes. And while the doctor was gone to +the nearest messenger office to despatch the missive to the General +Post Office, ostensibly to catch a particular post, his prisoner would +not have decamped for a hundred pounds, and the doctor knew it. + +Phillida did not appear at dinner, but at supper she did, and Pocket +was only less uncomfortable in her absence, which he felt he had +caused, than when they were both at table and he unable to say another +word to express his sorrow for the unseemly scene of the forenoon. She +spoke to him once or twice as though nothing of the kind had happened, +but he could scarcely look her in the face. Otherwise both meals +interested him; they were German in their order, a light supper +following the substantial middle-day repast; but it appeared that they +both came from an Italian restaurant, and the English boy was much +taken with the pagoda-like apparatus in which the dishes arrived +smoking hot in tiers. It provided a further train of speculation when +he remembered that he had never seen a servant in the house, and that +the steps had struck him as dirty, and the doctor’s waste-paper basket +as very full. Pocket determined to make his own bed next morning. He +had meanwhile an unpleasing suspicion that the young girl was clearing +away, for the doctor took him back into the drawing-room after supper; +and later, when they returned for a game of billiards on the toy board, +which they placed between them on the dining-table, both Phillida and +the fragments had disappeared. + +The little billiards were a bond and a distraction. They brought out +Baumgartner’s simple side, and they emphasised the schoolboy’s +simplicity. Both played a strenuous game, the doctor a most deliberate +one; his brows would knit, his mouth shut, his eyes calculate, and his +hand obey, as though his cue were a surgical instrument cutting deep +between life and death. It was a curious glimpse of disproportionate +concentration; even the Turk’s head was only lit to be laid aside as an +obstruction. Pocket’s one chance was to hit hard and trust to the +fortune that accrues on a small table. Both played to win, and the boy +forgot everything when he actually succeeded in the last game. They had +played very late for him, and he slept without stirring until +Baumgartner came to his room about eight o’clock next morning. + +Now Pocket had not seen a newspaper all Friday, but it was the first +thing he did see on the Saturday morning, for the doctor was waving one +like a flag to wake him. + +“Trust your vermin press to get hold of the wrong end of the stick!” he +cried, with fierce amusement; “it only remains to be seen whether they +succeed in putting your precious police on the wrong tack too. Really, +it’s almost worth being at the bottom of a popular mystery to watch the +smartest men in this country making fools of themselves!” + +“May I see?” asked Pocket; he had winced at more than one of these +remarks. + +“Certainly,” replied Baumgartner; “here’s the journalistic wonder of +the age, and there you are in its most important column. I brought it +up for you to see.” + +The boy bit his lips as he read. His deed had been promoted to leaded +type and the highest rank in headlines. It appeared, in the first +place, that no arrest had yet been made; but it was confidently +asserted (by the omniscient butt of Teutonic sallies) that the police, +wisely guided by the hint in yesterday’s issue (which Pocket had not +seen), were already in possession of a most important clue. In +subsequent paragraphs of pregnant brevity the real homicide was +informed that his fatal act could only be the work of a totally +different and equally definite hand. Pocket gathered that there had +been a certain commonplace tragedy, in a street called Holland Walk, in +the previous month of March. A licensed messenger named Charlton had +been found shot under circumstances so plainly indicative of suicide +that a coroner’s jury had actually returned a verdict to that effect. +There appeared, however, to have been an element of doubt in the case. +This the scribe of the leaded type sought to remove by begging the +question from beginning to end. It had not been a case of suicide at +all, he declared, but as wilful a murder as the one in Hyde Park, to +which it bore a close and sinister resemblance. Both victims had been +shot through the heart in the early hours of the morning; both belonged +to one neighbourhood, and to the same dilapidated fringe of the +community. A pothouse acquaintanceship was alleged between them; but +the suggestion was that the link lay a good deal deeper than that, and +that the two dead men were known to the police, who were busy searching +for a third party of equal notoriety in connection with both murders. + +“But we know he had nothing to do with the second one,” said the boy, +looking up at last. “It wasn’t a murder, either; neither was the first, +according to the coroner’s jury, who surely ought to know.” + +“One would have thought so,” said Baumgartner, with his sardonic smile; +“but the yellow pressman knows better still, apparently.” + +“Do you suppose there’s a word of truth in what he says? I don’t mean +about Charlton or—or poor Holdaway,” said Pocket, wincing over his +victim’s name, which he had just gleaned from the paper. “But do you +think the police are really after anybody?” + +“I don’t know,” said Baumgartner. “What does it matter?” + +“It would matter a great deal if they arrested somebody for what I +did!” + +The boy was no longer looking up; and his voice trembled. + +“It would alter the whole thing,” he mumbled significantly. + +“I don’t see it,” returned the doctor, with grim good-nature. “The +little wonder of the English reading world has nearly unearthed another +mare’s nest, as two of its readers know full well. No real harm can +come of this typical farrago. Let it lead to an arrest! There are only +two living souls who can’t account for their time at that of this +unfortunate affair.” + +Pocket realised this; but it was put in a way that gave him goose-skin +under the clothes. He was always seeing his accident in some new light, +always encountering some new possibility, or natural consequence of his +silence, which had not occurred to him before. But he was learning to +keep his feelings under control, to set his face and his teeth against +the regular reactions of his coward conscience and his fickle will. And +once again did Dr. Baumgartner atone for an unintentional minor by +striking a rousing chord on the very heart-strings of the boy. + +“Eight o’clock!” cried the magician, with a glance at his watch and an +ear towards the open window. “The postman’s knock from door to door +down every street in town—house to house from one end of your British +Islands to the other! A certain letter is without doubt being delivered +at this very moment—eh, my poor young fellow?” + + + + +CHAPTER XII. +HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS + + +Eugene Thrush was a regular reader of the journal on which Dr. +Baumgartner heaped heavy satire, its feats of compression, its genius +for headlines, and the delicious expediency of all its views, which +enabled its editorial column to face all ways and bow where it listed, +in the universal joint of popularity, were points of irresistible +appeal to a catholic and convivial sense of humour. He read the paper +with his early cup of tea, and seldom without a fat internal chuckle +between the sheets. + +That Saturday morning, however, Mr. Thrush was not only up before the +paper came, but for once he took its opinion seriously on a serious +matter. It said exactly what he wished to think about the Hyde Park +murder: that the murderer would prove to be the author of a similar +crime, committed in the previous month of March, when the Upton boy +must have been safe at school. If that were so, it was manifestly +absurd to connect the lad with a mystery which merely happened to +synchronise with that of his own disappearance—absurd, even if he were +shown to have been somewhere near the scene of the murder, somewhere +about the time of its perpetration. + +That much, though no more, had, however, been fairly established +overnight. It was a conclusion to which Mullins, with the facile +conviction of his class, had jumped on the slender evidence of the +asthma cigarette alone; but before midnight Thrush himself had been +forced to admit its extreme probability. There was a medicine cork as +well as an asthma cigarette; the medicine cork had been found very much +nearer the body; in fact, just across the pathway, under a shrub on the +other side of the fence. It was Mullins, who had made both discoveries, +who also craved permission to ring up Dr. Bompas, late at night, to ask +if there was any particular chemist to whom he sent his patients with +their prescriptions. Dr. Bompas was not at home, which perhaps was just +as well but his man gave the name of Harben, in Oxford Street. Harbens, +rung up in their turn, found that they certainly had made up one of the +doctor’s prescriptions on the Wednesday, for a young Mr. Upton, and, +within half an hour, had positively identified the cork found by +Mullins in Hyde Park. It was still sticky with the very stuff which +had put poor Pocket asleep. + +Yet Thrush could not or would not conceive any actual connection +between a harmless schoolboy and an apparently cold-blooded crime. He +resisted the idea on more grounds than he felt disposed to urge in +argument with his now strangely animated factotum. It was still a wide +jump to a detestable conclusion, but he confined his criticism to the +width of the jump. The cork and the cigarette might be stepping-stones, +but at least one more was wanted to justify the slightest suspicion +against the missing boy. Let it be shown that he had carried firearms +on the Wednesday night, and Thrush undertook to join his satellite on +the other side; but his mental bias may be gauged from the fact that he +made no mention of the boy’s mother’s dream. + +Mullins found him not only up, shaved and booted, but already an +enthusiastic convert to the startling theory of a sensation journalist, +and consequently an irritable observer of the saturnine countenance +which darkened to a tinge of distinct amusement over the leaded type. + +“So you don’t think there’s much in it, Mullins?” + +“I shouldn’t say there was anything at all, sir.” + +“Yet I suppose you remember the very similar occurrence in Holland +Walk?” + +“Oh yes, sir, but it was a case of suicide.” + +“I don’t agree.” + +“But surely, sir, the jury brought it in suicide?” + +“The coroner’s jury did—in spite of the coroner—but it may come before +another jury yet, Mullins! I remember the case perfectly; the medical +evidence was that the shot had been fired at arm’s length. That isn’t +the range at which we usually bring ourselves down! Then there was +nothing to show that the man ever possessed a pistol, or even the price +of one; he was so stony it would have gone up the spout long before. +The very same point crops up in the case of this poor boy. Who says he +ever had a revolver in his life? His father tells me explicitly that he +never had; I happened to ask the question,” added Thrush, without +explaining in what connection. + +“Well, sir,” said Mullins, with respect enough in his tone, “you talk +about jumping to conclusions, but it strikes me the gentleman who write +for the papers could give me some yards and a licking, sir!” + +This was a sprightly speech for Mullins; but it was delivered with the +very faintest of deferential smiles, and Mr. Thrush shook his +spectacles without one at all. + +“The gentlemen on this paper have a knack of lighting on the truth, +however,” he remarked; “it may be by fair means, or it may be by foul, +but they have a way of getting there before the others start.” + +Mullins remarked with quiet confidence that they were not going to do +it this time. His position was, briefly, that he could not bring +himself to believe in two separate mysteries, at one and the same time +and place, with no sort of connection between them. + +“That would be too much of a coincidence,” said Mullins, sententiously. + +Thrush looked at him for a moment. + +“But life’s one long collection of coincidences! That’s what I’m always +telling you; the mistake is to look on them as anything else. Don’t you +call it a bit of a coincidence that both these men should meet their +death at the very hour of the morning when you’re on your way over here +from Netting Hill, and in much the same degree of latitude, which +you’ve got to cross somewhere or other on your way? Yet who has the +nerve to say you must have gone through Holland Walk that other +morning, and been mixed up in that affair because you are in this?” + +“I don’t admit I’m mixed up in anything,” replied Mullins, with some +warmth. + +“I mean as a witness of sorts. I was merely reducing your argument to +the absurd, Mullins; you didn’t take me literally, did you? It’s no use +talking when we both seem to have made up our minds; but I’m always +ready to unmake mine if you show me that young Mr. Upton carried a +pistol, Mullins! Now I should like my breakfast, Mullins, and you must +be roaring inside for yours. The man who’s been knocking up chemists +all night is the man to whom breakfast is due; get your own and then +mine, and after that you can tell me how you got on.” + +Anything more genial than the garrulous banter of Eugene Thrush, at his +best, it was impossible to encounter or incur; he had been, however, +for a few minutes at his worst, and it was difficult to see why the +pendulum should have swung so suddenly to the other extreme. Mullins +went about his business with his usual sleek solemnity. But Thrush was +yet another man the moment he was alone. His face was a sunny +background for ideas, misgivings, and half-formed plans, one after the +other, whirling like clouds across a crimson sky. But the sky was clear +whenever Mullins was in the room. And at the breakfast-table there was +not a cloud. + +“To come back to those chemists, and this shop-to-shop canvassing,” +resumed Thrush, as Mullins poured out his tea; “how many have you done, +and how many have we still to do between us?” + +Mullins produced a pocket-book that did him credit, and consulted notes +as neat. + +“Rung up when you were out at dinner—seventeen. Kept Cigarettes +d’Auvergne—one. That was Thornycroft’s in Shaftesbury Avenue, where I’d +just been when I met you down below in the street. In the night I +knocked up other eight-and-twenty, all either in the neighbourhood of +Trafalgar Square or else on the line of the Park.” + +“Poor devils! I suppose you urged a pretty bad case?” + +“A matter of life or death.” + +“Well?” + +“Three more kept them, not counting Harbens: one in Knightsbridge, one +in New Bond Street, and one a little way down the Brompton Road.” + +“Much demand in any of those quarters?” + +“Only in the Brompton Road; a literary gentleman has a box regularly +every week, and two in the autumn. Pringle, his name is.” + +“I know him; so he’s as breathless as his own yarns, is he?” murmured +Thrush, to his buttered egg. “But has one of these apothecaries sold a +box of d’Auvergnes since Wednesday afternoon?” + +“Two have,” said Mullins, “but one was to Mr. Pringle.” + +Thrush levelled inquiring spectacles. + +“How did you worm that out, Mullins?” + +“By changing my tune a bit, sir. I started asking if they knew anybody +who could recommend the cigarettes from personal experience, as we +were only trying them on hearsay.” + +“Very smart of you, Mullins! And one wheezy novelist is the only +consumer?” + +“That’s right, sir, but the man in Knights-bridge sold a box on +Thursday to a doctor.” + +“Did you get the name?” + +“Bone-Gardner, I think it was a Dr. Otto Bone-Gardner.” + +“Baumgartner, I expect you mean!” cried Thrush, straightening a wry +face to spell the name. “I’ve heard of an Otto Baumgartner, though I +can’t say when or where. What’s his address?” + +“He couldn’t tell me, sir; or else he wouldn’t. Suppose he thought I’d +be turning the doctor out next. Old customer, I understood he was.” + +“For d’Auvergne Cigarettes?” + +“I didn’t inquire.” + +“My good fellow, that’s the whole point! I’ll go myself and ask for the +asthma cigarettes that Dr. Baumgartner always has; if they say he never +had them before, that’ll be talking. His being a doctor looks well. But +I’m certain I know his name; you might look it up in _Who’s Who_, and +read out what they say.” + +And Mullins did so with due docility, albeit with queer gulps at +barbaric mouthfuls such as the list of battle-fields on which Dr. +Baumgartner had fought in his martial youth; the various Universities +whereat he had studied psychology and theology in an evident reaction +of later life; even the titles of his subsequent publications, which +contained some long English words, but were given in German too. A +copious contribution concluded with the information that photography +and billiards were the doctor’s recreations, and that he belonged to a +polysyllabically unpronounceable Berlin club, and to one in St. James’s +which Mullins more culpably miscalled the Parthenian. + +“Parthenon!” said Thrush, as though he had bitten on a nerve. “But what +about his address?” + +“There’s no getting hold of that address,” said Mullins, demoralised +and perspiring. “It’s not given here either.” + +“Well, the chemist or the directory will supply that if we want it, but +I’m afraid he sounds a wheezy old bird. The author of _Peripatetic +Psychology_ deserves to have asthma all his nights, and _After this +Life_ smacks of the usual Schopenhauer and Lager. No, we won’t build on +Dr. Baumgartner, Mullins; but we’ll go through the chemists of London +with a small tooth-comb, from here to the four-mile radius.” + +Thrush had finished breakfast, and Mullins was beginning to clear away, +when a stormy step was heard upon the stairs, and in burst Mr. Upton +with a panic-stricken face. He was colourless almost to the neck, but +he denied that he had any news, though not without a pregnant glance at +Mullins, and fell to abusing London and the Londoners, but City men +above all others, till Thrush and he should be alone together. The +incidental diatribe was no mere padding, either; it was the sincere +utterance of a passionately provincial soul. Nobody in all London, he +declared, and apparently without excepting Mr. Thrush, cared a twopenny +curse what became of his poor boy. In view of the fact that the present +company alone knew of his disappearance, and not so very many more of +the boy’s existence, this was an extravagantly sweeping statement. But +the distracted man had a particular instance to bear him out; he had +been to see his boy’s friends’ father, “a swine called Knaggs,” that +very morning at his house in St. John’s Wood. + +“Rather early, wasn’t it?” suggested Thrush, whose manner was more +softly sympathetic than it had been the night before. The change was +slight, and yet marked. He was more solicitous. + +“Early!” cried Mr. Upton. “Haven’t I lost my boy, and wasn’t it these +Cockney cads who turned him adrift in London? I ought to have gone to +them last night. I wish I had, when my blood was up after your dinner; +for I don’t mind telling you now, Mr. Thrush, that in spite of your +hospitality I was none too pleased at your anxiety to get rid of me +afterwards. It made me feel like doing a little bit for the boy on my +own; but I’d called once on my way into town, and only seen a servant +then, so I thought I’d make sure of putting salt on somebody by waiting +till this morning.” + +The visitor paused to look harder than ever at Mullins, and Thrush +seized the opportunity to offer an apology for his abrupt behaviour in +the street. + +“I confess I showed indecent haste,” said he; “but Mullins and I had +our night’s work cut out, and he at any rate has not had his boots off +since you saw him.” + +“Hasn’t he?” cried Mr. Upton, in remorseful recognition of an +unsuspected devotion; “then I’ll say what I’ve got to say in front of +him, for you’re both my friends, and I’ll unsay all I said just now. +Bear with my temper, both of you, if you can, for I feel beside myself +about the boy! It was all I could do to keep my hands off that smug +little lump of London inhumanity! Kept me waiting while he finished his +breakfast, he did, and then came in polishing a hat as sleek as +himself, and saying ‘Rather early!’—just as you set me off by saying +yourself a minute ago.” + +“But he seems to have told you something, Mr. Upton?” + +“Has he not! He began by telling me he was sorry for me, confound him! +I could have made him sorrier for himself! He was sorry for me, but +what could he do? London was a large place, and ‘we Londoners’ were +busy men. I told him so were some of us in the iron-trade, but not too +busy to keep an eye on boys who were friends of our boys. He said +London life was different; and I said so I could see. They never had +spare beds at a moment’s notice, much less for boys who might set fire +to the house or—or shoot themselves——” + +His two hearers uttered a simultaneous exclamation, and Mr. Upton stood +glancing piteously from one to the other, as though his lad’s +death-warrant were written in their faces. Eugene Thrush, however, +looked so genuinely distressed that the less legible handwriting on the +face of Mullins also attracted less attention. + +“Had he anything to shoot himself with?” inquired Thrush, in a +curiously gentle voice. + +Mr. Upton nodded violently as he moistened his lips. + +“He had, after all!” he croaked. “Little as I dreamt it yesterday, my +unhappy boy, who had never to my knowledge pulled a trigger in his life +before, was going about London with a loaded revolver in his pocket!” + +“Had he brought it from school?” asked Thrush, with a covert frown at +the transfigured Mullins. + +Mr. Upton repeated what he had heard through the young Westminsters, +with their father’s opinion of pawnbrokers’ shops as resorts for young +schoolboys, of young schoolboys who frequented them, and of parents and +guardians who gave them the chance. How the two gentlemen had parted +without fisticuffs became the latest mystery to Eugene Thrush, whose +only comment was that it behoved him all the more to do something to +redeem the capital in the other’s eyes. + +“Now we know why my poor wife heard a shot!” was the only rejoinder, in +a voice not too broken to make Mullins prick up his ears; it was the +first he had heard about the dream. + +“I wouldn’t say that, Mr. Upton. We know no more than we knew before. +Yet I will own now,” exclaimed Thrush, catching Mullins’s bright eye, +“that the coincidence will be tremendous if there’s nothing in it!” + +But only half the coincidence was present in the father’s mind; no +thought of the murder had yet entered it in connection with his boy; +and to hear so emphatic an echo to his foreboding was more than his +fretted nerves could stand. In the same breath he pounced on Thrush for +a pessimist—apologised—and humbly entreated him to take a more hopeful +view. + +“There may have been an accident, Thrush, but not necessarily a fatal +one!” + +An accident! Thrush had never thought of that explanation of the public +mystery; but evidently Mullins had, judging by his almost fiendish +grins and nods behind the poor father’s back. Thrush looked at both men +with the troubled frown of a strenuously reasoning being—looked and +frowned again—frowned and reasoned afresh. And then, all in an instant, +the trouble lifted from his face; light had come to him in an almost +blinding flash, such as might well obscure the quality of the light; +enough for Eugene Thrush that it lit him back to his mystery every bit +as brightly as it lit him onward to its solution. + +He was even man enough to refrain from reflecting it automatically in +his face, as he put a number of apparently irrelevant questions to Mr. +Upton about the missing boy. What was his character? what its chief +points? Was he a boy with the moral courage of his acts? Would he face +their consequences like a man? + +“I never knew him tell a lie in his life,” said Mr. Upton, “either to +save his own skin or any thing else; and it was a case of their young +skins when they got into trouble with me! Poor Tony was the most +conscientious of them all, and I hear that’s what they say of him at +school.” + +Thrush put one or two further questions, and then said he had a clue, +though a very slight one, which he was rather in a hurry to follow up +himself; and this time the ironmaster went off quietly of his own +accord, with a dejected undertaking to be at his hotel when he was +wanted. + +“I don’t like the look of our friend,” remarked Thrush, looking hard at +Mullins when at last they were alone. “He shapes none too well for the +strain he’s got to bear; if he cracks up there’ll be a double tragedy, +if not a triple one, in that family. We must catch our hare quickly, +Mullins, or we may catch him too late.” + +Mullins turned on the disagreeable grin that Thrush had so resented a +few minutes before; he took no notice of it now. + +“You’ll find your man,” said Mullins significantly, “the very moment +that I find mine, Mr. Thrush.” + +“Meaning they’re the same person?” + +“To be sure.” + +“That this lad is the actual slayer of the man Holdaway?” + +“Surely, sir, it’s as plain as a pikestaff now?” + +“Not to me, Mullins—not to me.” + +Thrush was twinkling behind his great round goggles. + +“Then who do you think has done it, sir?” inquired Mullins, in +deferential derision. + +“Ah! that’s another matter, my man; but I can tell you whom I hope to +get arrested within another hour!” + +Mullins looked as though he could hardly believe his ears; his jaw, +black as a crape hat-band this morning, fell in front of his grimy +collar. + +“You’re actually thinking of arresting some one else?” + +“I am—with your permission, Mullins.” + +“Tell me who it is, sir, for Heaven’s sake!” + +And with his fattest smile Thrush whispered into an ear that recoiled +from his words as though they had been so many drops of boiling oil. