Idols

CHAPTER IX

He threw off his dress clothes with the repulsion that every man feels for such garments after an all-night sitting. He was tired out, capable only of attending to the trivial and personal things that immediately concerned him; thanked God, with the fervour which the average man expresses for none but the trifling mercies of Providence, that no case compelled his attendance in court at ten o’clock; stretched himself, yawned, stumbled shiveringly into bed, where, drawing the bedclothes tightly around him, he sank at once into the heavy sleep of the weary man. A confused sound broke upon his slumbers. In a waking dream it seemed to him that Minna was battering with a hammer at some formless material object which his mind identified as marriage. He awoke to find the noise that of knocking at his door. In reality, he had slept some hours, but he was conscious of only a few minutes’ repose. He called out angrily to be left alone. The knocking continued. He called out again. Then a strange voice was heard “Can I see you for a minute, sir?”

Exasperated, he jumped out of bed and opened the door.

“What the devil is it?”

He recoiled in some astonishment at the sight of Israel Hart’s butler, Samuels. The man looked greasy, unkempt, agitated. Behind him flashed the retreating figure of Mrs. Parsons, the porter’s wife.

“Come in, if you want to speak to me,” said Hugh, for the cold draught was sweeping down the passage through the open flat-door. Samuels obeyed.

“An awful thing, sir. I think you had better come round at once. My master was murdered during the night.”

If he had suddenly received a blow from a life-preserver, Hugh could not have been, for the moment, more stunned and dazed.

“Murdered—your master—last night?”

He stared at the man. It was inconceivable. The incredible horror of it was that he had passed the night, keenly awake, in the house. Israel Hart murdered, a few yards away from him, without uttering a cry, giving out a sound in the death-struggle—it passed realisation.

“Yes, sir, in his study,” said the butler with tears in his eyes and with quivering lips. “The housemaid found him at a quarter to seven this morning.”

“How did it happen?”

“Someone hit him with something heavy—just over here.”

The man passed his hand upwards from his temple to his skull.

“It has been terrible work this morning,” he added, with a shiver.

The first shock over, Hugh recovered his balance.

“I will come with you at once. Tell me the details while I dress.”

And while he hurried into his clothes and afterwards ate a crust of bread and drank a cup of coffee, Samuels told his story. In brief, what had occurred was this. The housemaid, coming to lay the study fire, had discovered her master lying huddled together on the hearth-rug. As she approached with her candle, a glance had showed her a streak of blood in his grey hair. She had screamed, rushed up to Samuels and given the alarm. He had come down, seen the body, recognised that life was extinct, had sent out at once for a doctor and a policeman. Pending their arrival, he had caused Miss Hart to be roused by her maid, and had remained in the study to prevent any of the servants disturbing the arrangements of the room. Miss Hart had come downstairs, wild with terror, and had fainted away, so that she had to be carried up to bed again. The policeman had come in the course of a few minutes, followed soon afterwards by the doctor, who was a near neighbour. Then the Inspector had arrived, and later a Scotland Yard official, and they were at present engaged in investigations. There did not seem to be the slightest clue. It was an awful mystery.

“And Miss Hart—how was she when you left?” asked Hugh, as they went down the steps of the mansion.

“It seems she came to very soon, sir,” answered Samuels, “and then she would dress and come down, and now she’s bearing up wonderfully. It was she and the Inspector that agreed you were to be fetched, as you were the last person—except the other—that saw him alive.”

“Yes,” said Hugh, “I remember him telling you to go to bed.”

“Oh, I saw him again after that, sir, when he went upstairs.”

“Then how could I be the last? Besides I thought he was found in the study—I don’t follow you.”

“He went upstairs to get something from his bedroom safe—and then went down again. I was seeing to the fire in his room—and he told me again to go to bed. I thought you were still there, sir.”

“What time was that?” Hugh asked, sharply.

“That was five minutes to twelve.”

“Oh, I left him at half-past eleven,” said Hugh.