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. +BOY AND GIRL + + +Pocket Upton was able to relieve his soul of one load that morning. Dr. +Baumgartner had left the schoolboy to his soap and water, taking the +newspaper with him; but apparently Pocket had followed him down in +quicker time than the other anticipated. At any rate the little lady of +the house was all alone in the dining-room, where Pocket found her +boiling eggs on the gas-fire, and had her to himself for several +seconds of which he wasted none. There was neither grace nor tact in +what he said, and his manner was naturally at its worst, but the +penitential torrent came from his heart, and was only stemmed by the +doctor’s hasty arrival on the scene. Miss Platts had not been given +time to say a word, but now she asked Mr. Upton how many minutes he +liked his egg boiled, and would not let him do it himself, but smiled +when he told her it was “done to a shake.” Dr. Baumgartner, on the +other hand, scowled upon them both until observation or reflection had +convinced him that no promises had been broken and no confidences +exchanged. + +The callow pair saw something more of each other during the morning; +for Pocket hotly resented being distrusted, and showed it by making up +to the young girl under the doctor’s nose. He talked to her about books +in the other room. He had the impertinence to invite her into the +dining-room for a game of billiards, but the sense next moment to +include her uncle in an amended form of more becoming suggestion. +Baumgartner eventually countenanced a game, but spent most of the time +with his back to the players and his eye on the street. The boy and +girl got on very well now; they seemed frankly glad of each other, +though he caught her more than once with a large and furtive eye on +him. But she seemed to enjoy her baptism of schoolboy slang. And it was +only when she began to question him about his special vocabulary, that +Baumgartner looked on for a little, and put in his word. + +“You see he still believes in his public school,” said he to Phillida, +in a tone which reminded their visitor of his first breakfast in the +house. + +“I should think I did!” cried Pocket, and did a little loyal boasting +about the best of schools, and the best house in that school, until +memory took him by the throat and filled his eyes. It was twelve +o’clock, and a summer’s Saturday. School was over for the week. Only +your verses to do in your own time, and get signed by Spearman before +you went up to dormitory on Saturday night; but meanwhile, Saturday +afternoon! A match on the Upper, where you could lie on your rug and +watch the game you couldn’t play; call-over at the match; ices and +lemon-drinks in a tent on the field; and for Saturday supper anything +you liked to buy, cooked for you in the kitchen and put piping hot at +your place in hall, not even for the asking, but merely by writing your +name plainly on the eggs and leaving them on the slab outside! It was +not these simple luxuries that Pocket missed so sorely; it was the +whole full life of ups and downs, and no yesterdays and no to-morrows, +that he had lost for ever since last Saturday. The heavy midday meal +came in smoking from the Italian restaurant, and Pocket was himself +again, as a boy will be; after all, they knew about him at home by this +time, their worst fears were allayed, and in the end it would all come +right. In the end he would be sitting in his own old place at home, +instead of with strangers in an unknown street; telling them +everything, instead of holding his peace; and watching even Fred and +Horace listening to every word—much as Dr. Baumgartner was listening to +something now. + +What was it? Phillida was listening, too, and watching her uncle as she +listened. Pocket did both in his turn. + +It was the voice of newspaper hawkers, shouting in couples, coming +nearer with their shouts. Dr. Baumgartner jumped up from the table, and +ran outside without his hat. + +His promise alone prevented Pocket from following and outstripping the +doctor. He knew what the shouting was about before he could have sworn +to a single raucous word. But Phillida could not know, and she resumed +at once where they had left off before breakfast. + +“Of course I forgive you,” she whispered. “It was I began it!” + +“Began what?” + +“Our row yesterday.” + +Phillida had a demure twinkle, after all; but it was lost on Pocket +now. “I’d forgotten all about it,” he said with superfluous candour, +his ear still on the street. + +“I haven’t.” + +Her voice made him remember better. “I hope to goodness I didn’t hurt +you?” + +“Of course you didn’t.” + +“But you must have thought me mad!” + +There was a slight but most significant pause. + +“Well, I never shall again.” + +“Then you did!” he gasped. Their eyes had met sharply; both young faces +were flooded with light, and it was much the same light. There was no +nonsense about it, but there was indignant horror on his side, and +indignant shame on hers. + +“You really are at school?” she whispered, not increduously, but as one +seeking assurance in so many words; and in a flash he saw what she had +thought, what she had been deliberately made to think, that his beloved +school was not a school at all, but an Ayslum! + +But at that moment Dr. Baumgartner was heard bargaining at the gate +with one raucous voice, while the other went on roaring huskily, “Park +murder—arrest! ’Rest o’ de Park murderer! Park murder—Park +murder—arrest!” And Pocket sprang up from the table in a state that +swept his last thoughts clean from his mind. + +The girl said something; he did not hear what. He was white and +trembling, in pitiable case even to eyes that could only see skin-deep; +but the doctor’s step came beating like a drum to him, and he was +solidly seated when the doctor entered—without any paper at all. + +“It’s that murder the papers are all exploiting,” he explained +benignly. “They were shouting out something about an arrest; you would +hear them, I daresay. But it’s the usual swindle; the police are merely +hoping to effect an arrest. I threatened to send for them unless the +scoundrel took his paper back!” + +He was in his lightest mood of sardonic gaiety. The sins of the vendors +recalled those of “your vermin press itself”; the association was +wilfully unfair, the favourite phrase a studied insult; but the English +boy was either dense or indifferent, and Phillida’s great eyes were in +some other world. Baumgartner subjected them both to a jealous +scrutiny, and suddenly cried out upon his own bad memory. It appeared +there was a concert at the Albert Hall, where “the most popular and +handsome pair in England” (the inverted commas were in the doctor’s +sneer) were being welcomed on their return from the ends of the earth. +He had intended going to hear what they could do; but Phillida should +go instead; she was not past the ballad stage. + +And Phillida rose submissively, with unreal thanks which could not +conceal her recognition of the impromptu pretext for getting rid of +her; her uncle called a taxicab, and with harsh hilarity turned her off +the premises in the frock she had been wearing all day. + +“And now,” said he, returning with a scowl, “what the devil were you +two talking about while my back was turned?” + +“Yesterday,” replied Pocket, more than ready for him, though his heart +beat fast. + +“What about yesterday?” + +“Our scuffle in the other room.” + +“Is that all?” + +“No—I found out something; she didn’t tell me.” + +“What did you find out?” + +“That you let her think me mad!” cried Pocket, in monstrous earnest. He +might have laughed at himself, could he have seen his own reproachful +face. But he could have killed Baumgartner for laughing at him; it did +not occur to him that the laugh was partly one of pure relief. + +“Why, my young fellow, how else can I account for you?” + +“You said she would think I was a patient.” + +“Exactly! A mental case.” + +“You had no business to make me out mad,” persisted Pocket, with dogged +valour. + +“Pardon me! I had all the business in the world; and I beg that you’ll +continue to foster the illusion as thoroughly as you did yesterday when +I was out. It’s no good shaking your head at me; listen to reason,” +continued Baumgartner, with an adroit change of tone. “And try, my good +young fellow, do try to think of somebody besides yourself; have some +consideration for my niece, if you have none for me.” + +Pocket was mystified, but still more incensed; for he felt himself +being again put gently but clearly in the wrong. + +“And I should like to know,” he cried, “what good it does her to think +she’s associating with a lunatic?” + +“She would probably prefer the idea to that of a murderer,” was the +suave reply. “I speak only of ideas; otherwise I should not make use of +such an expression, even in jest. It’s as ugly as it’s ridiculous in +your case. Yet you heard for yourself that others are applying the +horrid term in all sobriety.” + +“I heard more than that,” returned Pocket. “They’ve arrested somebody!” + +“I thought I told you there was no truth in that?” + +But Baumgartner had winced for once, and the boy had seen it, and his +retort was a precocious inspiration. + +“That was only to avoid a scene at table, Dr. Baumgartner!” + +“Well, my young fellow,” said the doctor, after one of his wise pauses, +“and what if it was?” + +“I can’t sit here and let an innocent man lie in prison.” + +“He won’t lie long.” + +“It’s absolutely wicked to let them keep him at all.” + +“Nor will they, longer than another hour or two.” + +“Well, if they do, you know what I shall do!” + +Pocket had never displayed such determination, nor incurred quite the +same measure or quality of wrath that Baumgartner poured upon him +without a word for the next few moments. It was a devouring gaze of +sudden and implacable animosity. The ruthless lips were shut out of +sight, yet working as though the teeth were being ground behind them; +the crow’s footed face flushed up, and the crow’s feet were no more; it +was as though age was swallowed in that flood of speechless passion +till the whole man was no older than the fiery eyes that blazed upon +the boy. And yet the most menacing thing of all was the complete +control with which the doctor broke this pregnant silence. + +“You say that. I say otherwise. You had better find a book in the other +room till you know your own mind again.” + +“I know it now, unless they release that man,” said Pocket, through his +teeth, although they chattered. + +“Give them a chance, and give yourself one! It will be time to think of +clearing other people when they fail to clear themselves. Have more +patience! Think of your own friends, and give them time too.” + +If the last allusion was to the lad’s letter, due in Leicestershire +that morning, it was as happy as all Baumgartner’s last words. If he +meant himself to be included among Pocket’s friends, there was food for +thought in the suggestion that a man of the doctor’s obvious capacity +was not idle in the boy’s best interests. Pocket was made to feel +rather ashamed of himself, as usual; but he could not forget the +concentrated fury of the look which had not been weakened by infuriate +words; and the recollection remained as an excuse, as well as a menace, +in his mind. He had time enough to think it over. Dr. Baumgartner +smoked his meerschaum in the gathering shade at the back of the house. +The schoolboy sulked for some time in the big chair, but eventually +took the doctor at his word about a book. + +If it be ever true that a man may be known by his books, it was +certainly so to some extent in the case of Dr. Otto Baumgartner. His +library was singularly small for an intellectual man who wrote +himself, and a majority of the volumes were in languages which no +public schoolboy could be expected to read; but of the English books +many were on military subjects, some few anthropological; there were +photographic year-books and Psychical Research Reports by the foot or +yard, and there was an odd assortment of second-hand books which had +probably been labelled “occult” in their last bookseller’s list. +Boismont on _Hallucinations_ was one of these; it was the book for +Pocket. He took the little red volume down, and read a long chapter on +somnambulism in the big chair. In a way it comforted him. It was +something to find that he was far from being the only harmless creature +who had committed a diabolical deed in his sleep; here among several +cases was one of another boy who had made an equally innocent and yet +determined attempt on his own father. But there was something peculiar +in poor Pocket’s case, something that distinguished it from any of +those cited in the book, and he was still ferreting for its absolute +fellow when Phillida came in long before he expected her. Boismont had +made the time fly wonderfully, in spite of everything; the girl, too, +appeared to have been taken out of herself, and talked about her +concert as any other young girl might have done, both to Pocket and her + uncle, who glided in at once from the garden. The doctor, however, was +himself in mellower mood; and they were having tea, for all the world +like any ordinary trio, the girl still making talk about sundry songs, +the man quizzing them and her, and the boy standing up for one that his +sister sang at home, when a metallic tattoo put a dramatic stop to the +conversation. + +The two young people, but not their elder, were startled quite out of +their almost inadvertent tranquillity; and the knocker was not still +before Pocket realised that it was the first time he had heard it. No +letters were delivered at that house; not a soul had he seen or heard +at the door before. Even in his excitement, however, with its stunning +recrudescence of every reality, its instantaneous visions of his people +or the police, there was room for a measure of disgust when the girl +got up, at an ungallant nod from the German, to go to the door. + +“It’s a huge fat man,” whispered Phillida, on her return to the big +room at the back of the house. “Here’s his card.” + +“Thrush!” muttered Baumgartner as though he knew the name, and he +glowered at the two young faces on which it made no impression +whatever. It was plain how he hated leaving them together; but for once +it must be done, and done quickly—with both doors open and the +visitor’s very movements audible on the steps. To the door the doctor +must go, and went, shutting that one pointedly behind him. + +The young creatures, looking in each other’s eyes, listened for raised +voices and the slam of prompt expulsion; but the voices were pitched +too low to reach their ears in words, and were only interrupted by the +sound of footsteps in the hall, and the perfectly passive closing of an +outer and an inner door in quick succession. + +“He’s taken him into the dining-room,” murmured Phillida. “Who can it +be?” + +“Hasn’t he any friends?” + +“None who ever come here; none of that name anywhere, I feel sure.” Her +great eyes, without leaving his for an instant, filled with thought as +a blank screen takes a shadow. “I wonder if it’s about that!” she +whispered. + +“What?” + +“What they were calling out with the newspapers while we were at +table.” + +There was a pause. The look in her eyes had changed. It was purely +penetrating now. + +“Why should it be?” asked Pocket, his own eyes falling. + +“It’s no use asking me, Mr. Upton.” + +“But I don’t understand the question.” + +“Is that true?” + +“No,” he muttered; “it isn’t.” + +She was leaning over to him; he felt it, without looking up. + +“Mr. Upton,” she said, speaking quickly in the undertone they were both +instinctively adopting, “you know now what I thought about you at +first. I won’t say what made me; but that was what I thought, but could +hardly believe, and never will again. It makes it all the more a +mystery, your being here. I can’t ask my uncle—he tells me nothing—but +there’s something I can and must ask you.” + +Pocket hung his head. He knew what was coming. It came. + +“My uncle brought you here, Mr. Upton, on the very morning that thing +happened they were calling out about to-day. In the Park. It is to the +Park he goes so often in the early morning with his camera! How can I +say what I want to say? But, if you think, you will see that everything +points to it; especially the way he ran out for that paper—and hid the +truth when he came in!” + +Pocket looked up at last. + +“I know the truth.” + +“About the arrest?” + +“Yes; it was quite obvious, and he admitted it when you’d gone.” + +“Why not before?” + +“I couldn’t tax him about it in front of you,” he muttered, looking up +and down quickly, unable to face her fierce excitement. + +“Do tell me what it is you both know about this dreadful case!” + +“I can’t,” the boy said hoarsely; “don’t ask me.” + +“Then you know who did it. I can see you do.” + +There was a new anguish even in her whisper; he could hear what she +thought. + +“It was nobody you care about,” he mumbled, hoarser than before, and +his head lower. + +“You don’t mean——” + +She stopped aghast. + +“I can’t say another word—and you won’t say another to me!” he added, a +bitter break in his muffled voice. He longed to tell her it had been an +accident, to tell her all; but he had given his word to Baumgartner not +to confide in her, and he did not think that he had broken it yet. + +“You don’t know me,” she whispered, and for a moment her hand lay warm +in his; “trust me! I’m your friend in spite of all you’ve said—or +done!” + +Dr. Baumgartner might have been ten minutes getting rid of the +intruder; before that he had been first amazed and then relieved to +hear the piano in the drawing-room; and that was all his anxious ear +had heard of either boy or girl during his absence. Yet the boy was +not standing over the piano, as he might have been, for Phillida was +trying to recall one of the concert songs he said his sister sang. +Pocket, however, was staring out into the garden with a troubled face, +which he turned abruptly, aggressively, and yet apprehensively to meet +the doctor’s. + +But the doctor no longer looked suspiciously from him to Phillida, but +stood beaming on them both, and rubbing his hands as though he had done +something very clever indeed. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. +BEFORE THE STORM + + +Sunday in London has got itself a bad name among those who occasionally +spend one at their hotel, and miss the band, their letters, and the +theatre at night; but at Dr. Baumgartner’s there was little to +distinguish the seventh day from the other six. The passover of the +postman, that boon to residents and grievance of the traveller, was a +normal condition in the dingy house of no address. More motor-horns +were heard in the distance, and less heavy traffic; the sound of church +bells came as well through the open windows; then the street-door shut, +and there was a long period without Phillida, until it opened and shut +again, and in she peeped with her parasol and Prayer-book, as though +they were all quite ordinary people without a guilty secret among them! + +Such was the Sunday morning. It was fine and warm. Dr. Baumgartner +pottered about his untidy little garden, a sun-trap again as Pocket had +seen it first; the Turk’s head perspired from internal and external +heat, but its rich yellow, shading into richer auburn, clashed rather +with a red geranium which the doctor wore jauntily in the button-hole +of his black alpaca jacket. + +It was Phillida who had given him the flower at breakfast. She grew +what she could in the neglected garden; the plants in the miniature +conservatory were also hers, though the doctor took a perfunctory +interest in them, obviously on her account. It was obvious at least to +Pocket Upton. He saw all these things, and what they meant. He was not +without his little gifts of observation and deduction. He noticed the +difference in Baumgartner’s voice when he addressed his niece, the +humane kindling of the inexorable eyes, and to-day he thought he saw a +reciprocal softening on the part of Phillida. There had been none to +see yesterday or the day before. It was her uncle whom the girl had +seemed unable to forgive for the unseemly scuffle of Friday morning. +But now it was as though memory and common fairness had set years of +kindness against these days of unendurable mystery, and bidden her +endure them with a better grace. If she felt she had been disloyal to +him, she could not have made sweeter amends than she did by many an +unobtrusive little office. And she exchanged no more confidences with +poor Pocket. + +Yet these two were together most of the day; all three were; and it was +a strangely peaceful day, a day of natural hush, and the cessation of +life’s hostilities, such as is sometimes almost pointedly bestowed +before or after a time of strain. It was a day on which Pocket +certainly drew his spiritual breath more freely than on any other since +the dire catastrophe. There were few fresh clouds; perhaps the only one +before evening was the removal of the book on hallucinations in which +Pocket had become interested on the Saturday afternoon. It was no +longer lying about the room as he had left it. There was a gap in its +place in the shelf. The book had been taken away from him; it made him +feel as though he were back again at his very first dame’s school. + +And the church bells sent him back to the school he was at now! They +were more mellow and sedate then the chapel bells there, that rang you +down the hill at the double if you were late and not too asthmatical; +and Pocket saw and heard himself puffing up the opposite hill to take +his place for chapel call-over in the school quad. The fellows would be +forming in squads there now, all in their Sunday tails or Eton jackets +as the case might be; of course Pocket was in tails, though still +rather proud of them. The masters, in their silk hoods or their +rabbit-skins were prominent in his mind’s eye. Then came the cool and +spacious chapel, with its marble pulpit and its brazen candelabra, and +rows of chastened chapel faces, that he knew better than his own, +giving a swing to chants which ran in his head at the very thought. How +real it all was to him, and how unreal this Sunday morning, in the +sunny room with the battle engravings over the book-cases, and the +walnut chairs in front of them, and Dr. Baumgartner in and out in his +alpaca coat! After chapel he would have gone for a walk with Blundell +minor, most probably, or else written his letter home and got it over. +And that chapter would have ended with cold boiled beef and apple-pie +with cloves in it at Spearman’s. + +The Italian restaurant which sent in Dr. Baumgartner’s meals certainly +provided richer fare than that. There was a top-floor of soup in the +portable contrivance, and before the meat a risotto, which the doctor +praised without a single patriotic reservation. + +“Italy is a country where one can live,” said he. “Not that you must +understand me to be altogether down on your own fatherland, my young +fellow; there is something to be said for London, especially on a +Sunday. No organs from my dear Italy, none of those so-called German +bands which we in Germany would not tolerate for a moment; no postman +every hour of the day, and no gaolbirds crying false news down the +streets.” + +Pocket looked for a grim twinkle in the speaker’s eye, but found it +fixed on Phillida, who had not looked up. Instinct prompted Pocket to +say something quickly; that he had not seen a postman there, was the +actual remark. + +“That is because I conduct my correspondence at my club,” explained the +doctor. “I give out no other address; then you only get your letters +when you want them.” + +“Do you often go there?” the boy ventured to inquire, devoutly wishing +he would go that afternoon. + +“Not when I have visitors,” replied Baumgartner, with a smiling bow. +“And I look upon my patients in that light,” he added, with benevolent +but futile hypocrisy, embarrassing enough to Phillida, but not more so +than if she had still believed it to be the truth. + +Silence ensued until they were all in the other room; then the niece +took refuge at her piano, and this time Pocket hung over her for an +hour or more. He went through her music, and asked for everything that +Lettice played or sang. Phillida would not sing to him, but she had the +makings of a pianist. The boy’s enthusiasm for the things he knew made +her play then as well as ever he had heard them played. Even the +doctor, dozing in the big chair with eyes that were never quite shut, +murmured his approval more than once; he loved his Mendelssohn and +Schubert, and had nothing to say against the Sousas and others that the +boy picked out as well, and mentioned with ingenuous fervour in the +same breath. Pocket would have sung himself if the doctor had not been +there, for he had a bit of a voice when he was free from asthma; and +once or twice he stopped listening to wonder at himself. Could he be +the boy who had killed a man, however innocently, three days before! +Could it be he whom the police might come and carry off to prison at +any moment? Was it true that he might never see his own people any +more? Such questions appalled and stunned him; he could neither answer +them nor realise their full import. They turned the old man in the +chair, who alone could answer them, back into the goblin he had seemed +at first. Yet they did give a certain shameful zest and excitement even +to this quiet hour of motley music in his presence. + +Besides, there was always one comfort to remember now: his letter home. +Of course Lettice would show it to their father; of course something +would be done at once. Shame and sorrow for the accident would be his +for ever; but as for his present situation, there were moments when +Pocket felt rather like a story-book cabin-boy luxuriously marooned, +and already in communication with the mainland. + +He wondered what steps had been taken so far. No doubt his father had +come straight up to town; it was a moving thought that he might be +within a mile of that very room at that very moment. Would all the +known circumstances of his disappearance be published broadcast in the +papers? Pocket felt he would have red ears all his life if that were +done; and yet it had hurt him a little to gather from Baumgartner that +so far there was nothing in the papers to say he had so much as +disappeared. That fact must have been known since Thursday or Friday. +Once it did cross his mind that to keep it from his mother they would +have to keep it out of the papers. Well, as long as she did not know! + +He pictured the blinds down in her room; it was the hour of her +afternoon rest. If he were at home, he would be going about quietly. +Lettice would be reading or writing in the morning-room, most +probably. Father would be gloating over his rhododendrons with a strong +cigar; in his last letter the boy had heard how beautiful they were. +Horace might be with him, smoking a cigarette, if he and Fred were not +playing tennis. Their pocket edition had not to look very far ahead to +see himself smoking proper cigarettes with the others, to hear his own +voice telling them of his own experience—of this very hour at Dr. +Baumgartner’s. Even Fred and Horace would have to listen to that! +Pocket looked at the long lean figure in the chair, at the eyelids +never quite closed, and so imparting at once a softening and a sinister +effect. He noted the drooping geranium in his buttonhole, and grey ash +from the Turk’s head sprinkling the black alpaca coat. It brought the +very phrases of a graphic portrait almost to his lips. + +Yet if anybody had told the boy he was beginning to gloat over the +silver lining to the cloud that he was under, and that it was not +silver at all but one of the baser metals of the human heart, how +indignantly he would have denied it at first, how humbly seen it in the +end! + +When Phillida went off to make the tea her uncle sought his room and +sponge, but did not neglect to take Pocket with him. Pocket was for +going higher up to his own room; but Baumgartner said that would only +make more work, in a tone precluding argument. It struck Pocket that +the doctor really needed sleep, and was irritable after a continuous +struggle against it. If so, it served him right for not trusting a +fellow—and for putting Boismont in the waste-paper basket, by Jove! + +There was no mistaking the red book there; it was one of the first +things Pocket noticed, while the doctor was stooping over his basin in +the opposite corner; and the schoolboy’s strongest point, be it +remembered, was a stubborn tenacity of his own devices. He made a dive +at the waste-paper basket, meaning to ask afterwards if the doctor +minded his reading that book. But the question never was asked; the +book was still in the basket when the doctor had finished drying his +face; and the boy was staring and swaying as though he had seen the +dead. + +“Why, what’s the matter with my young fellow?” inquired Baumgartner, +solicitously. + +“Nothing! I’ll be all right soon,” muttered Pocket, wiping his forehead +and then his hand. + +“You look faint. Here’s my sponge. No, lie flat down there first!” + +But Pocket was not going to lie down on that bed. + +“I do feel seedy,” he said, in a stronger voice with a new note in it, +“but I’m not going to faint. I’m quite well able to go upstairs. I’d +rather lie down on my own bed, if you don’t mind.” + +His own bed! The irony struck him even as he said the words. He was +none the less glad to sit down on it; and so sitting he made his first +close examination of two or three tiny squares of paper which he had +picked out of the basket in the doctor’s room instead of Boismont’s +book on hallucinations. There had been no hallucination about those +scraps of paper; they were fragments of the boy’s own letter to his +sister, which Dr. Baumgartner had never posted at all. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. +A LIKELY STORY + + +At that moment help was as far away as it had been near the day before, +when Eugene Thrush was closeted in the doctor’s dining-room; for not +only had Mr. Upton decamped for Leicestershire, without a word of +warning to anybody, on the Saturday afternoon, but Thrush himself had +followed by the only Sunday train. + +A bell was ringing for evening service when he landed in a market town +which reversed the natural order by dozing all summer and waking up for +the hunting season. And now the famous grass country was lying in its +beauty-sleep, under a gay counterpane of buttercups and daisies, and +leafy coverts, with but one blot in the sky-line, in the shape of a +permanent plume of sluggish smoke. But the works lay hidden, and the +hall came first; and Thrush, having ascertained that this was it, +abandoned the decrepit vessel he had boarded at the station, and +entered the grounds on foot. + +A tall girl, pacing the walks with a terribly anxious face, was +encountered and accosted before he reached the house. + +“I believe Mr. Upton lives here. Can you tell me if he’s at home? I +want to see him about something.” + +Lettice flushed and shrank. + +“I know who you are! Have you found my brother?” + +“No; not yet,” said Thrush, after a pause. “But you take my breath +away, my dear young lady! How could you be so sure of me? Is it no +longer to be kept a secret, and is that why your father bolted out of +town without a word?” + +“It’s still a secret,” whispered Lettice, as though the shrubs had +ears, “only I’m in it. Nobody else is—nobody fresh—but I guessed, and +my mother was beginning to suspect. My father never stays away a Sunday +unless he’s out of England altogether; she couldn’t understand it, and +was worrying so about him that I wired begging him to come back if only +for the night. So it’s all my fault, Mr. Thrush; and I know everything +but what you’ve come down to tell us!” + +“That’s next to nothing,” he shrugged. “It’s neither good nor bad. But +if you can find your father I’ll tell you both exactly what I have +found out.” + +In common with all his sex, he liked and trusted Lettice at sight, +without bestowing on her a passing thought as a person capable of +provoking any warmer feeling. She was the perfect sister—that he felt +as instinctively as everybody else—and a woman to trust into the +bargain. It would be cruel and quite unnecessary to hide anything from +that fine and unselfish face. So he let her lead him to a little +artificial cave, lined and pungent with pitch-pine, over against the +rhododendrons, while she went to fetch her father quietly from the +house. + +The ironmaster amplified the excuses already made for him; he had +rushed for the first train after getting his daughter’s telegram, +leaving but a line for Thrush with his telephone number, in the hopes +that he would use it whether he had anything to report or not. + +“As you didn’t,” added Mr. Upton, in a still aggrieved voice, “I’ve +been trying again and again to ring you up instead; but of course you +were never there, nor your man Mullins either. I was coming back by +the last train, however, and should have been with you late to-night.” + +“Did you leave the motor behind?” + +“Yes; it’ll be there to meet me at St. Pancras.” + +“It may have to do more than that,” said Thrush, spreading his full +breadth on the pitch-pine seat. “I’ve found out something; how much or +how little it’s too soon to tell; but I wasn’t going to discuss it +through a dozen country exchanges as long as you wanted the thing a +dead secret, Mr. Upton, and that’s why I didn’t ring you up. As for +your last train, I’d have waited to meet it in town, only that wouldn’t +have given me time to say what I’ve got to say before one or other of +us may have to rush off somewhere else by another last train.” + +“Do for God’s sake say what you’ve got to say!” cried Mr. Upton. + +“Well, I’ve seen a man who thinks he may have seen the boy!” + +“Alive?” + +“And perfectly well—but for his asthma—on Thursday.” + +The ironmaster thanked God in a dreadful voice; it was Lettice who +calmed him, not he her. Her eyes only shone a little, but his were +blinded by the first ray of light. + +“Where was it?” he asked, when he could ask anything. + +“I’ll tell you in a minute. I want first to be convinced that it really +was your son. Did the boy take any special interest in Australia?” + +“Rather!” cried Lettice, the sister of three boys. + +“What kind of interest?” + +“He wanted to go out there. It had just been talked about.” She looked +at her father. “I wouldn’t let him go,” he said. “Why?” + +“I want to know just how it came to be talked about.” + +“A fool of a doctor in town recommended it.” + +Lettice winced, but Thrush nodded as though that tallied. + +“Did he recommend any particular vessel?” + +“Yes, a sailing ship—the _Seringapatam_— an old East Indiaman they’ve +turned into a kind of floating hospital. I wouldn’t hear of the beastly +tub.” + +“Do you know when she was to sail?” + +“I did know,” said Lettice. “I believe it was just about now.” + +“She sailed yesterday,” said Thrush, impressively; “and your brother, +if it was your brother, talked a good deal about her to this man. He +told him all about your having always been in favour of it, Miss Upton, +and his father not. I’m bound to say it sounds as though it may have +been the boy.” + +Thrush seemed to be keeping something back; but the prime and absorbing +question of identity prevented the others from noticing this. + +“It must have been!” cried Mr. Upton. “Who was the man, and where +exactly did he see him?” + +“First on Thursday morning, and last on Thursday night. But perhaps I’d +better tell you about my informant, since we’ve only his word for +Thursday, and only his suspicions as to what has happened since. In the +first place he’s a semi-public man, though I don’t suppose you know his +name. It’s Baumgartner—Dr. Otto Baumgartner—a German scientist of some +distinction.” + +The ironmaster made a remark which did him little credit, and Thrush +continued with some pride: “There was some luck in it, of course, for +he was the very first man I struck who’d bought d’Auvergne Cigarettes +since Wednesday; but I was on his doorstep well within twenty-four +hours of hearing that your son was missing; and you may chalk that up +to A. V. M.! I might have been with him some hours sooner still, but I +preferred to spend them getting to know something about my man. I tried +his nearest shops; perfect mines! One was a chemist, who didn’t know +him by sight, and had never heard of the cigarettes, but remembered +being asked for them by an elderly gentleman last Thursday morning! +That absolutely confirmed my first suspicion that Baumgartner himself +was not the asthmatic; if he had been, the nearest chemist would have +known all about him. Yet he had gone to the nearest chemist first!” + +“The nearest butcher was next door; but he was so short about +Baumgartner that I scented a true-green vegetarian. It was a false +scent, Mr. Upton; not to mention the baker and the candlestick-maker, +there’s a little restaurant in the same row, which was about the fifth +place where I began by asking if they knew where a Dr. Baumgartner +lived in that neighbourhood. The little Italian boss was all over me on +the spot! The worthy doctor proved to be his most regular customer, +having all his meals sent in hot from the restaurant in quite the +Italian manner. I don’t suppose you see how very valuable this was to +me. Germans love Italy, the little man explained; but I said that was +the one point on which I should never yield to Germany—and I thought I +was going to be kissed across the counter! It seems the good doctor +lives alone with his niece (not always even her), and keeps no servants +and never entertains. Yet on Friday, for the first time since the +arrangement was made, the old chap went to the restaurant himself to +complain of short commons; there had not been enough for them to eat on +the Thursday night!” + +“Had they been alone?” asked Mr. Upton, with a puzzled face. + +“That’s the whole point! My little Florentine understood they were, but +I deduced one extra, and then conceived a course that may astonish you. +It was the bold course; but it nearly always pays. I lunched at my +leisure (an excellent Chianti my little friend keeps) and afterwards +went round and saw the doctor himself. The niece opened the door—I wish +I’d seen more of her—but she fetched her uncle at once and I begged for +an interview on an urgent matter. He consented in a way that, I must +say, impressed me very favourably; and the moment we were alone I said, +‘I want to know, Doctor, who you bought those asthma cigarettes for +last Thursday!’” + +“That took him aback, but not unduly; so then I added, ‘I’m an inquiry +agent with a very delicate case in hand, and if you’ll tell me it may +solve at heart-breaking a mystery as I’ve ever handled.’ Is was +treating him like a gentleman, but I believe in that; there’s no +shorter cut to whether a man is one or not.” + +“Well, his face had lit up, and a very fine face it is; it hadn’t +blackened for the fifth of a second; but I had a disappointment in +store. ‘I’d tell you his name with all my heart,’ he said, ‘only I +don’t really know it myself. He said it was John Green—but his +handkerchiefs were marked “A. A. U.”’” + +“Tony’s initials!” cried Tony’s father. + +“But it never was Tony under a false name,” his sister vowed. “That +settles it for me, Mr. Thrush.” + +“Not even if he’d got into some scrape or adventure, Miss Upton?” + +“He would never give a name that wasn’t his.” + +“Suppose he felt he had disgraced his name?” + +“My brother Tony wouldn’t do it!” + +“He might feel he had?” + +“He might,” the father agreed, “even if he’d done no such thing; in +fact, he’s just the kind of boy who would take an exaggerated view of +some things.” His mind went back to his last talk with Horace on the +subject. + +“Or he might feel he was about to do something, shall we say, unworthy +of you all?” Thrush made the suggestion with much delicacy. + +“Then I don’t think he’d do it,” declared loyal Lettice. + +“Let us hear what you think he did,” said Mr. Upton. + +“It’s not what I think; it’s what this man Baumgartner thinks, and his +story that you ought to hear.” + +And that which they now heard at second-hand was in fact a wonderfully +true version—up to a point—of poor Pocket’s condition and +adventures—with the sleep-walking and the shooting left out—from the +early morning of his meeting with Baumgartner until the late afternoon +of that day. + +Baumgartner had actually described the boy’s long sleep in his chair; +it was with the conversation when he awoke that the creative work began +in earnest. + +“That’s a good man!” said Mr. Upton, with unimaginable irony. “I’d like +to take him by the hand—and those infernal Knaggses by the scruff of +their dirty necks—and that old hag Harbottle by the hair!” + +“I think of dear darling Tony,” said Lettice, in acute distress; “lying +out all night with asthma—it was enough to kill him—or to send him out +of his mind.” + +“I wonder if it could have done that,” remarked Thrush, in a tone of +serious speculation which he was instantly called upon to explain. + +“What are you keeping back?” cried Lettice, the first to see that he +had been keeping something all this time. + +“Only something he’d kept back from them,” replied Thrush, with just a +little less than his usual aplomb. “It was a surprise he sprang on them +after waking; it will probably surprise you still more, Mr. Upton. You +may not believe it. I’m not certain that I do myself. In the morning he +had spoken of the Australian voyage as though you’d opposed it, but +withdrawn your opposition—one moment, if you don’t mind! In the evening +he suddenly explained that he was actually sailing in the +_Seringapatam_, that his baggage was already on board, and he must get +aboard himself that night!” + +“I don’t believe it, Thrush.” + +“No more do I, father, for a single instant. Tony, of all people!” + +Thrush looked from one to the other with a somewhat disingenuous eye. +“I don’t say I altogether accept it myself; that’s why I kept it to the +end,” he explained. “But we must balance the possibilities against the +improbabilities, never losing sight of the one incontestable fact that +the boy has undoubtedly disappeared. And here’s a man, a well-known +man, who makes no secret of the fact that he found him wandering in the +Park, in the early morning, breathless and dazed, and drove him home to +his own house, where the boy spent the day; they took a hansom, the +doctor tells me, than which no statement is more quickly and easily +checked. Are we to believe this apparently unimpeachable and +disinterested witness, or are we not? He was most explicit about +everything, offering to show me exactly where he found the boy, and +never the least bit vague or unsatisfactory in any way. If you are +prepared to believe him, if only for the sake of argument, you may care +to hear Dr. Baumgartner’s theory as to what has happened.” + +Lettice shook her head in scorn, but Mr. Upton observed, “Well, we may +as well hear what the fellow had to say to you; we must be grateful to +him for taking pity on our boy, and he was the last who saw him; he may +have seen something that we shouldn’t guess.” + +“Exactly!” exclaimed Eugene Thrush; “he saw, or at any rate he now +thinks he saw, enough to build up a pretty definite theory on the +foundation of fact supplied by me. He didn’t know the boy had come up +to see a doctor and been refused a lodging for the night; he understood +he had come up to join his ship, and suspected he had been on a sort of +mild spree—if Miss Upton will forgive me!” And he turned deferential +lenses on the indignant girl. + +“I don’t forgive the suggestion,” said she; “but it isn’t yours, Mr. +Thrush, so please go on.” + +“It’s an idea that Dr. Baumgartner continues to hold in spite of all I +was able to tell him, and we mustn’t forget, as Mr. Upton says, that he +was the last to see your brother. Briefly, he believes the boy did +meet with some misadventure that night in town; that he had been +ill-treated or intimidated by some unscrupulous person or persons; +perhaps threatened with blackmail; at any rate imbued with the +conviction that he is not more sinned against than sinning. That, I +think, is only what one expects of these very conscientious characters, +particularly in youth; he was taking something or somebody a +thousandfold more seriously than a grown man would have done. Afraid to +go back to school for fear of expulsion, ashamed to show his face at +home! What’s to be done? He thinks of the ship about to sail, the ship +he hoped to sail in, and in his desperation he determines to sail in +her still—even if he has to stow away!” + +“My God!” cried Mr. Upton, “he’s just the one to think of it. His head +was full of those trashy adventure stories!” + +But Lettice shook hers quietly. + +“To think of it, but not to do it,” said she, with a quiet conviction +that rather nettled Mr. Thrush. + +“But really, Miss Upton, he must have done something, you know! And he +actually talked to Dr. Baumgartner about this; not of doing it himself, +but of stowaways in general, à propos of his voyage; and how many +pounds of biscuit and how many ounces of water would carry one alive +into blue water. There’s another thing, by the way! He told Baumgartner +the ship touched nowhere between the East India Docks and Melbourne; he +would be out of the world for three whole months.” + +“And she only sailed yesterday?” cried Mr. Upton, coming furiously to +his feet. “And you let her get through the Straits of Dover and out to +sea while you came down here to tell me this by inches?” + +Thrush blinked blandly through his port-hole glasses. + +“I’m letting her go as far as Plymouth,” said he, “where one or both of +us will board her tomorrow if she’s up to time!” + +“You said she didn’t touch anywhere between the docks and Melbourne?” + +“No; your son said that, Mr. Upton, and it was his one mistake. They +don’t usually touch, but a son of one of the owners happens to have +gone round in the ship to Plymouth for the trip. I got it first from an +old boatswain of the line who’s caretaker at the office, and the only +man there, of course, yesterday afternoon; but I’ve since bearded one +of the partners at his place down the river, and had the statement +confirmed and amplified. One or two pasengers are only going aboard at +Plymouth, so she certainly won’t sail again before to-morrow noon, even +if she’s there by then. You will be in ample time to board her—and I’ve +got a sort of search-warrant from the partner I saw—if you go down by +the 12.15 from Paddington to-night.” + +The ironmaster asked no more questions; that was good enough for him, +he said, and went off to tell a last lie to his wife, with the +increasing confidence of one gradually mastering the difficulties of an +uncongenial game. He felt also that a happy issue was in sight, and +after that he could tell the truth and liberate his soul. He was +pathetically sanguine of the solution vicariously propounded by Eugene +Thrush, and prepared to rejoice in a discovery which would have filled +him with dismay and chagrin if he had not been subconsciously prepared +for something worse. It never occurred to Mr. Upton to question the +man’s own belief in the theory he had advanced; but Lettice did so the +moment she had the visitor to herself in the smoking-room, where it +fell to her to do certain honours _vice_ Horace, luckily engaged at the +works. “And do you believe this astounding theory, Mr. Thrush?” + +Thrush eyed her over his tumbler’s rim, but completed his draught +before replying. + +“It’s not my province to believe or to disbelieve, Miss Upton; my job +is to prove things one way or the other.” + +“Then I’ll tell you just one thing for your guidance: my brother is +absolutely incapable of the conduct you ascribe to him between you.” + +Thrush did not look as though he were being guided by anybody or +anything, beyond the dictates of his own appetites, as he sat by the +window of the restaurant car, guzzling new potatoes and such Burgundy +as could be had in a train. But he was noticeably less garrulous than +usual, and his companion also had very little to say until the train +was held up inexplicably outside Willesden, when he began to fume. + +“I never knew such a thing on this line before,” he complained; “it’s +all the harder luck, for I never was on such an errand before, and +it’ll just make the difference to me.” + +“You’ll have time,” said Thrush, consulting his watch as the train +showed signs of life at last. + +“Not for what I want to do,” said Mr. Upton firmly. “I want to shake +that man’s hand, and to hear from his own lips about my boy!” + +“I’m not sure that you’ll find him at home,” Thrush said, after a +contemplative pause. + +“I’ll take my chance of that.” + +“He said something about their both going out of town to-day—meaning +niece and self. I heard her playing just before I left, and that +seemed to remind him of it.” + +“Well, Thrush, I mean to risk it.” + +“And losing the train?” + +“I can motor down to Plymouth; there’s plenty of time. I might take him +with me, as well as you?” + +“Better,” said Thrush, after another slight pause. “I’d rather you +didn’t count on me for that trip, Mr. Upton.” + +“Not count on you”? + +“One of us will be quite enough.” + +“Have you some other case to shove in front of mine, then?” cried the +ironmaster, touched on the old raw spot. + +“I shouldn’t put it like that, Mr. Upton.” + +“All right! I’ll take your man Mullins instead; but I’ll try my luck at +that German doctor’s first,” he growled, determined to have his own way +in something. + +“I’m afraid you can’t have Mullins,” said Thrush, gently. + +“Want him yourself do you?” + +“I do; but I’m afraid neither of us can have him just now, Mr. Upton.” + +“Why not? Where is he.” + +Thrush leant across as they swam into the lighted terminus. + +“In prison.” + +“In prison! Your man Mullins?” + +“Yes, Mr. Upton, he’s the man they arrested yesterday on suspicion of +complicity in this Hyde Park affair!” + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. +MALINGERING + + +Pocket had put the fragments of his poor letter together again, and was +still poring over those few detached and mutilated words, which were +the very ones his tears had blotted, when there came a warning chink of +tea-things on the stairs. He was just able to thrust the pieces back +into his pocket, and to fling himself at full length on the bed, before +Dr. Baumgartner entered with a tray. + +“There, my young fellow! This will make a man of you! Then we shall see +you yourself again by supper-time.” + +“I’m not coming down again,” said Pocket. “Don’t force me, please” + +“Force you?” Baumgartner cocked a keen eye at the open window. “What a +tyrant you would make me out! On the contrary, I think you show your +wisdom in remaining quiet. Perhaps you would be quieter still with the +window shut—so—and fastened to prevent it rattling. I will open it +when I come up again. There shall not be a sound in the house to +disturb you.” + +And he took to tiptoes there and then, gliding about with a smiling +stealth that set Pocket shivering on the bed; he shivered the more when +an admirable doctor’s hand, cool and smooth as steel, was laid upon his +forehead. + +“A little fever, I’m afraid! I should get right into bed, if I were +you. It’s nothing to be alarmed about, much less astonished; you have +been through so much, my poor young fellow.” + +“I have indeed!” cried Pocket, with unguarded bitterness. + +And Baumgartner paused between the foot of the bed and the door. + +“But there’s one consolation for you,” he said at length, in a sibilant +whisper. “They’ve had that letter of yours at home quite a long time +now—ever since yesterday morning, haven’t they?” + +The bed shook under Pocket when the door was shut—he only hoped it was +not before. Up to the last minute, he felt quite sure that Dr. +Baumgartner, suspicious as he was, had suspected nothing of the +discovery downstairs behind his back. If he himself had betrayed +anything it was in the last few seconds, when it had been all that he +could do to keep from screaming out his knowledge of the other’s +trickery. To play such a trick upon a broken-hearted boy! To have the +heart to play it! No wonder he felt feverish to that wicked hand; the +wonder was that he had actually lain there listening to the smooth +impostor gratuitously revelling in his imposition! + +Rage and disappointment seized him by turns, and both together; at +first they bit deeper even than the fear of Baumgartner—a fear felt +from the beginning, and naturally redoubled now. Disappointment had the +sharper tooth: his letter had ever gone, not one of his people knew a +thing about him yet, his tears had not drawn theirs, they had not hung +in anxious conclave on his words! Not that he had recognised any such +subtle consolations as factors in his temporary and comparative peace +of mind; now that they were gone, he could not have said what it was he +missed; he only knew that he could least forgive Baumgartner for this +sudden sense of cruel and crushing disappointment. + +The phase passed, for the boy had the temperament that sees the other +side eventually, and of course there was something to be said for the +doctor’s stratagem. He could understand it, after all; the motive was +not malevolent; it was to relieve his mind and keep him quiet. The plan +had succeeded perfectly, and nobody was really any the worse off. His +people would have known he was alive and well on the Friday; but that +was all, and they had no reason yet to assume his death. No; even +Pocket came to see that his letter had been more of a relief to write +than it could have been to read; that, indeed, it could only have +aggravated the anxiety and suspense at home. Yet there was in him some +fibre which the deliberate deception had fretted and frayed beyond +reason or forgiveness. He saw all there was to be said about it; he +could imagine Baumgartner himself putting the case with irresistible +logic, with characteristic plausibility, and all the mesmeric wisdom of +a benevolent serpent; but for once, the boy felt, he would not be taken +in. It was not coming to that, however, for he had quite decided not to +betray his knowledge of the fraud—if only he had not already done so! + +His fears on that score were largely allayed by Baumgartner’s manner +when at length he returned with another tray; for nothing could have +been more considerate and sympathetic, and even fatherly, than the +doctor’s behaviour then. Pocket had never touched his tea; he was very +gently chidden for that. Obstinately he declared he did not want any +supper either: it was true he did not want to want any, or another bite +of that man’s bread, but he was sorry as soon as the words were out. It +was against his reasoned policy to show temper, and he was beginning +to feel very hungry besides. The doctor said, “You’ll think better of +that, my young fellow,” which turned a mere remark into more than half +an absolute resolution. The second tray was set with a lighted candle +on a chair by the bedside. The boy eyed it wistfully with set teeth, +and Baumgartner eyed the boy. + +“Is there anything you could fancy, my young fellow?” + +“Nothing to eat.” + +“Is there any book?” + +“Yes,” said Pocket, without a moment’s premeditation. “There’s the book +I was reading yesterday.” + +“What was that?” + +“Some Frenchman on hallucinations.” + +“So you were reading that book!” remarked the doctor, with detestable +aplomb. “I wondered who had taken it down. It is a poor book. I have +destroyed it.” + +“I’m sorry,” said Pocket, and tried to look it rather than revolted. + +“I am not,” rejoined Baumgartner. “Even if it were a good book, it is +no book for you at the present time. It is morbid to dwell on what is +done and over.” + +“If it is over,” murmured the boy. + +“It is over!” said Baumgartner, fiercely. + +“Well,” said Pocket, “I’m glad I read what he’d got to say about +somnambulism.” + +“Why?” + +Pocket did not say it was a satisfaction to have done anything in spite +of such a despot as his questioner. But he did say it was a comfort to +know that others besides himself had committed terrible deeds in their +sleep. + +“But,” he added, “they always seem to have dreamt the dreadful thing as +well. Now, the funny thing is that I remember nothing