They arrived at The Lindens. A knot of idlers were standing at the gates discussing the straws of information that floated among them. A policeman on duty marched slowly round the drive, his footprints indistinguishable from countless others that had broken up the thin and melting coat of snow. On the steps stood an Inspector in talk with a couple of pressmen, who were taking notes with red, cold fingers.

The Inspector touched his cap as Hugh came up.

“A shocking affair, sir. If you will go in I will see you in a moment.”

Hugh entered, went up to the fireplace in the hall and warmed his hands, wondering at the force of routine which had caused this fire to be lit on a morning of such upheaval. The slight sound of an opening door made him turn, and then he saw Minna’s pale and haggard face. She beckoned to him hurriedly and disappeared into the dining-room. He followed her, shutting the door behind him. The sight of the room brought a fresh shock of associations. Was there ever such a ghastly morrow to a feast?

Minna stood by the table, one hand behind her resting upon it, her eyes meeting his in dull defiance. She checked brusquely his first half-articulated exclamation of sympathy.

“Yes. I know all that you can tell me. We can’t waste time over it. Have you spoken to the Inspector?”

“Not yet.”

“Thank God I’ve seen you first. This does not interfere with our compact. You won’t say a word about seeing me last night?”

“Certainly not,” he replied, turning away from her with a feeling of repugnance. “As far as your father is concerned, I left this house at half-past eleven.” She closed her eyes with a sigh of relief.

“I was afraid you might betray me—not wilfully—but indiscreetly.”

“Has this been your dominant emotion all the time?” he said, harshly. “I am glad our ways lie separate.”

“I have my interests to protect,” she said.

He shrugged his shoulders, walked past her to the fireplace and leant his broad shoulders against the black marble mantelpiece. Her selfishness dumbfounded him. Her eyes bore no trace of tears, her attitude not a suggestion of grief. Ill and worn she looked; but from shock and strain and anxiety—not from sorrow. Had she no human feeling? And yet she was the same woman whose heart had throbbed with wild tumult against his; whose eyes had glowed with a burning passion in their slumberous depths; whose voice had melted into murmurings like the deep notes of the mating dove. Once he had compared her in his mind to a volcano. The aptness of the similitude occurred to him now. She had passed through her period of eruption. Now the molten fire of her nature was cold and unlovely lava.

She moved suddenly from the table with the dragging step of exhaustion, and flung herself into a chair and lay with her head bowed upon her arm.

“I know how you judge me,” she said, hoarsely. “You have always judged me, and that is one of the things that made me hate you. You think I ought to be in floods of tears. So I should have been, if it had not been for last night. But I must protect myself now or never. No one can do it for me. How was I to know that you would be discreet? I had ruin staring me in the face. I have strained every nerve to keep my wits till you came. You can’t tell the agony of the strain. How could you? And this awful horror overwhelming me. Oh, God—don’t you think I feel the horror of it?”

She did not raise her face, but remained with it buried on her arm in an attitude of profound prostration. Soon a shudder ran through her frame. She began to moan and sob. An impulse of pity brought him to her side.

“If I can be of any help to you, Minna, you only have to command me.”

But she did not heed him, only waved him away with her free hand.

“Go—leave me,” she said, scarce audibly.

“If you want me, send for me and I will come,” he said. He left her, went into the hall, where he found the Inspector. To the latter’s questions he gave what formal answers lay in his power. A news agency representative joined them soon afterwards. Gradually Hugh acquainted himself with all the meagre facts in the possession of the police. Mr. Hart had been killed outright by one blow of a blunt, heavy instrument. Death must have occurred during the small hours. The safe in the study was found open. The only article apparently missing from it was a black deed-box, which Mr. Hart’s confidential clerk, who had been summoned immediately, stated to have contained bonds. There were no other signs of robbery. A thorough inspection of the premises had discovered no traces of burglarious entry, the only possibility of which was by means of a window that had been left unsecured. Footprints there were none, owing to the slight fall of snow. For the present the police were entirely at a loss.

“Do you know if Mr. Hart had any enemies?” asked the Inspector.

“A man in his profession comes into intimate relations with many people whom he could not call his friends,” replied Hugh. “But I am not acquainted with any of his clients. As a private friend I always found him kind and generous.”

“Could you supply me with any details concerning his private life?” asked the pressman.

“I am scarcely in a position to do so,” replied Hugh, in a manner that precluded importunity.

He felt sick at heart, unhinged, and longed to be free from the sordid horror of the house. His own hidden yet intimate connection with the tragedy of the night oppressed him like an incubus. It was he who had started the poor old man upon a train of thought and emotion that had kept him from his bed, where the murderer, if safe-robbery had been his only aim, might not have sought him. It was he who was responsible for the unguarded window by which the murderer had entered. And, then, the fact that he had been beneath the same roof discussing with the daughter her inheritance, while the father was being done to death downstairs, loomed grotesquely hideous before his eyes. It was like a situation in some vulgar melodrama where simultaneous action is represented in two separate and adjacent interiors.

At last he escaped police officials and reporters and found himself in the Heath Road, glad to breathe the outer air again, grey and misty as it was, covering the heath like a pall. Outside the Merriams, he paused, seized with a sudden desire for the comfort of Irene’s voice and the sympathy of her clear eyes. Mere intimacy, too, required that he should inform her of the catastrophe. He entered with the latch-key which he possessed by virtue of his intimacy, and knocked at the door of the smoking-room, where Irene always worked in the mornings. As soon as he appeared on the threshold, she rose quickly from her writing-table.

“You have come to tell me—I know it. The whole of Sunnington knows it—a dreadful thing—that poor little girl!”

“I have just come from the house,” he said, gravely. “I had a short interview with her. It is a terrible shock, of course, but she is bearing it pretty well—better than I should have expected. You know I was dining there yesterday, so I was nearly the last person who saw him alive. For that reason they came to fetch me this morning.”

“Tell me what you know about it,” she said, drawing a chair towards him. He sat down and put her in possession of the facts, as far as they were known to the police. She listened intently, sitting by her writing-table, supporting her chin on her hand.

“And have they no clue at all?”

“None. The poor old fellow found murdered. A deed-box gone from the safe. A window left unsecured. Practically speaking, that is all they can go upon.”

“Do you know, Hugh,” said Irene, “I am convinced it was no common burglar. It was some desperate man who had borrowed money on some securities which he knew lay in that box, and he committed this crime to get them back. He was hiding in the house all the evening, possibly somewhere in the study—-and he opened that window to escape by the back lane.”

He smiled in spite of himself at her feminine certainty. “I wish they would put you in charge of the investigations, Renie,” he said.

“But don’t you think my theory is quite plausible?” she asked, accepting his remark with a humble knitting of her brows. He admitted that it was, observed that he had spoken not in satire but in admiration. The police were standing about there, not knowing where to turn next.

“Well, the first thing,” said Irene, “would be to list the securities in the deed-box—there must be a record of them somewhere—and then to investigate the actions last night of each of the clients to whom the securities belonged.”

“I never thought of that,” he exclaimed, sharply. “Yes, they’ll do that, undoubtedly.”

Irene went on to speak of Minna; of the girl’s friendless isolation; of the help that she herself might have offered, had Minna not so resolutely repelled her advances. She would be even willing now to risk a breach of good taste if she could befriend her. She asked his advice. Her great-heartedness drew him very near to her—so near that it required a moment’s struggle to stifle the craving to tell her all the miserable history of his marriage, and his own connection with the night’s tragedy. How could he advise her in the matter, knowing, as he did, Minna’s inveterate jealousy and dislike?

“I think she will have some of her own people with her,” he remarked, mendaciously. “She said something about it this morning.”

He rose to bid her good-bye. As she took his hand she scanned his face earnestly.

“You are looking so ill and worn,” she said, affectionately. “Much more so than when you came in. It has been all this discussion.”