until the shot +woke me and I found myself where you saw me.” + +“I’m glad you find it funny!” + +The sneer seemed strangely unworthy of a keen intelligence; the +increased asperity of Baumgartner’s manner, and his whole conduct about +a harmless book, altogether inexplicable. + +“You know what I mean,” replied the boy, with spirit. + +“Yes, I know what you mean! You mean to go out of your mind, and to do +your best to drive me out of mine, for the sake of a technically human +life less precious than the average dog’s!” + +And, much as it puzzled him, there was certainly something more human +about this sudden outburst than in anything Dr. Baumgartner had said +since the scene between them in the bedroom below. He even slammed the +door behind him when he went. But Pocket preferred that novel +exhibition, for its very heat and violence, to the sleek and calculated +solicitude of the doctor’s final visit, with pipe and candle, when the +one by the bedside had burnt down almost to the socket. + +“My young fellow!” he exclaimed in unctuous distress. “Not a bite eaten +in all these hours! Do you know that it’s nearly midnight?” + +“I’m not hungry,” replied Pocket, lying gloriously for once. “I told +you I wasn’t well.” + +“You’ll be worse if you don’t force yourself to eat.” + +“I can’t help that.” + +“Well, well!” said the doctor, instead of the objurgation that seemed +to tremble for an instant on his lips. He replaced between them the +oval hook of clear amber enclosing the thin round one of black +nicotine, and he puffed until the cruel carved face was hotter and more +infuriate than ever, under the swirling smoke of mimic battle. To the +boy it was all but a living face, and a vile one, capable of nameless +atrocities; and the hard-frozen face of Baumgartner was capable of +looking on. + +“Well, well! If I am to have you ill on my hands it’s my own fault. I +take the responsibility for everything that has happened since the very +first moment we met. Remember that, my young fellow! I took the law +into my own hands, and you I took into my own house for better or +worse. You were worse then, remember, and yet I took you in! Is it not +strange that your asthma has entirely left you under my roof? Does it +not lead you to believe in me, my young fellow—to trust me perhaps more +than you have done?” + +It did not. Pocket was not going to lie about that; he held his tongue +stubbornly instead. He still believed in his own explanation, derived +from one of his many doctors, and moreover already mentioned to this +one, of the sudden cessation of his chronic complaint. He hated +Baumgartner for forgetting that, and pretending for a moment to take +any credit to himself. That again was not worthy of so cool and keen a +brain, much less of the candid character with which Pocket had supposed +himself to be dealing. The very young are pathetically apt to see their +own virtues in those whom they trust at all; but the schoolboy’s faith +in Dr. Baumgartner had been shattered to its base; and now (as sure a +symptom of his youth) he could see no virtue at all. + +“You must trust me again,” said Baumgartner, as though he knew what he +had forfeited. “I know what will do you good.” + +“What?” asked Pocket, out of mere incredulous curiosity. + +“Fresh air; some exercise; a glimpse of the beautiful town we live in, +before another soul is about, before the sun itself is up!” + +Pocket hardly knew what made him shudder at the proposition. It might +have been the poignant picture of that other early morning, which came +before him in a scorching flash. But there was something also in the +way the doctor was bending over him in bed, holding his pipe nearer +still, so that the two dreadful faces seemed of equal size. And +Baumgartner’s had become a dreadful face in the boy’s eyes now; there +was none among those cruel waxworks to match it in cold intellectual +cruelty; and its smile—its new and strange smile it must have been that +made him shudder and shake his head. + +“But, my young fellow,” urged the doctor, “it will do you so much good. +And not a soul will see us so early, early in the morning!” + +Again that insinuating smile inspired a horror of which the boy himself +could have offered no satisfactory explanation, especially as there was +much to commend the proposal to his mind. But his face was white enough +as he moved it from side to side on the pillow. + +“I tell you I’m ill,” he whimpered. “How can I go out with you, when +you see I can’t eat a bite?” + +Baumgartner gave it up for the night. He was coming back in the early, +early lovely summer’s morning; then they would see, would they not? +Pocket had a last wave from the hideous meerschaum head, and a nod from +the other. He was alone for the night. And he meant to be alone next +morning when the doctor took his early walk; let him prowl by himself. +Pocket was not going with him. He had never been more determined about +anything than that. It was an animal instinct of fear and deep +revulsion, an impulse quite distinct from a further determination to +slip away in his turn as soon as the coast was clear. On this course he +was equally decided, but on other and more palpable grounds. +Baumgartner had broken his side of their treaty, so the treaty was torn +up with the letter which had never gone. And Pocket was going instead +of his letter—going straight to his people to tell them all, and have +that poor innocent man set free before the day was out. + +The night’s immunity was meanwhile doubly precious; but it had been +secured, or rather its continuance could only be assured, at a price +which he wondered even now if he could pay. He was a growing, hungry +boy, no longer ailing in wind or limb. Distress of mind was his one +remaining ill; the rest was sham; and distress of mind did not prevent +him from feeling ravenous after fasting ten or eleven hours. Here was +food still within his reach, even at his side; but he felt committed +to his declaration that he could not eat. If the tray were still +untouched in the morning, surely there could be no further question of +his going out with Baumgartner; but there was an “if.” The boy was not +used to being very stern with himself; his strongest point was not +self-denial. Much of his moral stamina had been expended in nightly +tussles for mere breath; he had grit enough there. But his temperament +was self-indulgent, and that he triumphed over positive pangs only +shows the power of that rival instinct not to accompany the doctor a +yard from his door. + +Yet it meant more hours with the food beside him than he could endure +lying still. He got up, inch by inch, for he knew who lay underneath; +and he opened the window, which Baumgartner had broken his promise to +open, by even slower and more laborious degrees. He leant out as he had +done that first morning, it might have been a month ago; and this scene +must have challenged comparison with that, had his mind been even as +free from dread and terror as it had been then. But all he saw was the +few remaining lighted windows in the backs of those other houses; he +could not have sworn there was a moon. The moon poured no beam of +comfort on his aching head; but the lighted windows were as the open +eyes of honest men, who would not see him come to harm; and the last +rumble in the streets was a faint but cheering chorus for lonely ears. + +Once a motor-horn blew a solo near at hand, and Pocket half recognised +its note; but he did not connect it with quite another set of sounds, +which grew but gradually on his ear out of the bowels of the house. +Somebody was knocking and ringing at the doctor’s door, not furiously, +but with considerable pertinacity. Pocket was thrilled to the marrow +just at first, and flew from the open window to the landing outside his +door. The house was in perfect darkness, and still as death in the +patient intervals between each measured attempt to rouse the inmates +without disturbing the street. It came to Pocket that it must be +Baumgartner himself, gone out for something without his key; and the +boy was about to run down and let him in, when he distinctly heard the +retreat of feet down the front steps, and then a chuckle on the next +landing as the doctor closed his bedroom door. + +Who could it have been? Baumgartner’s chuckle suggested the police; but +in that case it was the boy upstairs who was going to have the last +laugh, though a grim one, and very terribly at his own expense. He +could not close an eye for thinking of it, and listening for another +knocking and ringing down below. But nothing happened until the doctor +returned between five and six, still with his meerschaum pipe, still in +his alpaca jacket, but wearing also the goblin hat and cloak of their +first meeting, to renew and intensify the animal fear that glued the +boy to his bed. + +“It is a pity,” said Baumgartner, standing at the window which Pocket +had left open. “The air is like champagne at this hour, and not a cloud +in the sky! It would do you more good than lying there. It is you who +are making yourself ill. If I thought you were doing it on purpose +”—and his eyes blazed—“I’d feed you like a fowl!” + +“It’s so likely that I should do it on purpose,” muttered Pocket, with +schoolboy sarcasm. His eyes, however, were purposely closed, and they +had missed the old daggers in Baumgartner’s. + +“You know best,” said the doctor. “But you are missing the morning of +your life! Not a cloud in the sky, only the golden rain in my little +garden. I suppose you have not learnt what the golden rain is at your +public school? You English call it laburnum; but we Germans have more +imagination, thank God!” + +Pocket did not open his eyes again till he had gone; next instant he +had the door open too, as the doctor’s step was creaking down the lower +flight of stairs. Once more Pocket ventured out upon the landing, not +quite to the banisters; he trusted to his ears as before. They told +him the doctor had gone into his dark-room. His heart sank. It was only +for a moment. The dark-room door shut sharply. The steps came creaking +back along the hall, went grating out upon the doorstep. There was +another sharp shutting. Food at last! + +It was neither very nice nor half enough for a famishing lad, that +plate of cold mixed meats from the restaurant, with a hard stale roll +to eke them out. But Pocket felt he had a fresh start in life when he +had eaten every crumb and emptied his water-bottle. Nor was he without +plan or purpose any longer; he was only doubtful whether to knock at +Phillida’s door and shout goodbye, or to leave her a note explaining +all. Baumgartner would be out for hours; he always was, on these early +jaunts of his; there would almost be time to wait and say goodbye +properly when the girl came down. She would hardly hinder him a second +time, and he longed to see her and speak to her again, especially if +that was to be the end between them. He did not mean it to be the end, +by any means; but any nonsense that might have been gathering in the +schoolboy’s head was, at this point, more than rudely dispelled by the +discovery that Dr. Baumgartner had removed his clothes! + +Pocket swore an oath that would have shocked him in a schoolfellow; it +was a practice he indeed abhorred, but decent words would not meet +such a case. It was to be met by action, however, just as that locked +door had been met, and the policeman’s prohibition in the Park. He knew +where his clothes must be. He slipped his overcoat, which he was using +as a dressing-gown, over his pyjamas, and ran right downstairs as Dr. +Baumgartner had done not many minutes before him. His clothes were in +the dark-room. But the dark-room door had a Yale lock; there was no +forcing it by foot or shoulder, though Pocket in his passion tried +both. So round he went without a moment’s hesitation to the dark-room +window by way of the little conservatory. The blind was drawn. That +mattered nothing. He went back for a plant-pot, and smashed both it and +a sheet of ruby glass with one vicious blow. + +Entry was simple after that; he had only to be careful not to cut his +hands or feet. Inside, he removed the broken glass, closed the window, +and let the blind down as he had found it, without looking twice at his +clothes. There they were for him to carry upstairs at his leisure. They +were not his only property in that room either. His revolver was there +somewhere under lock and key. He might want it, waking, if Dr. +Baumgartner came back before his time. + +It was easily located; of the lockers, built in with the shelves on +the folding doors, only one was actually locked, and the revolver was +not in the others. Pocket went to his waistcoat for one of those knives +beloved of schoolboys, with the hook for extracting stones from hoofs, +among other superfluous implements. Pocket had never used this one, had +often felt inclined to wrench it off because it was hard to open and in +the way of the other tools. But he used it now with as little +hesitation as he had done the other damage, with almost a lust for +breakage; and there was his revolver, safe and sound as his clothes. + +It had been honoured with a place beside a rack of special negatives; +at least, there were other racks, in the other lockers, not locked up +like that; and there was no other treasure that Pocket could see. He +had his hand on his own treasure, was in the act of taking it, +trembling a little, but more elated, as he stood in a ruby flood only +partially diluted by the broken window behind the blind. + +At that moment there came such a thunder of knuckles on the door beside +him that the revolver caught in the rack of negatives, and brought the +whole lot crashing about his toes. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. +ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH + + +The unseen knuckles renewed their assault upon the dark-room door; and +Pocket wavered between its Yale lock, which opened on this side with a +mere twist of the handle, and the broken red window behind the drawn +red blind. Escape that way was easy enough; and if ever one could take +the streets in pyjamas and overcoat, with the rest of one’s clothes in +a bundle under one’s arm, it was before six o’clock in the morning. But +it was not a course that vanity encouraged in an excited schoolboy with +romantic instincts and a revolver which he perceived at a glance to be +still loaded in most of its chambers. Pocket was not one of nature’s +heroes, but he had an overwhelming desire to behave like one, and time +to feel how he should despise himself all his life if he bolted by the +window instead of opening the door. So he did open it, trembling but +determined. And there stood Phillida in her dressing-gown, her dark +hair tumbling over her shoulders. + +“It’s you!” she cried, taking the exclamation out of his mouth. + +“Yes,” he said, with a gust of relief; “did you think it was thieves?” + +“Isn’t it?” she demanded, pointing to the broken window visible through +the blind. Then she saw his revolver, and drew back an inch. + +“He took this from me,” said Pocket. “I had a right to it. Take it if +you will!” + +And he offered it, in the best romantic manner, by the barrel. But +Phillida was too angry to look at revolvers. + +“You had no business to break in to get it,” she told him, with +considerable severity. + +“I didn’t! I broke in for my clothes; he took them, too, this morning +before he went out. They’re what I broke in for, and I’d a perfect +right; you know I had! And while I’m about it I thought I might as well +have this thing too. I knew it was in here somewhere. It was in there. +And I’m glad I got it, and so should you be, because you and I are in +the house of one of the greatest villains alive!” + +The words tumbled over each other with quite hereditary heat. They were +all out in a few seconds, and the boy left panting with his +indignation, the girl’s eyes flashing hers. + +“I begin to think my uncle was right,” said she. “This is the act of +what he said you were, if anything could be.” + +“He lied to you, and he’s been lying to me!” + +“He may have been justified.” + +“You wait till you hear all he’s done! I don’t mean taking my revolver +from me; he was justified in that, if you like, after what I’d done +with it. He may even have been justified in taking away my clothes, if +he couldn’t trust me to keep my word and stay in this awful house. But +that isn’t the worst. He encouraged me to write a letter home, to my +own poor people who may think me dead——” + +“Well?” + +There was more sympathy in her voice, more anxiety; but his was +breaking with his great grief and grievance. + +“He took it out himself, to send it to the General Post Office to catch +the country post. So he said; and I was so grateful to him! On Saturday +morning he said they must have got it; he kept on saying so, and you +don’t know how thankful I was every time! But yesterday afternoon I +found scraps of my letter in the waste-paper basket in his room; he’d +never posted it at all!” + +Phillida looked shocked and distressed enough at this; her liquid eyes +filled with sympathy as they gazed upon the wretched youth. + +“I’m a fool to blub about it—but—but that was the Limit!” he croaked, +and worked the poor word till it came distinctly. + +“It was cruel,” she allowed. “It must seem so, at any rate; it does to +me; but then I understand so little. I can’t think why he’s hiding you, +or why you let yourself be hidden.” + +“But you must know what I’ve done; you must guess?” + +The revolver was still in his hand; he gave it a guilty glance, and she +looked from it to him without recoiling. + +“Of course I guessed on Saturday.” There was a studious absence of +horror in her tone. “Yet I couldn’t believe it, unless it was an +accident. And if it was an accident——” + +“It was one!” he choked. “It was the most absolute accident that ever +happened; he saw it; he can tell you; but he never told me till hours +afterwards. I was nearly dead with asthma; he brought me here, he was +frightfully good to me, I’m grateful enough for all that. But he should +have told me before the accident became a crime! When he did tell me I +lost my head, and begged him to keep me here, and afterwards when I +came to my senses he wouldn’t let me go. I needn’t remind you of that +morning! After that I promised to stay on, and I’d have kept all my +promises if only my letter had gone to my poor people!” + +He told her what a guarded letter it had been, only written to let them +know he was alive, and that with the doctor’s expressed approval. But +now he had learnt his lesson, and he was going to play the game. It was +more than ever the game with that poor fellow lying in prison for what +he had never done. And so the whole story would be in to-morrow’s +papers, with the single exception of Dr. Baumgartner’s name. + +“Nothing shall make me give that,” said Pocket valiantly; “on your +account, if not on his!” + +Phillida encouraged his new resolution without comment on this last +assurance. She had stooped, and was picking up the unbroken negatives +and putting them back in the rack; he followed her example, and +collected the broken bits, while she put the rack back in its place, +and certain splinters in theirs, until the locker shut without showing +much damage. Pocket was left with the fragmentary negatives on his +hands. + +“I should throw those away,” said Phillida. “And now, by the time +you’re ready to go, I’ll have a cup of tea ready for you.” + +They faced each other in the rosy light, now doubly diluted by the open +door, and Pocket did not move. He wanted to say something first, and he +was too shy to say it. Shyness had come upon him all at once; hitherto +they had both been like young castaways, finely regardless of +appearances, he of his bare feet and throat, she of her dressing-gown +and her bedroom slippers. She was unconscious or careless still, as +with a brother; but he had become the very embodiment of mauvaise +honte, an awful example of the awkward age; and it was all the fault of +what he suddenly felt he simply must say. + +“But—but I don’t want to leave you!” he blurted out at last. + +“But I want you to,” she returned promptly and firmly, though not +without a faint smile. + +It was leaving her with a villain that he minded; but he could not get +that out, except thus bluntly, nor could he denounce the doctor now as +he had done when his blood was up. Besides, the man was a different man +to his niece; all that redeemed him went out to her. Pocket did not +think he was peculiar there; in fact, he thought romantically enough +about the girl, with her dark hair all over her pink dressing-gown, and +ivory insteps peeping out of those soft slippers especially when the +vision was lost for ever, and he upstairs making himself as presentable +as he could in a few minutes. But it seemed she was busy in the same +way, and she took longer over it. He found the breakfast things on the +table, the kettle on the gas-stove, but no Phillida to make the tea. He +could not help wishing she would be quick; if he was going, the sooner +he went the better, but he was terribly divided in his desires. He +hated the thought of deserting a comrade, who was also a girl, and such +a girl! He could only face it with the fixed intention of coming back +to the rescue of his heroine, he the hero of their joint romance. But +for his own immediate freedom he was already unheroically eager. And +yet he could deliberately fit the broken negatives together, on the +white tablecloth, partly to pass the time, partly out of a boyish +bravado which involved little real risk; for the doctor had not yet +been gone an hour; and a loaded revolver is a loaded revolver, be it +brandished by man or boy. + +The piecing of the plates was like a children’s puzzle, only easier, +because the pieces were not many. One of the reconstructed negatives +was of painful interest; it reminded Pocket of the fatal one smashed to +atoms by Baumgartner in the pink porcelain trough. There were trees +again, only leafless, and larger, and there was a larger figure +sprawling on a bench. Pocket felt he must have a print of this; he +remembered having seen printing-frames and tubes of sensitised paper in +the other room; and hardly had he filled his frame and placed it in +position, than Phillida ran down stairs, and he told her what he had +done. + +“I wish you hadn’t,” she said nervously, as she made mechanical +preparations with pot and kettle. “It would only make matters worse if +my uncle came in now.” + +“But he wasn’t back on Friday before ten or eleven.” + +“You never know!” + +Pocket spoke out with a truculence which his brothers had inherited, +but not he, valiantly as he might try to follow a family example. + +“I don’t care! I can’t help it if he does come. I’ll tell him exactly +what I’ve done, and why, and exactly what I’m going to do next. I give +him leave to stop me if he can.” + +“I’m afraid he won’t wait for that. But I wish you had waited for his +leave before printing his negative.” + +Pocket jumped up from table, and ran to the printing-frame in the sunny +room at the back. He had been reminded of it only just in time. It was +a rather dark print that he first examined, one half at a time, and +then extracted from the frame. It was meshed with white veils, showing +the joins of the broken plate. But it had been an excellent negative +originally. And it was still good enough to hold Pocket rooted to the +carpet in the sunny room, until Phillida came in after him, and stood +looking over his shoulder. + +“I know that place!” said she at once. “It’s Holland Walk, in +Kensington.” + +He turned to her quickly. + +“The place where there was a suicide or something not long ago?” + +“The very place!” exclaimed the girl, looking up from the darkening +print. + +“I remember my uncle would take me to see it next day. He’s always so +interested in mysteries. I’m sure that’s the very spot he showed me as +the one where it must have happened.” + +“Did he take the photograph then?” + +“No; he hadn’t his camera with him.” + +“Then this is the suicide, or whatever it was!” cried Pocket, in +uncontrollable excitement. “It’s not only the place; it’s the thing +itself. Look at that man on the bench!” + +The girl took a long look nearer the window. + +“How horrible!” she shuddered. “His head looks as though it were +falling off! He might be dying.” + +“Dying or dead,” said Pocket, “at the very second the plate was +exposed!” + +She looked at him in blank horror. His own horror was no less apparent, +but it was more understanding. He had Baumgartner’s own confession of +his attempts to secure admission to hospital death-beds, even to +executions; he expounded Baumgartner on the whole subject, briefly, +clumsily, inaccurately enough, and yet with a certain graphic power +which brought those incredible theories home to his companion as +forcibly as Baumgartner himself had brought them home to Pocket. It was +the first she had ever heard of them. But then he had never discussed +his photography with her, never showed her plate or print. That it was +not merely a hobby, that he was an inventor, a pioneer, she had always +felt, without dreaming in what direction or to what extent. Even now +she seemed unable to grasp the full significance of the print from the +broken negative; and when she would have examined it afresh, there was +nothing to see; the June sunshine had done its work, and blotted out +the repulsive picture even as she held it in her hands. + +“Then what do you think?” she asked at last; her voice was thin and +strained with formless terrors. + +“I think that Dr. Baumgartner has the strangest power of any human +being I ever heard of; he can make you do anything he likes, whether +you like it yourself or not. The newspapers have been raking up this +case in connection with—mine—and I see that one theory was that the man +in this broken negative committed suicide. Well, if he did, I firmly +believe that Dr. Baumgartner was there and willed him to do it!” + +“He must have been there if he took the photograph.” + +“Is there another man alive who tries these things? I’ve told you all +he told me about it, but I haven’t told you all he said about the value +of human life.” + +“Nor need you! He makes no secret of his opinion about that!” + +“Then put the two things together, and where do they lead you? To these +murders committed with the mad idea of taking the spirit in its flight +from the flesh; that’s his own way of putting it, not mine.” + +“But I thought your case was an accident pure and simple?” + +“On my part, certainly; but how do I know he couldn’t get more power +over me in my sleep than at any other time? He saw me walking in my +sleep with this wretched revolver. He said himself I’d given him the +chance of a lifetime. You may be sure he meant before that poor man’s +death, not after it.” + +“It isn’t possible,” declared Phillida, as though she had laid hold of +one solid certainty in a sea of floating hypotheses. “And I know he +hasn’t a pistol of his own,” she added, lest he should simplify his +charge. + +But there they were agreed. + +“He hadn’t one on him that morning; that I can swear,” said Pocket, +impartially disposing of the idea. “Mine was the only one in that cape +of his, because I once jolly nearly had it out again when he came back +into the room. There was nothing of the sort in his other coat, or +anywhere else about him, or I couldn’t have helped seeing it.” Phillida +accepted this statement only too thankfully. She beamed on the boy, as +if in recognition of a piece of downright magnanimity towards an enemy +whom she could now understand his regarding in that light. If only he +would go before the enemy returned! If her uncle had such a power over +him as he himself seemed to feel, then that was all the more reason for +him to go quickly. But Pocket was not the man to get up and run like +that. Perhaps he enjoyed displaying his bravery on the point, and +keeping his companion on tenter-hooks on his account; at any rate he +insisted on finishing his breakfast, and gave further free expression +to the wildest surmises as he did so. And yet he was even then on the +brink of a discovery which was some excuse for the wildest of them all, +while it demanded a fresh solution of the whole affair. + +He had been fingering the recovered weapon in his pocket, almost +fondling it, though with mingled feelings, as the Prodigal Son of his +small possessions; suddenly it leapt out like a live thing in his hand, +and clattered on the table between the girl and boy. It was a wonder +neither of them was shot dead in his excitement. His whole face was +altered; but so was his whole life. She could not understand his +incoherent outburst; she only knew that he was twisting the chambers +round and round under her nose, and that there appeared to be live +cartridges in all six. + +“Don’t you see?” the words came pouring. “Not one of them’s been +fired—it’s as I loaded it myself the other night! It can’t have been +this revolver at all!” + +“But you must have known whether you fired or not?” + +“I tell you I was walking in my sleep till the row woke me. I’d only +heard it once before, in a room. It sounded loud enough for the open +air, though I do remember wondering I hadn’t felt any kick. But I was +so dazed, and there was this beastly thing in my hand; and he took it +from me in such a rage that of course I believed I’d let it off. But +now I can see I can’t have done. It wasn’t my revolver and it wasn’t +me!” + +“Yet you say yourself my uncle didn’t carry one?” + +“I’ll swear he didn’t; but there’s another man in all this! There was +the man they arrested on Saturday—the man I was so keen to set free!” + +The boy’s laugh grated; he was beside himself with righteous joy. What +was it to him that his innocence implied another’s complicity? Only too +characteristically, he saw simply the central fact from his own point +of view; but was it such an undoubted fact as he hot-headedly supposed? +There was the broken negative to confirm a certain suspicion, but that +was not enough for Phillida. + +She asked if he had no more cartridges, and he said he had a few loose +in his waistcoat pocket; he had thrown away the box. “Then my uncle +might have put in a fresh one while you were asleep.” + +“Why should he?” + +“I don’t know, but it sounds quite as possible as the other.” + +“I’ll soon tell you if he did!” cried Pocket. “There were fourteen in +the box to start with, because I counted them, and we only shot away +one at the Knaggses’ before we were cobbed. That left thirteen—six in +the revolver and seven in my pocket. There are your six, and here’s +one, two, three, four—and three’s seven!” + +He swept them over the cloth like crumbs, for her to count them for +herself, while he looked on with flaming cheeks and wagging tongue. He +was beginning to see what it all meant now, but still only what it +meant to him and his. He could look his people in the face again; that +was the burden of his loud thanksgiving. He was as sure of his +innocence as though the dead man had risen to prove it. + +“Very well,” said Phillida, briskly; “then it’s all the more reason you +should go this minute, and catch the very first train home.” + +And in her sudden anxiety to see him safely off, she was for helping +him on with the overcoat he had brought down again with his bag; but he +followed her out slowly, and he would not turn his back. + +“I can’t leave you now,” he said; and she knew that he saw it from her +side at last. + +“Why not?” + +“Because the whole thing’s altered! I’m not going to leave you with a +man like that!” + +So Pocket, without a moment’s thought either for her immediate feelings +or the ultimate consequences to himself; and yet with an unconscious +air of sacrifice more wounding than his actual words. She would have +flung open the door, and ordered him out, but he got his back to it +first. So her big eyes blazed at him instead. + +“You’re very kind!” she cried. “But suppose I don’t believe a word you +say against my uncle behind his back?” + +“I shall wait and say it to his face. That’s another reason for +waiting.” + +“Do you think you’re the person to judge him—a boy like you?” + +“I don’t say I am. I only say that print——” + +“How do you know he took the negative?” + +“I don’t, but——” + +“But you jump to conclusions like a baby!” cried the girl, too quick +for him in following up a confusing advantage. “I never heard anybody +like you for flying from one wild notion to another; first you say he +must have made you fire, though you own you were walking in your sleep +with a loaded revolver, and then you’re sure you never fired at all, +simply because you find the revolver fully loaded after days and days! +Then you find a photograph that needn’t necessarily be what we thought +it, that my uncle needn’t have taken even if it was; but you jump to +another conclusion about him, and you dare to speak of him to me as +though you knew every horrid thing you chose to think! As if you knew +him and I didn’t! As if he hasn’t been kind and good to me for years +and years—and kind to you—far too kind——” + +The strained voice broke, tears were running down her face, and in it +and them there was more sincerity. Grief, and not anger, was the well +of those bitter tears. And it was in simple supplication, not +imperiously any more, that she pointed to the door when speech failed +her. The boy’s answer was to go close up to her instead. “Will you +come with me?” he asked hoarsely. + +She shook her head; she was past surprise as well as indignation; she +could only shake her head. + +“My people would be as good to you as ever he was,” urged Pocket +extravagantly. “They’d understand, and you’d stay with us, Phillida! +You might live with us altogether!” + +She smiled very faintly at that. + +“Oh, Phillida, can’t you see that they’d do anything for you after all +we’ve been through together? And I, oh! there’s nothing I wouldn’t do +if only you’d come with me now this minute! I know there’s a train +about ten, and I know where we could borrow the money on the way. Come, +Phillida, get on your things and come away from all this horror!” + +He had gone on, even into details, encouraged by the tolerance or +apathy which had allowed him to go on at all. He took it for +indecision; but, whatever it was, she shook it off and declared once +for all that she would never leave Dr. Baumgartner, even if everything +was true about him, and he as mad as that would make him out. + +“But he is!” cried Pocket, with most eager conviction. “That’s the only +possible explanation, and you’d believe it fast enough if you’d heard +all he said to me that first night, and been with me in the dark-room +when he developed his negative of the man he said I shot! You’d see how +it all fits in, and how this other negative this morning simply shows +he was at the bottom of that other affair as well! Of course he’s mad; +but that’s the very reason why I can’t go and leave you with him.” + +“He would be as he’s always been to me.” + +“I believe he would,” said honest Pocket. + +“Then why don’t you go away and leave us?” + +“Because I can’t.” + +“Because you won’t!” + +“Very well, because I won’t and never will! But, mind you, it’ll be +your fault if anything happens to either of us after this!” + +He only meant it as a last argument, though he did resent her fatal +obstinacy, and all the obligations which it imposed upon himself. He +stood chained in fetters of her forging, as it were to the stake, but +he was prepared to stand there like a man, and he did not deserve the +things she said to him in a fresh paroxysm of unreasonable wrath. He +might be a baby, but he was not a complete coward, or simply trying to +make her miserable, as she declared; neither, on this occasion, was he +thinking only of himself. But Phillida seemed suddenly to realise that, +for she broke off with a despairing little cry, and ran sobbing up the +stairs. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. +A THIRD CASE + + +In days to come, when the boy had schooled himself not to speak of +these days, nor to let his mind dwell on their mystery and terror, it +was as a day of dark hours and vivid moments that he remembered the one +which Phillida and he began alone together in her uncle’s house. Those +endless hours were either mercifully forgotten or else contracted to an +endurable minimum; but the unforgettable moments would light themselves +up in his memory without a detail missing. + +There was their first encounter at the dark-room door, and Phillida +standing all but barefoot in the ruby light, with her glorious hair +about her shoulders, a picture that could never fade. Then there was +the moment of the incriminating print, which the sun wiped out even as +Phillida stood with it in her hands. That moment merged itself in the +greater one of his discovery that the revolver was fully loaded, his +inspiration that neither it nor he had done the fatal mischief in the +Park. Then she was begging him to go (she who would keep him the time +before!) and he entreating her to come with him, and neither giving way +an inch, so that they quarrelled just when they should have stuck +together, and she ran away in tears, and he stayed below in a glow of +anger which dissolved his fears like snow in May. + +That was the beginning of a black hour and more. Phillida was never to +be forgiven, then; he was staying there at his peril, staying +absolutely on her account, and so far from giving him the slightest +credit for it, or a single word of encouragement, she said all sorts of +things and was off before he could answer one of them. It was not for +Pocket to see the many ironies of that moment, and not for him to +recognise the tonic property of his heroic grievance. He could only see +himself at the foot of those stairs, first gnashing his teeth and not +sorry he had made her cry, then sitting down with his eye on the front +door, revolver in hand, to await the click of the doctor’s key. Another +click was to answer it; and at the point of the cocked revolver +Baumgartner was to have made a clean breast of his crimes, not only to +the giant-killer at the foot of the stairs but to the girl he meant to +call to witness with her own ears. + +Pocket saw himself a desperate character just then, and one not +incapable of desperate action had the climax only come at once. But he +had more than an hour of it alone at his post; he had a whole hot +forenoon of unmitigated suspense, of sickening alarms from tradesmen’s +carts, boys whistling past the house as though they were not in a +wicked world at all, and then a piano-organ that redoubled his +watchfulness, and spoilt some tunes for him for ever. Once he did hear +shambling feet on the very steps outside. Once was quite enough, though +it was but an advertisement for cast-off clothing (and false teeth) +that came fluttering through the letter-box. Pocket was left in such a +state that he would not have backed himself to hit the door from the +stairs; and he put the chain on it, thinking to interview the doctor +over that, in the manner of old Miss Harbottle. + +So it happened that the first significant sound was entirely lost upon +him, because he was listening for one so much nearer at hand, until +Phillida ran downstairs and almost over him where he sat. + +He got up to make way stiffly, but a glance assured him that the +quarrel was over on her side. The great eyes were fixed appealingly +upon him, but with a distressing look which he had done nothing to +provoke. Not before then was he aware of another duet between newsboys +coming nearer and nearer, and shouting each other down as they came. + +“You hear that?” she whispered, as if not to drown a note. + +“I do now.” + +“Do you hear what it is?” + +Pocket listened, and caught a word he was not likely to miss. + +“Something fresh about the murder,” said he grimly. + +“No; it’s another one,” she shuddered. “Can’t you hear? ‘Another awful +murder!’ Now they’re saying something else.” + +“It is something about the Park.” Pocket stuck to his idea. + +“And something else about some ‘well-known’—I can’t hear what!” + +“No more can I.” + +“I’ll open the door.” + +She opened it on the chain as he had left it. That did not help them. +The shouting had passed the end of their quiet road. It was dying away +again in the distance. + +“I must go out and get one,” said Phillida. “Some well-known man!” + +“You’re not thinking of the doctor, surely?” + +“I don’t know! I can’t think where he is.” + +“But you’re worse than I am, if you jump to that!” said Pocket, smiling +to reassure her. He did not smile when she had run out as she was; he +had shut the door after her, and he was waiting to open it in a fever +of impatience. + +Dr. Baumgartner had left the house before six o’clock in the morning; +now it was after twelve. If some tragedy had overtaken him in his turn, +then there was an end to every terror, and for him a better end than he +might meet with if he lived. The boy remembered Him who desireth not +the death of a sinner, and was ashamed of his own thought; but that did +not alter it. Unless his fears and his surmises were all equally +unfounded, better for everybody, and best of all for Phillida, if this +criminal maniac came to his end without public exposure of his crimes. +Pocket may have misconceived his own attitude of mind, as his elders +and betters do daily; he may have been thinking of his own skin more +than he knew, or wanted to know. In that case he had his reward, for +the murdered man was not Dr. Baumgartner. Phillida’s first words on +returning were to that effect; and yet she trembled as though they were +not the truth. + +“Who was it, then?” the schoolboy asked suspiciously. + +“Sir Joseph Schelmerdine.” + +“So he was the well-known man!” + +He was well known even to the boy by name, but that was all. He had +seen it in newspapers, and he thought he had heard it execrated by +Baumgartner himself in one of his little digs at England. Pocket was +not sure about this, but he mentioned his impression, and Phillida +nodded with swimming eyes. + +“Did the doctor know him?” + +“Not personally; but he thought him a European danger.” + +“Why?” + +“I can’t tell you. It was something to do with politics and gold-mines, +and some financial paper. I never understood.” + +“May I see the paper you’ve brought in?” + +The girl held it tight in her hand, and tighter still as he held out +his. + +“I’d rather you didn’t,” she said. + +“Then there’s something you haven’t told me.” + +“There is!” + +“I shall know it sooner or later.” + +“I know you will, and I know what you’ll think! You may think what you +like, and still be wrong!” + +There was a pause between the sentences, and in the pause the boy found +the paper at his feet. There was no need to open it at the place; it +was so folded already, the news standing out in its leaded type, and +more of it in the late corner. Sir Joseph Schelmerdine, Bart., M.P., +the well-known proprietor of the _Money-maker_, had been shot dead in +front of his house in Park Lane. The murder had been committed in the +early hours of the morning, before anybody was about except Sir Joseph +and his groom, and the person whom the groom described as the only +possible murderer. The man had just seen his master mounted for the +early morning ride, and had left him in conversation with a +photographer representing himself as concerned with the press, and +desirous of obtaining an equestrian photograph for his paper. The groom +thought it was to be taken in the Park, and was himself on his way back +to the mews when the riderless horse overtook him. Mounting the animal, +he had galloped round to find Sir Joseph dead in the road, and no trace +of the “photographer” but a false beard and spectacles which he had +evidently discarded in his flight, and which unfortunately precluded a +close description of his appearance. But a hue and cry had been +started, and it was believed that the criminal was still in hiding in +the immediate neighbourhood, which was being subjected to a thorough +search under the direction of responsible officers from Scotland Yard. + +Such was the news which the young girl had shrunk from showing to her +companion. She had left him, indeed, to read it by himself. And the +next thing he remembered was finding her quite insensible in the big +chair in the back room. + +The afternoon was a blank broken by no more moments such as these. It +was a period of dull misery and gnawing dread; but the pair saw each +other through it, they were not divided any more. Now they listened for +his step no longer, but for more newsboys crying his capture to the +world. And in the hours that they spent thus listening, and listening, +the girl had much to say, that it did her good to say, about this Dr. +Baumgartner as she had known and almost loved him in the past. + +Lovable, however, he had never been, though more than good and kind to +her for all that. He had never taken her into his life, or entered into +hers, in the many years they had been more or less together. All she +really knew of him was from her mother, whose elder sister he had +married soon after the Franco-Prussian War, and lost soon after +marriage. He must have been settled in England many years before +Phillida’s mother, herself an Englishman’s widow, came to keep house +for him. The girl could not remember her father, but her mother had +lived to see her in her teens, and in her lifetime Dr. Baumgartner had +seemed much as other men. It was only of late years that he had +withdrawn from a world in which he was justly honoured, and buried +himself ever deeper in his books and his photographic experiments. His +niece had never known anything of these; he had told her nothing, and +she had always gone in awe of him. But he had sent her to school, he +was going to send her to college, he had only just given her six +months in Switzerland. It was during those months that all his +eccentricities had become pronounced; that he had given up servants, +and taken to doing half the work of the house himself, with the casual +aid of charwomen, and saving the other half by having the meals in from +a restaurant. Phillida had no influence with him in these or any other +matters. She only blamed herself for not having realised the change in +him and done more to save him from himself. He had done so much for +her, whatever madness might have overtaken him in the end; her own +kinsfolk so much less, for all their opulent integrity. Nothing could +make her forget what he had done. She never could or would desert him; +it was no use asking her again; but she took her callow champion’s +hand, and wrung it with her final answer, which was unaccompanied by +further prayers for his departure. + +And Pocket could understand her now, though it was no consecutive tale +that he heard, but a very chaos of excuses and extenuations, regrets, +suppositions, and not always revelant recollections, of which he had to +make what he could in his own mind. What he made was a narrative so +natural that he could not believe it was the life-story of a murderer. +His own convictions became preposterous in his own eyes. What had he +been thinking about all day? Was that the way a murderer would behave? +Was this the way a murderer would live, in these surroundings, with +those books about him, with that little billiard-table in the next +room? Had those waxen murderers in the garish vault lived ordinary +lives as well? Pocket had only thought of them as committing their +dreadful deeds, yet now he could only think of Baumgartner as living +this ordinary life. + +The mood passed, but it would recur as sure as Phillida thought of +something else to be said for Dr. Baumgartner; it was the creature of +her feeling for him, and of the schoolboy’s feeling for her. If he +could have convicted himself of the fatal affair in the Park, and so +cleared Baumgartner of all blood-guiltiness whatsoever, in that or any +other case, he would have done it for Phillida’s sake that afternoon. +But with every hour of the doctor’s absence suspicions multiplied. +Phillida herself was a prey to them. She was almost as ready to recall +symptoms of incipient insanity as instances of personal kindness; if +one lost one’s reason, she broke a long silence to contend, there could +be no question of regret and wrong. She was not so sure about crime and +punishment. Pocket, of course, said there could be no question of that +either; but in his heart he wondered how much method they must prove to +hang a madman. + +The evening meal had been taken in, but that was all. The girl and boy +had no thought of sitting down to it; she had made tea not long before; +and strong excitement is its own meat and drink. They were sitting +silently together in the room at the back. The scented summer dusk was +deepening every minute. Suddenly there was a sound of small branches +breaking in the garden. Pocket peeped out, standing back from the +window at her entreaty. + +The laburnum by the wall was shaking violently, pouring its golden rain +into both gardens, and the bush beneath it looked alive; a tall figure +rose out of it, and came creeping towards the little conservatory, bent +double, and brushing the soil from his clothes as he advanced with long +and stealthy strides. It was Dr. Baumgartner, in a cap pulled down over +his eyes, and the old alpaca jacket. He had a newspaper parcel under +his arm. + +The boy and girl were in the dark angle between the window and the +door; but it was only comparative darkness, and Baumgartner might have +seen them; they were clasping hands as they shrank away from him with +one accord. But he did not seem to see them at all. He stretched +himself, as though he found it a relief to stand upright, and more +mould trickled from his garments in the act; he took off the alpaca +jacket, and shook it as one shakes a handkerchief. There could have +been nothing in the pockets, certainly no weapon, and if he had a +hip-pocket there was none in that, for his gaunt figure stood out +plainly enough in the middle of the room. There was still the newspaper +parcel; he had put it down on one of the walnut-tables. He now removed +the paper; it fell at Pocket’s feet, a newspaper and nothing more; and +nothing had come out of it but the stereoscopic camera, that either +watcher could detect. + +And he passed through the room without taking the least notice of +either of them, whether he saw them or not; and they heard him go +upstairs, and shut the door, and then his footsteps overhead. + +“I’ll go up and tackle him at once,” said Pocket, through his set +teeth; but Phillida would not hear of it. + +“No! I must go first and see if there’s nothing I can get him; he +mayn’t have had anything all day. There’s no need for you to come at +all—I believe he’s forgotten all about us both!” + +“Not he!” whispered Pocket, as the door opened overhead. “Here he +comes!” + +He could not help gripping his revolver as the stairs creaked again +under Dr. Baumgartner; he had gripped it more than once already with +the hand that was not holding Phillida’s. The doctor was coming down in +a hurry, as though he had indeed forgotten something. But he passed +the open drawing-room door; they saw him pass, jingling a bunch of +keys, and never so much as glancing in on the way. It was the dark-room +door he opened. Now he would find out everything! They heard a match +struck, and saw the faint light turn into a strong deep crimson glow. +The door shut. The children stood listening in the dark. + +Running water, and the chink of glass; the tapping of a stoppered +bottle; the opening of the dark slide; these stages the younger +photographer followed as though he were again looking on. Then there +was a long period without a sound. + +“He’s developing now!” whispered Pocket, close to the folding-doors. He +caught the sound of laboured breathing on the other side. “There it +is—there it is—there it is!” cried the doctor’s voice in mingled +ecstasy and mad excitement. A deep sigh announced the blackening of the +plate at the conclusion of the first process. A tap ran for a moment; +interminable minutes ensued. “It’s gone! It’s gone again!” cried the +wild voice, with a sob; “it’s gone, gone, gone like all the rest!” + +One listener waited for the passionate smashing of the negative as +before; but that did not happen again; and then he wondered if it was +being put straight into the rack with the others, if the damage to the +locker had been discovered at last. He never knew. The door opened. The +red glow showed for a moment in the passage, then went out. The door +shut behind Baumgartner, and again he passed the drawing-room, a bent +figure, without looking in. And the flagging step on the stairs bore no +resemblance to the one which had come hurrying down not many minutes +before. + +“I must go to him!” said Phillida in broken undertones, and her grief +communicated itself to the other young sympathetic soul, for all the +base fears he had to fight alone. Personal safety, little as she might +think of it, was the essence of her position as opposed to his; and he +was of the type that thinks of everything. She left him listening +breathless in the dark. And in the dark she found him when at length +she returned to report the doctor busy writing at his desk; but a pin’s +head of blue gas glimmered where there had been none before, and a +paper which had been trodden underfoot now rustled in Pocket’s hand. + +“Does he know I’m here?” he asked. + +“I don’t think so. We never mentioned you. I believe he’s forgotten +your existence altogether; he began by looking at me as though he’d +forgotten mine. He says he wants nothing, except time to write. He +seems so strange—so old!” + +Again the break in her voice, and again the boyish sympathy in his. “I +wonder if something would be any comfort to you?” + +“I don’t think so. What is it?” + +“Something I saw in the paper he brought in with him. I lit the gas +while you were upstairs.” + +Phillida turned it out again without comment. + +“Nothing that you saw can make any difference to me,” she sighed. + +“Do you remember my saying there must be another man in +these—mysteries?” + +“I think I do. What difference does it make? Besides, the man you meant +is in prison.” + +“He isn’t!” + +“You said he was?” + +“He was let out early this morning! Let me light the gas while you read +it for yourself.” + +But Phillida had no desire to read it for herself. “I doubt if there’s +anything in that,” she said; “but what if there were? Does it make it +any better if a man has an accomplice in his crimes? If he’s guilty at +all, it makes it all the worse.” + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. +THE FOURTH CASE + + +The boy and girl sat long and late in the open window at the back of +the house. The room would have been in darkness but for a flood of +moonlight pouring over them. The only light in the house was in the +room above, and they only saw its glimmer on the garden when a casual +cloud hid the moon; but once Pocket had crept out into the garden