“I’m afraid it is the want of my breakfast,” he said, forcing a laugh.

All Irene’s protective instincts were aroused.

“No breakfast—and you were going away without asking for anything to eat! Sit down at once and let me get something for you.”

She ran out of the room in her impulsive way, leaving him standing on the hearth-rug.

“Good God,” he said, throwing his hat and gloves onto the chair, “I never thought of it.” And he remained staring blankly at a picture in front of him until Irene returned.

CHAPTER X

From that moment Hugh walked on the edge of a volcano. To keep his thoughts from dizzy hoverings over the abyss, he chained them down, with desperate will, to the work he had on hand. In a week’s time would begin the February sittings of the Central Criminal Court. Good fortune had given him more than his usual share of briefs. One, a blackmailing case, made intricate by medical complications. His client, the defendant, a man in good position.

“If you can pull it off, Colman,” said old Harroway, the solicitor, who had known Hugh from boyhood, “you’ll go up like a released balloon.”

He toiled at it night and day and held aloof from his kind. The publicity of his connection with the murder sickened him. He took cabs to and from his chambers lest his ears should be irritated by railway-carriage discussions. Minna he saw once, at the inquest, dressed in black, closely veiled, attended by the old Syrian woman. For appearance sake he had conducted her to her brougham. Had asked her one question on the way thither: Was she staying at The Lindens? She replied in the affirmative. She had hitherto refused offers of friendly asylums. Anna’s sympathy and protection sufficed her. What might happen later she did not know. Perhaps she would accompany Anna to Smyrna. The inquest resulted in a verdict of wilful murder against some person unknown. The next day he attended the funeral, walked, a haughty and tortured Gentile, amid a host of serene and money-lending Jews. The papers naturally reported the fact.

He did not go to the Merriams. Gerard’s arrival in town was the occasion of a peremptory command to dinner from Irene. He declined, alleging press of work. Gerard, sent by Irene for tidings of the absentee, burst in upon him at ten o’clock that night and found him sitting with dishevelled hair on the edge of a tumultuous sea of brief papers. The genuineness of his excuse was obvious.

He forced, however, his visitor into a chair, handed the tobacco jar and poured out whiskeys and sodas. Gerard eyed the quantum of spirits in Hugh’s glass; also noticed the corkscrew in the cork of the three parts emptied whiskey bottle.

“I say, you’re going it pretty strong, aren’t you?” he remarked, with a significant nod. “What is the matter—work—worry?”

“Both,” said Hugh, putting down his tumbler and sweeping his moist moustache in his fierce way.

“The work to get over the worry, and the whiskey to get over the work.”

“What’s the worry—this Hart affair?”

“I suppose so. It has got on my nerves.”

“I can’t see why the devil it should,” said Gerard, with a little contemptuous laugh. He was of that kind of men who deny the existence of nerves.

“By the way,” he added, after awhile, “they were damned slack at that inquest—I was just saying so to Renie—with the safe open and ledgers and things lying about the table when the old man was found, had I been the coroner, I should have wanted to know the subject of your last conversation with the deceased.”

To his surprise, Hugh sprang to his feet in a great excitement.

“For heaven’s sake, old man, don’t talk about it in that cold-blooded way. I am in a devil of a mess. I don’t mind telling you now—but keep it dark from Renie—I owed Hart £5,000 on my expectations from the Brantfield property. He’s had the bond—of course. I believe it was in that stolen deed-box—I was the last person in the house—no one saw me leave. Has Renie told you her theory of the murder?” Gerard looked at him and whistled.

“That’s how you staved off the bankruptcy, was it? I often wondered.”

“Yes, that was how,” said Hugh, laconically.

Gerard reflected, pulling at his pipe.

“I don’t see anything to be nervous about. Unless you’re keeping something back from me—human nature asserting itself—are you?”

“I tell you I’m in a devil of a mess,” said Hugh. “I didn’t mean to say anything about it. But I’ve told you so much. If you could help me, I would let you. The best thing is to go home to Renie—not just yet—and forget everything about it.”

Gerard drew his eyelids together and peered at his friend, then rose and walked straight up to him.

“Do you mean to hint that you accidentally killed that old man?”

Hugh looked at him incredulously for a moment and then broke into a derisive laugh.

“You fool!” he said.

“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” laughed Gerard, returning to his whiskey and soda. Hugh seated himself again in his swivel-working library chair, and ran his fingers through his wavy hair impatiently.

“For heaven’s sake let us talk of something else,” he said. “What have you been doing with yourself in Edinburgh?”

Gerard prolonged his visit for a quarter of an hour, and then went home, leaving Hugh to his blackmailer’s interests.

“You are back early,” said Irene.

“Yes. He is in the midst of his briefs. He is a lucky beggar. I wish I had half as many as he.”

“Why, you inconsequent dear,” said Irene. “Only the other day you were saying you were tired of practice—wanted to give it up and travel. Surely ‘semper mutabile’ ought to refer to men——”

“Well, why shouldn’t a man get sick of work?” Irene could find no reply, but laid her hand in his. Whatever Gerard said was right.

“How is poor Hugh?” she asked.

Gerard laughed with masculine ungraciousness and withdrew his fingers from her clasp, so as to press down the tobacco in his pipe.

“You always talk of Hugh as if he were a lad instead of a middle-aged man. He’s all right. But he has some silly idea that he’s in danger of arrest over this Hart affair.”

“No!” cried Irene, quickly, looking at him with sudden scare in her eyes.

“It seems he was mixed up in money matters with Israel, and he was the last person with the old man.”

“That is wrong. Hugh left at 11.30, and the butler saw Mr. Hart at twelve.”

“I don’t know,” said Gerard. “It is all rubbish. There’s something behind it that he wouldn’t tell me. I know nothing of Hugh’s private life. If he’s in a mess, he’ll get out of it this time as he has done before.”

But Irene did not treat the matter so lightly. The face that met Gerard’s somewhat shifty blue eyes was anxious and troubled. Suddenly, however, came the illumination of her smile.

“Of course you are right, dear love. It is all rubbish.”

But far from rubbish proved Hugh’s forebodings when he came home from chambers the following afternoon. Parsons, the hall porter, desired to speak to him, accompanied him up the stairs to his flat. He was an honest fellow, grateful to Hugh for countless careless generosities, and at the same time regarding him with respectful awe on account of his somewhat imperious manner. The seriousness of the communication he was about to make agitated him. With many hesitations he stumbled through his story. The police had been making enquiries, had learned the hour of his return on Tuesday morning, had cross-questioned Mrs. Parsons as to the condition of his clothes, as to his general habits; had enquired whether he was carrying a box or parcel.

“I was obliged to tell them that you were, sir,” said the porter, greatly distressed. “Though I would sooner cut my tongue out than do you any harm, sir.”

“Thank you, Parsons,” said Hugh. “I am greatly obliged to you for telling me. I need not say that you can give the police any information concerning me with a clear conscience. You can’t possibly do me any harm.”

The porter went away relieved. Hugh, left alone, went to his spirit-case on the sideboard and poured himself out a stiff glass of whisky. “It may be the last,” he said to himself, grimly. He drank it off and lit a cigarette with fingers that trembled just a little.

“And now for Minna,” he said, striding out of the room.

The expected blow had fallen. Arrest was certain. Unless he could account for his night, release was impossible. The circumstantial evidence which he knew could be brought against him was enough to imperil his life. And no one could be more acutely aware than he, a criminal advocate, of the possibility of a chain of specious links, unsuspected by him now, that might bring him powerless to the gallows. Now, the gallows is a gruesome thing, which an innocent man, full of the lust of life, cannot contemplate with equanimity.