to +steal a look at the lighted window itself; and what he saw was the +shadow of a huge bent head smoking a huge bent pipe, and dense clouds +of shadow floating up the wall and over the ceiling. + +It seemed hours since they had heard footstep or other sound upstairs +or anywhere. There had been a brisk interval—and then an end—of more or +less distant hansom-bells and motor-horns. There was no longer even a +certain minute intermittent trembling of trifles on the walnut-tables, +to which Pocket had become subconsciously accustomed in that house, so +that he noticed its absence more than the thing itself. It was as +though the whole town was at rest, and the tunnels under the town, and +every single soul above or below ground, but those two white faces in +the moonlight, and perhaps one other overhead. + +Pocket wondered; it was so long since a single sound had come down to +their ears. He wanted to steal out and look up again. Phillida was +against it; perhaps she was wondering too. Pocket, as usual, saw what +he did see so very vividly, in his mind’s eye, that he shivered and was +asked if he felt cold. The whispered debate that followed was the +longest conversation they had that night. The window was not shut as a +result of it, but Pocket fetched his overcoat on tiptoe, and it just +went over both their shoulders, when the chairs were drawn as near +together as they would go. + +The ragged little garden was brimming over with moonlight from wall to +wall. The unkempt grass looked pale and ghostly, like the skin of some +monstrous wolf. The moon rolled high in the sky and clouds flew above +and below the moon, varying in pace as well. Yet it was a still night, +and Pocket did not think that he had broken the stillness, until the +door burst open behind them, and Baumgartner stood there, holding his +lamp aloft. The wick was turned too high, the flame ran up the chimney +in the draught, and for an instant a demoniac face flared up behind it. +Then the chimney cracked, and fell in a tinkling shower, and the doctor +was seen whirling a naked tongue of fire about his head. The boy drew +back as the lamp flew through the open window, within an inch of his +nose, and crashed upon the path outside. + +The trio stood without a word in the moonbeams; but the doctor was +breathing hard through his teeth, like a man wrestling with himself; +and at last he laughed sardonically as though he had won. + +“A lamp like that’s a dangerous thing,” said he, with a kind of forced +solemnity and a shake of the head; “you never know what may happen when +a lamp does that! I’m glad the window was open; it didn’t go very near +my young fellow, I hope?” + +And he took Pocket playfully by the ear, but pinched it so hard that +the boy could have screamed with pain. + +“It would have served you right,” continued the doctor, before Pocket +could find his tongue, “for sitting up so late, and keeping a young +lady from her bed to bear you company. Come, Phillida! I shall have +another word with you, young fellow.” + +The two words to the girl were in a different key from all the rest. +They were tolerant, conciliatory, tenderly persuasive. The rest was +suavely sinister; it made her hesitate; but Pocket had the presence of +mind to bid her a cheery good-night, and she went, closely followed by +Baumgartner. + +Posted once more at the open door, the boy heard Baumgartner on the +next flight, soothing and affectionate still, allaying her fears; and +his own surged into his throat. He looked wildly about him, and an +idea came. He opened the front door wide, and then stole back through +the conservatory into the moonlight. He heard Baumgartner coming down +before he gained the garden. He tore to the end of it, and cowered in +the shadow of the far wall. + +The doctor came running into the moonlit room, but not for a minute; it +looked as though he had run out first into the road. In the room he lit +the gas, and Pocket saw him have a look in all the corners, but hardly +the look of a seeker who expects to find. Some long moments he stood +out horribly at the open window, gazing straight at the spot where the +fugitive crouched a few inches out of the moonlight and hugged the +revolver in his pocket. He seemed to see nothing to bring him out that +way, for he closed that window and put out the gas. The trembling +watcher heard the front door shut soon after, and saw another light in +Baumgartner’s room the minute after that, and the blind drawn down. But +on the blind there lagged a cloud-capped shadow till the doctor’s pipe +was well in blast. + +There were no more shadows after that. The moon moved round to the +right, and set behind the next house. The sky grew pale, and the +lighted blind paler still, until Baumgartner drew it up before putting +out his light. Pocket was now too stiff to stir; but it was not +necessary; the doctor had scarcely looked out. There was a twitter of +sparrows all down the road, garden answering to garden. The sun came up +behind Pocket’s wall, behind the taller houses further back. And +Baumgartner reappeared at his window for one instant in his cap. + +The front door shut again. + +Down the garden ran Pocket without the least precaution now. There was +a gravel passage between the tradesmen’s entrance, on the detached side +of the house, and the garden wall. This passage was closed by a gate, +and the gate was locked, but Pocket threw himself over it almost in his +stride and darted over into the open road. + +Just then it was a perfectly empty road, but for a gaunt black figure +stalking away in the distance. An overwhelming curiosity urged the boy +to follow, but an equal dread of detection kept him cowering in +gateways, until Baumgartner took the turning past the shops without a +backward glance. Pocket promptly raced to that corner, and got another +glimpse of his leader before he vanished round the next. So the +spasmodic chase continued over a zigzag course; but at every turn the +distance between them was a little less. Neither looked round, and once +the boy’s feet were actually on the man’s shadow; for half the streets +were raked with level sunlight, but the other half were ladders of +dusk with rungs of light at the gaps between the houses. All were +dustier, dirtier, and emptier than is ever the case by night or day, +because this was neither one nor the other, though the sun was up to +make the most of dust, dirt, and emptiness. It was before even the +cleansing hour of the scavenger and the water-cart. A dead cat was +sprawling horribly in one deserted reach of wood-paving. And a +motor-car at full speed in a thoroughfare calling itself King’s Road, +which Pocket was about to cross, had at all events the excuse of a +visible mile of asphalt to itself. + +Pocket drew back to let it pass, without looking twice at the car +itself, which indeed was disguised out of knowledge in the promiscuous +mire of many countries; but the red eyes behind the driver’s goggles +were not so slow. Down went his feet on clutch and brake without a +second’s interval; round spun the car in a skid that tore studs from +the tyres, and fetched her up against the kerb with a shivered wheel. +Pocket started forward with a cry; but at that moment a ponderous step +fell close behind him; his arm was seized, and he was dragged in +custody across the road. + +“Your boy, I think!” cried one whom he had never seen before, and did +not now, being locked already in the motorist’s arms. + +“When did you find him?” the father asked when he was man enough, still +patting Pocket’s shoulders as if he were a dog. + +“Only last night when I wired.” + +“And where?” + +“In the house where you and I couldn’t make ourselves heard.” + +The schoolboy flared up through all his emotion. + +“Why, I never saw you before this minute!” + +“Well, I’ve had my eye on you, more or less, for a day or two.” + +“Then why didn’t you wire before?” demanded Mr. Upton, quite ready to +mask his own emotion with a little heat. “I didn’t get it till after +nine o’clock—too late for the evening train—but I wasn’t going to waste +three hours with a forty-horser eating its head off! So here I am, on +my way to the address you gave.” + +“It was plumb opposite Baumgartner’s. I mounted guard there the very +night you left. He came out twenty minutes ago, and your boy after +him!” + +“But what does it all mean, Thrush? What on earth were you doing there, +my dear boy?” + +The notes of anger and affection were struck in ludicrously quick +succession; but the first was repeated on the boy’s hang-dog admission +that he had been hiding. + +“Hiding, Tony?” + +Thrush himself seemed surprised at the expression. “But at all events +we found you better employed,” he said to Pocket, “and the sooner we +all take up the chase again the more chance we shall have of laying +this rascal by the heels.” + +“Take it up, then!” snapped Mr. Upton. “Jump into the motor, and bring +the brute to me when you’ve got him! I want to speak to my boy.” + +He did not realise the damage done to his car, or listen to a word that +passed between Thrush and his chauffeur; he had eyes only for those of +his child who had been lost but was found, and not a thought in his +head outside the story he extracted piecemeal on the spot. Poor Pocket +told it very volubly and ill; he would not confine himself to simple +facts. He stated his suspicion of Baumgartner’s complicity in the Hyde +Park affair as though he knew it for a fact; cited the murders in +Holland Walk and Park Lane as obvious pieces of the same handiwork, and +yet declared his conviction that the actual hand was not Dr. +Baumgartner’s at all. + +“But why should you think he had an accomplice, Tony?” + +“He was unarmed the other morning. I’m quite positive of that. And his +niece, who lives with him, has never seen a firearm of any kind in the +house.” + +“Well, he’s villain enough to hang, if ever there was one! It’s time we +laid hold of him. Where’s Mr. Thrush? I thought you’d taken him on in +the car?” + +This to the chauffeur, now the centre of the carrion crowd that gathers +about the body of any disabled motor. The chauffeur, a countryman like +his master, was enjoying himself vastly with a surreptitious cigarette +and sardonic mutterings on the cause of his scattered spokes; the facts +being that he had nearly fallen asleep at his wheel, which Mr. Upton +had incontinently taken into his own less experienced hands. + +“The car won’t take anybody anywhere to-day,” explained the chauffeur, +with his cigarette behind his back. “I shall have to get a lorry to +take the car.” He held his head on one side suddenly. “There’s a bit o’ +tyre trouble for somebody!” he cried, grimly. + +Indeed, a sharp crack had come from the direction of the river, not +unlike the bursting of a heavy tyre; but Pocket Upton did not think it +was that. He caught his father’s arm, and whispered in his father’s +ear, and they plunged together into a side street broader than the +asphalt thoroughfare, but with scarcely a break in either phalanx of +drab mediocre dwellings, and not a creature stirring except themselves +and a few who followed. The hog’s back of a still more deserted bridge +arched itself at the foot of the street, its suspension cables showing +against the sky in foreshortened curves. As they ran a peculiarly +shrill whistle cut the morning air like a streak of sound. + +“P’lice!” screamed one of those bringing up the rear, and they easily +spurted past father and son, each already contending with his own +infirmity. Mr. Upton was dangerously scarlet in the neck, and Pocket +panting as he had not done for days. In sad labour they drew near the +suspension bridge, to a crescendo accompaniment on the police whistle. +It was evidently being blown on the Embankment to the right of the +bridge, and already with considerable effect. As the pair were about to +pass an intermediate turning on the right, a constable flew across it +on a parallel course, and they altered theirs with one accord. Pocket +panted after the constable, and his father thundered after Pocket, into +a narrow street debouching upon a fenced strip of greenery, not too +dense to hide broad pavement and low parapet on its further side, with +a strip of brown river beyond that, and a skyline of warehouses on the +Surrey shore. + +The narrow garden had not been opened for the day. There was a gate +opposite the end of the road, another gate leading out on the +Embankment opposite that. Between the two gates a grimy statue rose +upon a granite pedestal, a meditative figure clad to the heels in some +nondescript garment, and gazing across the river as he sat with a +number of discarded volumes under his chair. It was a peculiarly +lifelike monument, which Pocket would have been just the boy to +appreciate at any other time; even now it struck him for an instant, +before his attention was attracted to the group of commonplace living +people on the Embankment beyond the narrow garden. They were standing +together on the far side of one of the fixed seats. There was the +policeman who had blown the whistle, and a small but motley crew who +had answered to the call. Conspicuous units were a gentleman in +dressing-gown and pyjamas, a couple of chimneysweeps, and a labouring +cyclist on his way to work. They had formed a circle about some hidden +object on the ground; and long before the new-comers could run round +and join them, the schoolboy had steeled himself to look upon another +murdered man. He was in no hurry to look; apart from a natural dread of +death, which he had seen for the first time, and then unwittingly, only +the other morning, it was the murderer and not his victim of whom the +boy was thinking as he arrived last upon the scene. It was Dr. +Baumgartner whom he half expected to see swimming the river or hiding +among the bushes in the enclosed garden; for he was not one of the +group on the Embankment; and how else could he have made his escape? +The point was being discussed as Pocket came into earshot; all he could +see of the fallen man was the soles of his boots upright among living +legs. + +“Is he dead?” he asked of one of the chimneysweeps, who was detaching +himself from the group with the air of a man who had seen the best of +the fun. + +“Dead as an ’erring,” replied the sweep cheerfully. “Sooicide in the +usual stite o’ mind.” + +“Rats!” said the other sweep over a sooty shoulder; “unless ’e shot +’isself first an’ swallered the shooter afterwards! Some’un’s done ’im +in.” + +Pocket set his teeth, and shouldered his way into the group. His father +was already in the thick of it, talking to the stout man in spectacles, +who had risen miraculously from the ground and was busy brushing his +trouser-knees. Pocket forced himself on with much the same nutter he +had taken into the Chamber of Horrors, but with an equal determination +to look just once upon Dr. Baumgartner’s latest victim. A loud cry +escaped him when he did look; for the murdered man, and not the +murderer, was Dr. Baumgartner himself. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. +WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP + + +Phillida was prepared for anything when she beheld a motor-car at the +gate, and the escaped schoolboy getting out with a grown man of shaggy +and embarrassed aspect; but she was not prepared for the news they +brought her. She was intensely shocked and shaken by it. Her grief and +horror were not the less overwhelming for the shame and fear which they +replaced in her mind. Yet she remained instinctively on her guard, and +a passionate curiosity was the only emotion she permitted herself to +express in words. + +“But have they no idea who did it? Are they quite sure he didn’t do it +himself?” + +Mr. Upton broke through his heavy embarrassment with no little relief, +to dispose of the question of suicide once and for all. + +“It’s the one thing they are sure about,” said he. “In the first place +no weapon was to be found, and we saw no sign of a camera either, +though this boy tells me your uncle had his with him when he went out. +That’s more or less conclusive in itself. But there was a doctor on the +spot before we left, and I heard him say the shot couldn’t have been +fired at very close quarters, and that death must have been +instantaneous. So it’s no more a suicide than the case in Park Lane +yesterday or the one in Hyde Park last week; there’s evidently some +maniac prowling about at dawn, and shooting down the first person he +sees and then vanishing into thin air as maniacs seem to have a knack +of doing more effectually than sane men. But the less we jump to +conclusions about him—or anybody else—the better.” + +The girl was grateful for the covert sympathy of the last remark, and +yet it startled her as an index of what must have passed already +between father and son. It was a new humiliation that this big bluff +man should know as much as the boy whom she had learnt to look upon as +a comrade in calamity. Yet she could not expect it to be otherwise. + +“What must you think!” she cried, and her great eyes filled and fell +again. “Oh! what must you think?” + +“It’s no good thinking,” he rejoined, with almost a jovial kindness. +“We’re all three on the edge of a mystery; we must see each other +through before we think. Not that I’ve had time to hear everything yet, +but I own I can’t make head or tail of what I have heard. I’m not sure +that I want to. I like a man’s secrets to die with him; it’s enough for +me to have my boy back again, and to know that you stood by him as you +did. It’s our turn to stand by you, my dear! He says it wasn’t your +fault he didn’t come away long ago; and it shan’t be mine if you stay +another hour alone in this haunted house. You’ve got to come straight +back with us to our hotel.” + +They happened to be all three standing in the big back room, a haunted +chamber if there was one in the house. With his battle-pictures on the +walls, his tin of tobacco on the chimney-piece, and the scent of +latakia rising from the carpet, the whole room remained redolent of the +murdered man; and the window still open, the two chairs near it as they +had been overnight, and the lamp lying in fragments on the path +outside, brought the last scene back to the boy’s mind in full and +vivid detail. Yet the present one was in itself more desolate and +depressing than any in which Dr. Baumgartner had figured. It might be +that the constant menace of that portentous presence had thrown his +simple middle-class surroundings, at the time, into a kind of +reassuring relief. But it was the case that the morning had already +clouded over; the sunshine of the other mornings was sadly missing; and +Phillida looked only too eager to fly from the scene, until she +declared she never could. + +“But that’s absurd!” cried Mr. Upton bluntly. “I’m not going to leave a +young girl like you alone in the day of battle, murder and sudden +death! You needn’t necessarily come with us, as long as you don’t stay +here. Have you no other relatives in London?” + +“None anywhere that I know much about.” + +“That doesn’t matter. It’s time they knew more about you. I’ll hunt +them up in the motor, if they’re anywhere within a hundred miles, but +you simply must let me take their place meanwhile.” + +He was a masterful man enough; it did not require the schoolboy’s added +supplications to bring about an eventual compromise. The idea had +indeed been Pocket’s originally, but his father had taken it up more +warmly than he could have hoped. It was decided that they should return +to their hotel without Phillida, but to send the car back for her later +in the morning, as it would take her some time to pack her things and +leave the deserted house in some semblance of order. + +But her packing was a very small matter, and she left it to the end; +most of the time at her disposal was spent in a hurried investigation +of the dead man’s effects, more especially of his store of negatives in +the dark-room. The only incriminating plates, however, were the one she +had already seen on its discovery by Pocket the day before and another +of a man lying in a heap in the middle of a road. This one had been put +to dry openly in the rack, the wood of which was still moist from the +process. Phillida only held it up to the light an instant, and then not +only smashed both these negatives, but poured boiling water on the +films and floated them down the sink. The bits of glass she put in the +dust-bin with those of the broken lamp, and had hardly done so when the +first policeman arrived to report the fatality. He was succeeded by a +very superior officer, who gained admittance and asked a number of +questions concerning the deceased, but in a perfunctory manner that +suggested few if any expectations from the replies. Neither functionary +made any secret of his assumption that the latest murder was but +another of the perfectly random series which had already thrilled the +town, but on which no light was likely to be shed by the antecedents of +the murdered men. A third official came to announce that the inquest +was to be opened without delay, at two o’clock that afternoon, and to +request Phillida to accompany him to the mortuary for the formal +identification of the deceased. + +That was a dread ordeal, and yet she expected a worse. She had steeled +herself to look upon a debased image of the familiar face, and she +found it startlingly ennobled and refined. Death had taken away nothing +here, save the furrows of age and the fires of madness, and it had +given back the look of fine courage and of sane integrity which the +girl was just old enough to associate with the dead man’s prime. She +was thankful to have seen him like this for the last time. She wished +that all the world could see him as he was, so noble and so calm, for +then nobody would ever suspect that which she herself would find it +easier to disbelieve from this hour. + +“You do identify him, I suppose, miss?” the officer whispered, +impressed by her strange stare. + +“Oh, yes!” said Phillida. “But he looks as I have not seen him look for +years. There are worse things than death!” + +She said the same thing to Mr. Upton at luncheon in his private +sitting-room at the hotel, whereupon he again assured her that he had +no desire to know a dead man’s secrets. He had found his boy; that was +quite enough for him, and he was able to deliver himself the more +freely on the subject since Pocket was not at table, but in bed making +up for lost sleep. Not only had he succeeded in finding his son, but he +had found him without the aid of police or press, and so not more than +a dozen people in the world knew that he had ever disappeared. Mr. +Upton explained why he had deemed it essential to keep the matter from +his wife’s ears, and added almost equally good reasons for continuing +to hush it up on the boy’s account if only it were possible to do so; +but would it be possible to Phillida to exclude from her evidence at +the inquest all mention of so recent a visitor at her uncle’s house? +Phillida promised to do her best, and it proved not only possible but +easy. She was questioned as to the habits of the deceased so far as +they explained his presence on the Embankment at such a very early +hour, but that was all. Asked if she knew of a single person who could +conceivably have borne such a grudge against Dr. Baumgartner as to wish +to take his life, the witness answered in the negative, and the coroner +bowed as much as to say that of course they all knew the character of +the murder, but he had put the question for form’s sake. The only one +which caused her a moment’s hesitation arose from a previous answer, +which connected the doctor’s early ramblings with his hobby of +instantaneous photography. Had he his camera with him that morning? +Phillida thought so. Why? Well, he always did take it out, and it +certainly was not in the house. Mr. Upton wiped his forehead, for he +knew that his boy’s name had been on the tip of the witness’s tongue. +And there was a sensation in court as well; for here at last was a bone +for the detectives, who obtained a minute description of the missing +camera, but grumbled openly that they had not heard of it before. + +“They never told me they hadn’t got it,” explained Phillida to the +coroner, who made her his courteous bow, and permitted her to leave the +court on the conclusion of her evidence. + +On the stairs Mr. Upton paid her compliments that made her wince as +much as the crude grip of his hand; but he was tact itself compared +with his friend Mr. Thrush, who sought an interview in order to ply the +poor girl there and then with far more searching questions than she had +been required to answer upon oath. She could only look at Mr. Upton in +a way that secured his peppery intervention in a moment. The two men +had scarcely seen each other since the morning, and the ironmaster +thought they had enough to say to each other without bothering Miss +Platts just then; they accordingly adjourned to Glasshouse Street, and +Phillida was to have gone on to the hotel; but she made them drop her +at a shop near Sloane Square on the pretext of seeing about her +mourning. + +Phillida had promised to drive straight back to Trafalgar Square and +order tea for herself if Tony had not appeared; but she did not drive +straight back. She had a curious desire to see the place where the +murder had been committed. It had come upon her at the inquest, while +listening to the constable who had found the body, her predecessor in +the witness-box. She had failed to follow his evidence. He had +described that portion of his beat which had brought him almost on the +scene of the murder, almost at the moment of its commission. It +included only the short section of Cheyne Walk between Oakley Street +and Cheyne Row. The houses at this point are divided from the +Embankment by the narrow garden which contains the Carlyle statue. He +had turned up Cheyne Row, at the back of the statue, but before turning +he had noticed a man on the seat facing the river on the far side of +the garden. The man was sitting down, but he was said to have turned +round and watched the policeman as he passed along Cheyne Walk. There +might have been a second man lying on that seat, or crouching on the +flags between the seat and the parapet, but he would have been +invisible from the beat. Not another creature was in sight anywhere. +Yet the policeman swore that he had not proceeded a dozen yards up +Cheyne Row before the shot was fired. He had turned round actually in +time to see the puff of smoke dispersing over the parapet. It was all +he saw. He had found the deceased lying in a heap, nearer the seat than +the parapet, but between the two. Not another soul did he see, or had +he seen. And he had not neglected to look over the parapet into the +river, and along the foreshore in both directions, without discovering +sign or trace of human being. + +Such was the story which Phillida found so hard to credit that she +proceeded to the spot in order to go over the ground for her own +satisfaction. This did not make it easier to understand. It had come on +to rain heavily while she was in the shop; the shining Embankment was +again practically deserted, and she was able to carry out her +experiment without exciting observation. She took a dozen steps up +Cheyne Row, pretended she heard the shot, turned sharp round, and quite +realised that from where she was the body could not have been seen, +hidden as it must have been by the seat, which itself was almost hidden +by the long and narrow island of enclosed garden. But a running man +could have been seen through the garden, even if he stooped as he ran, +and the murderer must have run like the wind to get away as he had +done. The gates through the garden, back and front of the statue, had +not been opened for the day when the murder took place, so Phillida in +her turn made a half-circuit of the island to get to the spot where the +body had been found, but without taking her eyes off the spot until she +reached it. No! It was as she had thought all along; by nothing short +of a miracle could the assassin have escaped observation if the +policeman had eyes in his head and had acted as he swore he had done. +He might have dashed into the garden, when the policeman was at his +furthest point distant, if the gates had been open as they were now; +but they had been locked, and he could not have scaled them unobserved. +Neither would it have been possible to take a header into the river +with the foreshore as described by the same witness. Yet the murderer +had either done one of these things, or the flags of the Embankment had +opened and swallowed him. + +The girl stood on the very spot where the murdered man must have +fallen, and in her utter perplexity it was no longer the tragedy but +the problem which engrossed her mind. What had happened, had happened; +but how could it have happened? She raised her umbrella and peered +through the rain at a red pile of many-windowed flats; had that Argus +of the hundred eyes been sleeping without one of them open at the time? +Her own eyes fell as far as the black statue in the narrow garden, +standing out hi the rain, like the greenery about its granite base, as +though the blackened bronze were polished marble. How lifelike the +colossal scholar in his homely garb! How scornful and how shrewd the +fixed eternal gaze across his own old Father Thames! It assumed another +character as the girl gazed in her turn, she seemed to intercept that +stony stare, to distract it from the river to herself, and to her +fevered fancy the grim lips smiled contemptuously on her and her +quandary. He knew—_he_ knew—those grim old eyes had seen it all, and +still they stared and smiled as much as to say: “You are looking the +wrong way! Look where I am looking; that way lies the truth you are +poor fool enough to want to know!” + +And Phillida turned her back towards the shiny statue, and looked over +the wet parapet, almost expecting to see something, but never dreaming +of what she actually saw. The tide, which must have been coming in that +early morning, was now going out, and between the Embankment masonry +and the river there was again a draggled ribbon of shelving foreshore, +black as on some volcanic coast; and between land and water, at a point +that would necessarily have been submerged for the last eight or nine +hours, a small object was being laid more bare by every receding +wavelet. It was black and square, perhaps the size of two large +cigar-boxes side by side; and it had one long, thin, reddish tentacle, +finishing in a bulb that moved about gently in the rain-pocked water. + +Phillida felt the parapet strike cold and wet through her rain-coat +sleeves as she leant far over to make doubly sure what she object was; +but indeed she had not a moment’s doubt but that it was the missing +camera of the murdered man. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. +AFTER THE FAIR + + +Mr. Upton was dumfoundered when the top-floor door in Glasshouse Street +was opened before Eugene Thrush could insert his key; for it was the +sombre Mullins who admitted the gentleman as though nothing had +happened to him except a fairly recent shave. + +“I thought he was in prison?” exclaimed the ironmaster when the two +were closeted. + +“Do you ever read your paper?” + +“I haven’t looked at one since Plymouth.” + +“Well, I howked him out first thing yesterday morning.” + +“_You_ did, Thrush?” + +“Why not? I had need of the fellow, and that part of the game was up.” + +Mr. Upton showed symptoms of his old irritability under the Thrush +mannerism. + +“My good fellow, I wish to goodness you’d explain yourself!” + +“If I cared to be profane,” returned Thrush, mixing drinks in the +corner, “I should refer you to the first chapter of the Book of Job. I +provided the prisoner, and I’d a perfect right to take him away again. +Blessed be the song of the Thrush!” + +“You say you provided him?” + +“In other words, I laid the information against my own man, but only +with his own consent.” + +“Well, well, you must have your joke, I suppose. I can afford to put up +with it now.” + +“It wasn’t meant as a joke,” returned Thrush, and drank deep while his +client sipped. “If it had come off it would have been the coup of my +career; as it didn’t—quite—one must laugh it off at one’s own expense. +Your son has told you what that poor old sinner made him think he’d +done?” + +“Of course.” + +“Would it surprise you to hear that one or two others thought the same +thing?” + +“Not you, Thrush?” + +“Not I to quite the same positive extent as my rascal Mullins. He +jumped to it from scratch!” + +“He connected Tony with the Park murder?” + +“From the word ‘go.’ ” + +“On the strength of an asthma cigarette and my poor wife’s dream?” + +“No; he didn’t know about the dream. But he refused to believe in two +independent mysteries at one time and on one spot. The eternal unities +was too many measles for Mullins, though he never heard tell of ’em in +his life.” + +Mr. Upton was no longer irritated by the other’s flippancy. He looked +at Thrush with a shining face. + +“And you never told me what was in your minds!” + +“It was poison even in mine; it would have been deadly poison to you, +in the state you were in. I say! I’ll wear batting-gloves the next time +we shake hands!” and Thrush blew softly on his mangled fingers. + +“You believed he’d done it, and you kept it to yourself,” murmured Mr. +Upton, still much impressed. “Tell me, my dear fellow—did you believe +it after that interview with Baumgartner in his house?” + +Thrush emptied his glass at once. + +“Don’t remind me of that interview, Mr. Upton; there was the lad on the +other side of so much lath-and-plaster, and I couldn’t scent him +through it! But he never made a sound, confound him!” + +“Tony’s told me about that; they were whispering, for reasons of their +own.” + +“I ought to have seen that old man listening! His ears must have grown +before my purblind eyes! But his story was an extraordinarily +interesting and circumstantial effort. And to come back to your +question, it did fit in with the theory of a fatal accident on your +boy’s part; he was frightened to show his face at school after sleeping +in the Park, let alone what he was supposed to have done there; and +that, he believed, would break his mother’s heart in any case.” + +“By Jove, and so it might! It wouldn’t take much just now,” said Mr. +Upton, sadly. + +“So he thought of the ship you wouldn’t let him go out in—and the whole +thing fitted in! Of course he had told the old ruffian—saving his +presence elsewhere—all about the forbidden voyage; and that gentleman +of genius had it ready for immediate use. I’m bound to say he used it +on me with excellent effect.” + +“Same here,” said the ironmaster—“though I’d no idea what you +suspected. I thought it a conceivable way out of any bad scrape, for +that particular boy.” + +“It imposed upon us all,” said Thrush, “but one. I was prepared to +believe it if you did, and you believed it because you didn’t know your +boy as well as you do now. But Miss Upton, who seems to know him better +than anybody else—do you remember how she wouldn’t hear of it for a +moment?” + +“I do _so_, God bless her!” + +“That shook me, or rather it prevented me from accepting what I never +had quite accepted in my heart. That’s another story, and you’re only +in the mood for one at present; but after seeing Baumgartner on +Saturday, I thought I’d like to know a little more about him, not from +outsiders but from the inside of his own skull. So I went to the +British Museum to have a look at his books. It was after hours for +getting books, but I made such representations that they cut their red +tape for once; and I soon read enough to wonder whether my grave and +reverend seignior was quite all there. Spiritualism one knows, but here +was spiritualism with a difference; psychic photography one had heard +about, but here was a psychical photographer gone mad or bad! When a +gifted creature puts into admirable English his longing to snap-shoot +the souls of murderers coming up through the drop, like the clown at +Drury Lane, you begin to want him elected to a fauteuil in Broadmoor. +Will you believe me when I tell you that I stumbled mentally on the +very thing I shall presently prove to have been the truth, and that I +dismissed it from my mind as the wildest impossibility?” + +“I don’t see how you’re going to prove it now,” remarked Mr. Upton, who +hoped there would be no such proof, for the sake of the girl who had +been good to his boy; but that was a private consideration which there +was no necessity to express. + +“I shall want another chat with your lad when he’s had his sleep out,” +replied Thrush, significantly; “he’s told me quite enough to make me +eager for more. But you haven’t told me anything about your own +adventures?” + +And he got another drink to help him listen; for as a rule the +ironmaster was only succinct when thoroughly irate. But now for once he +was both brief and amiable. + +“What have I to tell compared with you?” he asked. “Those damned old +wooden walls only cleared the Thames on Sunday morning, and they +weren’t near Plymouth when I left last night; but my little aluminium +lot broke all her records before I broke one of her wheels. What I want +to know is what you did from the time I left on Sunday night to that +great moment this morning.” + +“I sat down to watch Baumgartner, his house,” replied Thrush. “The +merit of those quiet little streets is that there are always apartments +of sorts, though not always the most admirable sort, to be had in half +the houses. There was quite a choice bang opposite Baumgartner’s, and +I’d taken a front room before you were through Hammersmith. Of course I +explained that I had lost a last train, and the landlady’s son +embarrassed me with pyjamas of inadequate dimensions. Well, I sat at +the front window all night, for no better reasons than my strong +feeling about the doctor’s writings, and your daughter’s disbelief in +his yarn about her brother. Soon after five in the morning the old bird +came out, and I was after him like knife. I tracked him to +Knightsbridge without much difficulty, excepting the one of avoiding +being spotted, but there that happened by the merest accident. He was +passing under the scaffolding outside the church they’re pulling down +there, and he’s so tall he knocked his hat off. I admit I was too +close. He saw, and must have recognised me; but I shouldn’t have +recognised him if I hadn’t seen him start out. He was wearing a false +beard and spectacles!” + +“That’s proof positive,” said ingenuous Mr. Upton, under his breath. + +“Well, I confess it’s something like it in this case; but it was a very +awkward moment for me. I hadn’t to let him see I knew him, nor yet that +I was following him, and the only way was to abandon the chase as +openly as possible. It was then I decided that it was no use leaving +poor old Mullins in pawn to the police. I redeemed him without delay. +We went back to my new rooms together, which I needn’t tell you I liked +so much that I brought a suit-case and took them for a week. Of course, +as we had lost the run of Baumgartner, the next best thing was to watch +for his return. Mullins took that on while I got some sleep; when I +awoke the Park Lane murder was the latest, and I won’t say I didn’t +suspect who’d done it. Perhaps I didn’t tell you he had his camera with +him as well as beard and goggles, and all three figured in the first +reports.” + +“But all this time you had no idea my boy was in the house?” + +“None whatever; we saw the girl once or twice, but that was all until I +wired last night. What I never saw myself was Baumgartner’s return; but +in the afternoon I sent Mullins round to another road to try and get a +room overlooking the place from the back. Well, the houses were too +much class for that; but one was empty, and he got the key and risked +going back to prison for the cause! Suffice it that he set eyes on both +man and boy before I sent that wire.” + +“And you left my son in that murderer’s clutches a minute longer than +you could help?” It was a previous incarnation of Pocket’s father that +broke in with this. + +“You must remember in the first place that I couldn’t be in the least +sure it was your son; in the second, if murder had been intended, +murder would have been done with as little delay in his case as in the +others; thirdly, that we’ve nothing to show that Dr. Baumgartner is an +actual murderer at all, but, fourthly, that to raid his place was the +way to make him one. Poor Mullins, too, as the original Sherlock of the +show, was desperately against calling in the police under any +circumstances. He assured me there was no sign of bad blood about the +house, until the small hours, and then he saw your son make his escape. +I told him he should have collared the lad, but he lost sight of him in +the night and preferred to keep an eye on that poor desperate doctor.” + +Thrush treated this part of his narrative with the peculiar confidence +which most counsel reserve for the less satisfactory aspects of their +case. But Mr. Upton was not in a mood to press a point of grievance +against anybody. And the name of Mullins reminded him that his +curiosity on a very different point had not been gratified. + +“Why on earth did you have Mullins run in?” he inquired, with +characteristic absence of finesse. + +“I’m not very proud of it,” replied Thrush. “It didn’t come off, you +see.” + +“But whatever could the object have been?” + +“I must have a damn-it if I’m to tell you that,” said Thrush; and the +ironmaster concluded that he meant a final drink, from the action which +he suited to the oath. “It was one way that occurred to me of putting +salt on the lad.” + +“Tony?” + +“Yes.” + +“You puzzle me more and more.” + +“Well, you see, I gathered that he was a particularly honourable boy, +of fine sensibilities, and yet Mullins thought he had shot this man by +accident and was lying low. I only thought that, if that were so, the +news of an innocent man’s arrest would bring him into the open as quick +as anything. Mullins proving amenable to terms, and having really been +within a hundred miles of both murders at the time they were committed, +the rest was elementary. But what’s the good of talking about it? It +didn’t come off.” + +“It very nearly did! I can tell you that straight from Tony; he was +going to give himself up yesterday morning, if he hadn’t accidentally +satisfied himself of his own innocence.” + +Mr. Upton said more than this, but it was the explicit statement of +fact that alone afforded Thrush real consolation. His spectacled eyes +blinked keenly behind their flashing lenses; the button of a nose +underneath twitched as though it scented battle once again; and the +drink with the opprobrious name was suddenly put down unfinished. + +“If only I could find that camera!” he cried. “It’s the touchstone of +the whole thing, mark my words. If it’s an accomplice who did this +thing, he’s got it; even if not——” + +He stood silenced by a sudden thought, a gleam of light that illumined +his whole flushed face. + +“Mullins!” he roared. Mullins was on the spot with somewhat suspicious +alacrity. “Get the almanac, Mullins, and look up Time of High Water at +London Bridge to-day!” + +He himself flopped down behind the telephone to ring up the cab-office +in Bolton Street. But it takes time even for a Eugene Thrush to consume +all but three large whiskies and sodas; and the afternoon was already +far advanced. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. +THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA + + +The camera had been placed upon a folded newspaper, for the better +preservation of the hotel table-cloth. Its apertures were still choked +with mud; beads of slime kept breaking out along the joints. And +Phillida was still explaining to Pocket how the thing had come into her +possession. + +“The rain was the greatest piece of luck, though another big slice was +an iron gangway to the foreshore about a hundred yards up-stream. It +was coming down so hard at the time that I couldn’t see another +creature out in it except myself. I don’t believe a single soul saw me +run down that gangway and up again; but I dropped my purse over first +for an excuse if anybody did. I popped the camera under my waterproof, +and carried it up to the King’s Road before I could get a cab. But I +never expected to find you awake and about again; next to the rain +that’s the best luck of all!” + +“Why?” + +“Because you know all about photography and I don’t. Suppose he took a +last photograph, and suppose that led directly to the murder!” + +“That’s an idea.” + +“The man threw the camera into the river, but the plate would be in it +still, and you could develop it!” + +The ingenious hypothesis had appealed to the eager credulity of the +boy; but at the final proposition he shook a reluctant head. + +“I’m afraid there’s not much chance of there being anything to develop; +the slide’s been open all this time, you see.” + +“I know. I tried to shut it, but the wood must have swollen in the +water. Yet the more it has swollen, the better it ought to keep out the +light, oughtn’t it?” + +“I’m afraid there isn’t a dog’s chance,” he murmured, as he handled the +camera again. Yet it was not of the folding-bellows variety, but was +one of the earlier and stronger models in box form, and it had come +through its ordeal wonderfully on the whole. Nothing was absolutely +broken; but the swollen slide jammed obstinately, until in trying to +shut it by main force, Pocket lost his grip of the slimy apparatus, and +sent it flying to the floor, all but the slide which came out bodily in +his hand. + +“That settles it,” remarked Phillida, resignedly. The exposed plate +stared them in the face, a sickly yellow in the broad daylight. It was +cracked across the middle, but almost dry and otherwise uninjured. + +“I am sorry!” exclaimed Pocket, as they stood over the blank sheet of +glass and gelatine; it was like looking at a slate from which some +infinitely precious message had been expunged unread. “I’m not sure +that you weren’t right after all; what’s water-tight must be more or +less light-tight, when you come to think of it. I say, what’s all this? +The other side oughtn’t to bulge like that!” + +He picked the broken plate out of the side that was already open, and +weighed the slide in his hand; it was not heavy enough to contain +another plate, he declared with expert conviction; yet the side which +had not been opened was a slightly bulging but distinctly noticeable +convexity. Pocket opened it at a word from Phillida, and an over-folded +packet of MS. leapt out. + +“It’s his writing!” cried the girl, with pain and awe in her +excitement. She had dropped the document at once. + +“It’s in English,” said Pocket, picking it up. + +“It must be what he was writing all last night!” + +“It is.” + +“You see what it is!” urged Phillida, feebly. But she watched him +closely as he read to himself:— + +“_June_ 20, 190—.” + + +“It is a grim coincidence that I should sit down to reveal the secret +of my latter days on what is supposed to be the shortest night of the +year; for they must come to an end at sunrise, viz., at 3.44 according +to the almanac, and it is already after 10 p.m. Even if I sit at my +task till four I shall have less than six hours in which to do justice +to the great _ambition_ and the crowning folly of my life. I used the +underlined word advisedly; some would substitute ‘monomania,’ but I +protest I am as sane as they are, fail as I may to demonstrate that +fact among so many others to be dealt with in the very limited time at +my disposal. Had I more time, or the pen of a readier writer, I should +feel surer of vindicating my head if not my heart. But I have been ever +deliberate in all things (excepting, certainly, the supreme folly +already mentioned), and I would be as deliberate over the last words I +shall ever write, as in my final preparations for death——”. + + +“What is it?” asked Phillida, for his eyes had dilated as he read, and +he was breathing hard. + +“He practically says he was going to commit suicide at daybreak! He’s +said so once already, but now he says it in so many words!” + +“Well, we know he didn’t do it,” said Phillida, as though she found a +crumb of comfort in the thought. + +“I’m not so sure about that.” + +“Go on reading it aloud. I can bear it if that’s the worst.” + +“But it isn’t, Phillida. I can see it isn’t!” + +“Then let us read it together. I’d rather face it with you than +afterwards all by myself. We’ve seen each other through so much, surely +we can—surely——” + +Her words were swept away in a torrent of tears, and it was with dim +eyes but a palpitating heart that Pocket looked upon the forlorn drab +figure of the slip of a girl; for as yet, despite her pretext to Mr. +Upton, she had taken no thought for her mourning, that unfailing +distraction to the normally bereaved, but had put on anything she could +find of a neutral tint; and yet it was just her dear disdain of +appearance, the intimate tears gathering in her great eyes, unchecked, +and streaming down the fresh young face, the very shabbiness of her +coat and skirt, that made her what she was in his sight. Outside, the +rain had stopped, and Trafalgar Square was drying in the sun, that +streamed in through the open window of the hotel sitting-room, and +poured its warm blessing on the two young heads bent as one over the +dreadful document. + +This was the part they read together, now in silence, now one and now +the other whispering a few sentences aloud:—. + +“What I have called my life’s ambition demands but little explanation +here. I have never made any secret of it, but, on the contrary, I have +given full and frank expression to my theories in places where they are +still accessible to the curious. I refer to my signed articles on +spirit photography in _Light Human Nature_, _The Occult Review_ and +other periodicals, but particularly to the paper entitled ‘The Flight +of the Soul,’ in _The Nineteenth Century and After_ for January of last +year. The latter article contains my last published word on the matter +which has so long engrossed my mind. It took me some months to prepare +and to write, and its reception did much to drive me to the extreme +measures I have since employed. Treated to a modicum of serious +criticism by the scientific press, but more generally received with +ignorant and intolerant derision, which is the Englishman’s attitude +towards whatsoever is without his own contracted ken, my article, the +work of months, was dismissed and forgotten in a few days. I had +essayed the stupendous feat of awaking the British nation to a new +idea, and the British nation had responded with a characteristic snore +of unfathomable indifference. My name has not appeared in its vermin +press from that day to this; it was not mentioned in the paragraph +about the psychic photographer which went the rounds about a year ago. +Yet I was that photographer. I am the serious and accredited inquirer +to whom the London hospitals refused admittance to their pauper +deathbeds, thronged though those notoriously are by the raw material of +the British medical profession. Begin at the bottom of the British +medical ladder, and you are afforded the earliest and most frequent +opportunities of studying (if not accelerating) the phenomena of human +dissolution; but against the foreign scientist the door is closed, +without reference either to the quality of his credentials or the +purity of his aims. I can conceive no purer and no loftier aim than +mine. It is as high above that of your ordinary physician as heaven +itself is high above this earth. Your physician wrestles with death to +lengthen life, whereas I would sacrifice a million lives to prove that +there is no such thing as death; that this human life of ours, by which +we set such childish store, is but a fleeting phase of the permanent +life of the spirit. One shrinks from setting down so trite a truism; it +is the common ground of all religion, but I have reached it from the +opposite pole. Religion is to me the unworthy triumph of instinct over +knowledge, a lazy substitution of invention for discovery. Religion +invites us to take her postulates on trust; but a material age is +deserving of material proofs, and it is these proofs I have striven to +supply. Surely it is a higher aim, and not a lower, to appeal to the +senses that cannot deceive, rather than to the imagination which must +and does? But I am trenching after all upon ground which I myself have +covered before to-day; it is my function to-night to relate a personal +narrative rather than to reiterate personal views. Suffice it that to +me, for many years, the only path to the Invisible has been the path of +so-called spiritualism; the only lamp that illumined that path, so that +all who saw might follow it for themselves, the lamp of spirit +photography. It is a path with a bad name, a path infested with quacks +and charlatans, and by false guides who rival the religious fanatics in +the impudence of their appeal to man’s credulity. Even those who bear +the lamp I hold aloft are too often jugglers and rogues, to whose +wiles, unfortunately, the simple science of photography lends itself +all too readily. Nothing is easier than the production of impossible +pictures by a little manipulation of film or plate; if the spiritual +apparition is not to be enticed within range of the lens, nothing +easier than to fabricate an approximate effect. And what spiritualist +has yet succeeded in summoning spirits at will? It is the crux of the +whole problem of spiritualism, to establish any sort or form of +communication with disembodied spirits at the single will of the +embodied; hence the periodical exposure of the paid medium, the smug +scorn of the unbeliever, and the discouragement of genuine exploration +beyond the environment of the flesh. There is one moment, and only one, +at which a man may be sure that he stands, for however brief a particle +of time, in the presence of a disembodied soul. It is the moment at +which soul and body part company in what men call death. The human +watcher sees merely the collapse of the human envelope; but many a +phenomenon invisible to the human eye has been detected and depicted by +that of the camera, as everybody knows who has the slightest +acquaintance with the branch of physics known as ‘fluorescence.’ The +invisible spirit of man surely falls within this category. To the +crystal eye of science it is not so much invisible as elusive and +intractable. Once it has fled this earth, the sovereign opportunity is +gone; but photography may often intercept the actual flight of the +soul.” + +“I say no more than ‘often’ because there are special difficulties into +which I need not enter here; but they would disappear, or at least be +minimised, if the practice received the encouragement it deserves, +instead of the forbidding ban of a sentimental generation. It would +hurt nobody; it would comfort and convince the millions who at present +have only their Churches’ word for the existence of an eternal soul in +their perishable bodies. It would prove more, in the course of a few +experiments, than all the Churches have proved between them in nineteen +centuries. Yet how are my earnest applications received, in hospitals +where men die daily, in prisons where they are still occasionally put +to death? I am refused, rebuffed, gratuitously reprimanded; in fact, I +am driven ultimately to the extreme course of taking human life, on my +own account, in order to prove the life eternal. Call it murder, call +it what you will; in a civilisation which will not hear of a lethal +chamber for congenital imbeciles it would be waste of time to urge the +inutility of a life as an excuse for taking it, or the misery of an +individual as a reason for sending him to a world which cannot use him +worse than this world. I can only say that I have not deprived the +State of one conceivably profitable servant, or cut short a single life +of promise or repute. I have picked my few victims with infinite care +from amid the moral or material wreckage of life; either they had +nothing to live for, or they had no right to live. Charlton, the +licensed messenger, had less to live for than any man I ever knew; in +the course of our brief acquaintance he frequently told me how he +wished he was dead. I came across him in Kensington, outside a house to +which an unseemly fracas had attracted my attention as I passed. +Charlton had just been ejected for being drunk and insolent, and +refusing to leave without an extra sixpence. I befriended him. He was +indeed saturated with alcohol and honeycombed with disease; repulsive +in appearance, and cantankerous in character, his earnings were so +slender that he was pitifully clad, and without a night’s lodging +oftener than not. He had not a friend in the world, and was suffering +from an incurable malady of which the end was certain agony. I resolved +to put him out of his misery, and at the same time to try to photograph +the escape of his soul. A favourable opportunity did not present itself +for some time, during which Charlton subsisted largely on my bounty; at +last one morning I found him asleep on a bench in Holland Walk, and not +another being in sight, and I shot him with a cheap pistol which I had +purchased second-hand for the purpose, and which I left beside him on +the seat. Yet the weapon it was that cast a doubt upon the +authenticity of the suicide, despite my final precaution of stuffing a +number of cartridges into the dead man’s pocket; pot-house associates +came forward to declare that he could never have possessed either the +revolver or its price without their knowledge. Hence the coroner’s +repudiation of the verdict at the inquest. Yet it is to be feared that +the fate of such as poor Charlton excites but little public interest in +its explanation, and that the police themselves never took more than an +academic interest in the case.” + +“To me it was a bitter disappointment on other grounds. I had lost very +few seconds between pulling the revolver trigger and pressing the bulb +of my pneumatic shutter; but one had to get back into position for +this, and the fact remains that I was too late. The result may be found +among my negatives. It is dreadfully good of the dead man, if not a +unique photograph of actual death; but it lacks the least trace of the +super-normal. The flight of the soul had been too quick for me; it +would be too quick again unless I hit upon some new method. I had not +only failed to leave convincing evidence of suicide, but the fatal +pause between pistol-shot and snap-shot was due entirely to my +elaborate attempt in that direction. It was not worth making again. The +next case should be a more honest breach of the Sixth Commandment; the +shot to be fired, and the photograph taken, at the same range and all +but at the same instant. There would be no further point in leaving the +weapon behind, so I was free to choose the one best suited to my +purpose, and to adapt it at my leisure to my peculiar needs. Eventually +I evolved the ingenious engine which, no doubt, has already explained +itself better than I could possibly explain it; if not, the discoverer +of the camera need not hesitate to experiment with the pistol, as it +will not be loaded when found.” + +There was a brief discussion here. The children could not understand +about the pistol; but only one of them cared what had become of it. For +Phillida it was enough to know that the writer of this shameless +rigmarole, with its pompous periods and its callous gusto, must long +ago have lost his reason. She had no doubt whatever about that, and +already it had brought a new light into her eyes. She would pause to +discuss nothing else. It was her finger that pointed the way through +the next passages. + +“The perfection or completion of my device was the secret work of many +weeks; it brings me down almost to the other day, and to what I have +described as the supreme folly of my life. I had everything in +readiness for another attempt to liberate and photograph a human soul +in consecutive fractions of a second. But the right man was never in +the right place at the right time; one saw him by the dozen in a crowd, +but the people one met all by themselves, in the early summer mornings, +stayed one’s hand repeatedly by the eager brightness of their eyes or a +happy elasticity of step. Once an out-patient at the Brompton Hospital, +whom I had dogged all the way down to Richmond Park, was cheated of a +merciful end by dusk falling just as I had him to myself. No; the dawn +and the drunkard were still my best chance. So it was that the wretch +whose name I forget met with his death in Hyde Park last Tuesday +morning. I knew him by sight as a pot-house loafer of the Charlton +circle, but it was quite by chance that I followed his uncertain +footsteps through the Park, and saw him go deliberately to bed in the +drenching dew. His face filled in his tale; it was another farrago of +privation and excess. This was the type that caused me no compunction: +having aimed and focussed at the same time, as my invention provides, I +despatched the poor devil as he lay on his side, with his hat over his +eyes, and exposed my plate as he rolled over on his face. It may be +reckoned an offensive detail, but the click of my instantaneous shutter +coincided with the last clutter in his throat. + +“I need hardly say that I had looked about me pretty thoroughly before +firing, and my first act after taking the photograph was to make +another wary survey of the scene. It had the advantage that one could +see a considerable distance in three directions, and in none of these, +neither right nor left along the path, nor yet straight ahead across +the grass on the edge of which my victim lay, was a living creature to +be seen. This was very reassuring, as I felt that I could see a good +deal farther than the report of my small automatic pistol was likely to +be heard; for it is a remarkable feature of most shooting cases, +especially where a pistol has been used, and in the open air, how +seldom it is that a witness can be found who has actually heard the +fatal shot. In the fourth quarter, where there was a bank of shrubbery +behind some iron palings, I looked last, for I was standing with my +back that way. How shall I describe my sensations on turning round? +There was a young lad within a few feet of me, on the other side of the +palings; and this young lad was flourishing a revolver in his right +hand! + +“At first I made certain he had seen everything; but his blank and +frank bewilderment was more reassuring at a second glance, and at a +third I guessed what had happened to him. His crumpled clothes were +dank with dew. His eyes were puddles of utter stupefaction. He had +been sleeping in the Park, and walking in his sleep, and in all +probability it was my shot which had brought him to himself; of this, +however, I was less sure, and in my doubt I was disastrously inspired +to accuse him of having fired the shot himself. It never struck me that +he could mistake the body behind me for a living man; it was with a +wild idea of being the first to accuse the other, that I asked him if +he knew what he had done, and seized his revolver at the same moment. I +had the wit to grasp it in my hot hand until the barrel was just warm +enough to help me convince the child that he really had fired the shot; +but, since he could not see it for myself, I was not going out of my +way just then to tell him it was a fatal shot. Already I regretted that +I had gone so far, and yet already I saw myself committed to a course +of action as rash as it was now inevitable. The boy became convulsed +with asthma; I could not leave him there, to tell his story when the +body was discovered, to have it disproved perhaps on the spot, at the +latest on a comparison of bullets, and the truth brought home to me +through his description. Again, when I had taken him to my house, with +all sorts of foolish precautions, and still more foolish risks, I had +to keep him there. How could I let him loose to blurt out his story and +implicate me more readily than ever after what he had seen of me at +home? I had to keep him there—I repeat it—alive or dead. And I was not +the kind of murderer (if I am one at all) to take a young and innocent +life, if I could help it, to preserve my own; on the contrary, I had, +and I hope I always should have had, humanity enough at least to do +what I could for a fellow-creature battling with an attack which almost +threatened to remove him from my path without my aid.” + +There followed a few remarks on Pocket’s character as the writer read +it. They were not uncomplimentary to Pocket personally, but they +betrayed a profound disdain for the typically British institution of +which Pocket was too readily accepted as a representative product. His +general ignorance and credulity received a grim tribute; they were the +very qualities the doctor would have demanded in a chosen dupe. Yet he +appeared to have enjoyed the youth’s society, his transparent honesty, +his capacity for enthusiastic interest, whether in the delights of +photography or in the horrors of war. Baumgartner seemed aware that he +had been somewhat confidential on both subjects, and that either his +contempt of human life, or his ambitions in the matter of psychic +photography, would have been better kept to himself; but, on the other +hand, he “greatly doubted whether they taught boys to put two and two +together, at these so-called public schools”; and, after all, it was +not detection by the boy, but through the boy, that he had to fear. + +“The madness of keeping him prisoner, as he had been from the +beginning, in spite of all pretences and persuasions to the contrary, +was another thing to which Baumgartner had been thoroughly alive all +along. He had regarded it from the first as ‘the certain beginning of +the end’; from the first, he had been prepared with specious +explanations for any such inquisitor as the one who had actually +arrived no later than the Saturday afternoon. He wrote without elation +of his interview with Thrush, whose name he knew; the doctor had not +been deceived as to the transitory character of his own deception. It +was the same with the letter which he had pretended to post, which +could only have kept the boy quiet for a day or two, if he had posted +it, but which the boy himself had discovered never to have been posted +at all. There was a sufficiently cool description of the desperate mood +into which Baumgartner’s intuition of the boy’s discovery had thrown +him on the Sunday night.” + +“It was then,” he wrote, “that I formed a project which I should have +been sorry indeed to carry out, though I should certainly have done so +if he had given me the chance I sought. It must be understood that my +second attempt to photograph the flight of the soul had proved as great +a fiasco as the first. Suddenly I hit upon a perfectly conceivable +(even though it seem a wilfully grotesque) explanation of my failure. +What if the human derelicts I had so far chosen for my experiments had +no souls to photograph? Sodden with drink, debauched, degraded, and +spiritually blurred or blunted to the last degree, these after all were +the least likely subjects to yield results to the spirit photographer. +I should have chosen saints instead of sinners such as these, entities +in which the soul was a major and not a minor factor. I thought of the +saintliest men I knew in London, of some Jesuit Fathers of my +acquaintance, of a ‘light’ specialist I know of who is destroying +himself by inches in the cause of science, of certain missioners in the +slums; but I did not think twice of any one of them; their lives are +much too valuable for me to cut them short on the mere chance of a +compensating benefit to mankind at large. Last, and longest, I thought +of the boy upstairs. I had not meant to sacrifice him; a young life, of +some promise, is only less sacred to me than a mature life rich in +beneficent activities. But this young fellow was going to be my ruin. +I could see it in his eyes. He had found me out about the letter; he +would be the means of my being found out and stopped for ever in the +work of my life. It was his life or mine; it should be his; but I was +not going to take it there in the house, for reasons I need not enter +into here, and I intended to take more than his life while I was about +it. But he never gave me the chance. I did my best to get him to go out +with me this morning. But he refused, as a horse refuses a jump, or a +dog the water. He said he was ill; he looked ill. But I have no doubt +he was well enough to make his escape soon after my back was turned. I +see he has broken into my dark-room for the clothes I took away from +him before I went out; he would scarcely remain after that; but, to +tell the truth, I have hardly given him a thought since my return.” + +The readers shuddered over this long paragraph. More than once the boy +broke in with his own impulsive version of the awful moments on the +Sunday night and the Monday morning, in his bedroom at the top of the +doctor’s house. He declared that nothing short of main force would have +dragged him out-of-doors that morning, that he felt it in his bones +that he would never come back alive. Then he would be sorry he had said +so much. It only increased his companion’s anguish. She was reading +every word religiously, with a most painful fascination; it was as +though every word drew blood. There was a brief but terrible account of +the murder of Sir Joseph Schelmerdine outside his own house in Park +Lane. It was the rashest of all the crimes; but, apparently, the one +occasion on which the doctor had disguised himself before hand; and +that only because Sir Joseph and he knew and disliked each other so +intensely that a “straight” interview was out of the question. As it +was he had escaped by a miracle, after lying all day in a straw-loft, +creeping into a carriage at nightfall, and getting out on the wrong +side when it drove round to its house. Baumgartner described the +incident with a callous relish, as perhaps the most exciting in his +long career; he was going on to explain his subsequent return, in +propria persona, and yet by stealth, when he paused in the middle of a +sentence which was never finished. And his statement concluded as +follows, in less careful language and a more flowing hand:— + +“I thought the fool had cleared out long ago. The day’s excitement must +have driven him clean out of my head. I never thought of him when I got +back, never till I saw the damage to the darkroom window and missed his +clothes. I didn’t waste two thoughts upon him then. I had my negative +to develop. A magnificent negative it was, too, yet another absolute +failure from the practical point of view, perhaps from the same reason +as its predecessors. South African mines may produce gold and diamonds +(licit and illicit!) but their yield in souls is probably the poorest +to the square mile anywhere on earth. Schelmerdine never had one in his +gross carcass. So there was an end of him, and a good riddance to +rotten clay. I have not thought of him again all night. I have thought +of nothing but this perhaps passionately dispassionate statement that I +have made up my mind to leave behind me. It has given me strange +pleasure to write, a satisfaction which I have no longer the time to +attempt to analyse; all night long my pen has scarcely paused, and I +not conscious of a moment’s weariness of mind, body, or hand. Only +sometimes have I paused to light my pipe. I had made such a pause, +perhaps half an hour ago, when in the terrible stillness of the night I +heard a footstep in the hall. My nerves were somewhat on edge with all +this writing; it might be my imagination. I stole to my door, and as I +opened it the one below shut softly. I waited some time, heard nothing +more, went down with my lamp, and threw open the drawing-room door. +There was my young fellow, not gone at all, but sitting in the dark +with one whose name there is no need to mention. I do not wish to be +misunderstood. It was all innocent enough, even I never doubted that. +But somehow the sight of that boy and girl, sitting there in the dark +without a word, afraid to go to bed—afraid of me—made the blood boil +over in my veins. I could have trampled on that lad, my Jonah whom I +had pictured overboard at last, and I did hurl the lamp at his head. I +am glad it missed him. I am glad he made good his escape while I was +seeing his companion safe upstairs. If I had found him where I left +him, God knows what violence I might not have done him after all. The +boy has good in him, and more courage than he knows himself; again I +say that I am glad he has escaped unscathed. His life was not safe, but +now I shall only take my own. + +“Yes! I have made up my mind; it is better than leaving it to the +common hangman of this besotted country. I know what to expect in +enlightened England: either a death unfit for a dog, or existence worse +than death in a criminal lunatic asylum. I prefer my own peculiar +quietus; it has stood on my table all night long, ready and pointed at +my heart; a hand upon the door, a step behind me, and I should have +rolled over dead at their feet. So it will be if even now they are +waiting for me outside; but, if not, I know where to go, where already +it is broad daylight, where the wide open space will quicken and +enhance every ray, and the broad river multiply the sun by a million +facets of living fire. It is not the light that will fail me, there; +and as I have served others, so also will I serve myself, and it may be +with better fortune than they have brought me. Who knows? It would be +in keeping with the poetic ironies of this existence. At all events, +unless waylaid at once, I am giving it a chance. I shall place the +camera on the parapet of the Embankment. I have fitted the shutter with +a specially long pneumatic tube, and the bulb will do its double work +as usual when my fingers relax. I have long had it all in my mind. I +have written full instructions on the envelope which I shall stick by +the flap to the open slide; if we are found by a reasonably intelligent +person, the slide will be shut, and the camera handed over bodily to +the police. They, I think, may be trusted to honour one’s last +instructions, if only out of curiosity; their eyes will be the first to +read what I fear they will describe as my ‘full confession.’ Well, it +is ‘full,’ and the substantive must be left to them. So long as the +document does not fall into one little pair of gentle hands, I shall +lie easy in whatever ignominious grave they lay me. That is why I hide +it where I do: since, if it fell first into those hands, it would never +see the light at all.” + +There was a little more, but Phillida suddenly snatched the MS. away, +and wept over the end, bitterly, and yet not altogether in bitterness, +while Pocket picked up the camera and set it back in its place on the +muddy newspaper. Phillida folded up the packet, and after a moment’s +hesitation went away with it, jingling keys in her other hand. On her +return she stood petrified on the threshold. + +Pocket was seated at the table, the red bulb of the pneumatic shutter +between his finger and thumb; he pressed the bulb, and there was a loud +metallic snap inside the camera; he released the pressure, and the +shutter snapped like a shutter and nothing else. Phillida came forward +with a cry. Pocket had taken the top off the camera; it was like a box +without the lid, and on the one side there was nothing between the lens +and the grooved carrier for the slide, but on the other there was an +automatic pistol, fixed down with wires, as a wild beast might be +lashed, and its muzzle pointing through the orifice intended for the +second lens of the stereoscopic camera. + +Pocket pressed again, and again the mild clash of the shutter was +preceded by the vicious one that would have been an explosion if there +had been another cartridge in the pistol. + +“And we never guessed it!” said he. “That’s why he went in for this +sort of double camera, and rigged it up to take both kinds of shot in +quick succession. It’s the cleverest thing I ever heard of in my life.” + +He spoke as if it were only clever! Phillida stared at it and him +without a word. + +“The cleverest part is the way you aim. I do believe he relied +altogether on that spot about the middle of the focussing screen. I’ve +been trying it against the window, and where that spot comes the +pistol’s pointing every time. It’s a fixed focus, about ten to fifteen +feet, I fancy, and the spot isn’t quite in the middle of the screen, +but just enough to the left to allow. I don’t quite see how the one +bulb works everything, but these springs and things are a bit +confusing. We shan’t understand everything till we take it to pieces.” + +“You mean the police won’t!” said Phillida, bitterly. + +“The police! I never thought of them.” + +“What do you mean to do with this—this infernal machine?” the girl +asked, her voice breaking over the perfectly applicable term. + +“What do _you_ mean to do with—the writing?” demanded Pocket in his +turn. + +“Burn it! I’ve asked for a fire in my room; it’s locked away +meanwhile.” + +“Well, this is yours, too,” said Pocket, deliberately, “to do what you +like with as well.” + +“They wouldn’t think so!” + +“They’ll never know.” + +Phillida shook her head, and not without some scorn. “You couldn’t keep +it to yourself,” she said. “You would _have_ to tell.” + +“Well, but not everybody,” said poor Pocket. “Only my father, if you +like!” he added, valiantly. + +“Mr. Upton would feel bound to tell.” + +“I don’t see that. Didn’t you hear what he said about a man’s secrets +dying with him?” + +“He’s so kind! He says that; he said it again to me; but this is the +mystery of the day. It’ll be the talk for months, if not years. And as +yet only you and I, in all the world, have found it out!” + +She looked at him so wistfully, so sweetly and sadly and +confidentially, that he would have been either more or less than human +boy if he had failed to see her heart’s desire, and how it was still in +his power to save her the supreme humiliation and distress of sharing +their secret with the world. He made up his mind on the spot; and yet +it was a mind that looked both ways at every turn of affairs, and even +then he saw what he was going to lose. Fred and Horace would not sit +nearly so spellbound as they might have done, would probably back their +penetration of the mystery against his! There would be no boasting +about it in front of the hall fire at school, no breathing it even to +Smith minor out for a walk; no adventure to recount all his days; and +Pocket was one to whom the salt of an adventure would always be its +subsequent recital. But he could “play the game” as well as Horace +himself, when he happened to have no doubt as to the game to play. And +now he had none whatever. + +“Phillida, if you wish it, I’ll never breathe a syllable of all this to +a single soul on earth, I don’t care who they are, or what they do to +me!” + +He wanted them to put him on the rack that moment. + +“Oh, Tony, do you mean it?” + +Her eyes had filled. + +“Of course I mean it! I’ll swear it more solemnly than I’ve ever sworn +anything in my life so far.” + +“No, no! Your word’s enough. Don’t I know what that’s worth, after this +terrible week?” + +And she cried again at its hideous memories, so that Pocket turned away +and put the camera together again, and wrapped it up in her waterproof, +so that he might not see her tears. + +“I’ll never breathe a single word to a single soul,” he vowed, “except +yourself.” + +She caught at that through her tears. He could talk to her about it, +always, as much as ever he liked; it would be a bond between them all +their lives. And not until she said it, to be just to Pocket, did he +think of a reward or look beyond those days. + +But what were they to do with a stereoscopic camera containing an +automatic pistol? It was not to be burnt in a grate like a sheaf of MS. +They thought about it for some time with anxious faces; for it was +getting on towards evening now, though the sun was out again, and it +was lighter than the early afternoon; but Mr. Upton might be back any +minute. It was Phillida who at last said she knew. She would not tell +him what she meant to do; but she put on her waterproof again, little +as it was wanted now, and the camera under it as before; and together +they sallied forth into the noisy and crowded Strand. + +Pocket did not know where he was, and Phillida would not tell him where +she was going, neither could he question her in that alarming throng. +He felt a frightful sense of guilt and danger, not so much to himself +as to her, with that lethal weapon concealed about her; every man who +looked at them was a detective in his eyes, and past the policemen at +the corners he wanted to run. But they gained the middle of Waterloo +Bridge undetected and ensconced themselves in a recess without creating +a sensation. + +“Now, then,” said Phillida, “will you focus Westminster Bridge and the +Houses of Parliament, or shall I?” + +There they were before them against the sunset, the long lithe bridge, +the stately towers. But Pocket could not see Phillida’s drift until she +aimed herself, and, aiming, let the square black box slip clean through +her fingers into the depths of the river from which she had only +retrieved it a couple of hours before, as a body is committed to the +deep. + +She bewailed her stupidity; he had the wit to echo her then, and in a +loud voice, that any eye-witness or passer-by might be struck with the +genuine severity of their loss. But there had been no eye-witness who +thought it worth while to rally them on the occurrence, and the busy +townsfolk hastening past were all too much engrossed in their own +affairs to take any interest in those of the boy and girl who seemed +themselves in something of a hurry to get back to the Strand. + +And in the Strand the first thing they saw was a yellow poster bearing +but four words in enormous black letters:— + +CHELSEA INQUEST +CAMERA CLUE! + + +Phillida slipped her hand within Pocket’s arm. Pocket was man enough to +press it to his side. + +THE END + + +Printed in Great Britain by Wyman & Sons, Ltd., London and Reading + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30096 *** |