The marriage could be concealed no longer. It was a matter of life or death. Then all would be well. Provided only he reached The Lindens before a hand was laid on his shoulder. Through the gathering darkness of the dreary February evening he hurried on the accursedly familiar road. It had never seemed so long. As he neared the vague form of the constable advancing on his beat, his heart throbbed violently. Then he laughed scornfully at his fears. As if a policeman on duty would arrest him! Without a doubt he was being shadowed at this very moment, and when the time was ripe, a civil spoken officer in plain clothes would take him quietly and discreetly into custody. But he felt glad when the front door of The Lindens closed upon him and he found himself in the warm security of the hall.

Samuels, the butler, came down the stairs.

“Miss Hart is very sorry, but she cannot receive you to-day, sir.”

“Is she in bed?”

“No, sir.”

“Where is she?”

“In the drawing-room.”

“Thank you, Samuels; I must see her.”

And brushing past the rather bewildered butler, he mounted the stairs and entered the drawing-room unceremoniously. Minna rose angrily from her chair, keeping her thumb between the pages of the novel she was reading. Dressed in a loose dressing-gown, with her hair pinned up untidily, she was all the more incensed at his interruption.

“I told Samuels—” she began, with a petulant stamp of the foot.

“Yes, I know,” he interrupted. “I disregarded him. This is not a time for politeness. The police are after me. I may be arrested at any moment. They know that I did not reach home till the morning. I am caught in a trap. I must account for my actions between half-past eleven and seven.”

She turned as white as a sheet. The novel slipped from her fingers to the carpet.

“Impossible,” she said.

“What’s impossible?”

“That they should arrest you. They have no evidence. Oh! it is absurd.”

“Absurd or not, they will.”

Rapidly he sketched his position. She listened motionless, and with quivering lips.

“What do you wish me to do?” she asked in a voice scarcely audible.

“It’s obvious. You must release me from my promise. I must be able to account for my night—prove my statement.”

“Forfeit my money!” she cried, terror raising her voice. “Do you know what that would mean, to me? This wealth that my father got together is flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood. I can’t give it up. It would kill me!”

“It would be your life for mine,” he said, ironically.

“You have sworn,” she said.

“If I had given my simple promise it would have been sufficient.”

“Are you going to keep it?”

He drew himself up. “We will not discuss that,” he said.

“Would they let you go if you told them?”

“Most probably.”

“And if they did not?”

“There would be a very weak case against me.”

“But a wife’s evidence is invalid,” she cried, eagerly seeking the loophole.

“There is Anna.”

“But it would be against you to confess you were in the house at that time.”

“Anna could swear to my entrance at twelve by the window.”

“It might lead to my being arrested, too, as an accomplice.”

“I scarcely think so,” he replied, coldly. The interview was growing hateful. “We could have Anna as a witness to our conjugal relations. She could swear to entering our room at six to wake us—if the worst came to the worst, she might swear she found us asleep. Morality has its limits when it’s life or death.”

Minna sank into a chair and crouched there in a shaking terror.

“I can’t—I can’t—I can’t lose my money.”

“Very well,” he said, “you may keep it. I shall take my chance.”

“It would be the same,” she said, hoarsely, “if you said I was your mistress only. Goldberg is an executor under my father’s will. He hates me—you know why. The clause in the will would put him on the scent. He would go to Somerset House and discover it all....”

“If I am arrested and brought before the magistrate, can you expect Anna to be equally reticent?”

“Anna is an Oriental. Besides, she starts for Smyrna to-morrow morning.”

“In the face of what I have just told you, will you let her go?” he asked, sternly.

“Oh, God!” she cried, leaping to her feet with sudden wild passion. “Don’t torture me any more. You have caused enough misery in my life. Why should I sacrifice my heart’s blood for you—on the first fanciful alarm of danger! Have you ever made one sacrifice for me? Even when you said you loved me, did you give up one hour’s philandering with that other woman? You looked upon me at first as a toy to your hand—you told me so in this very room—to gratify your passions. You married me for my money. You condemned me to that life of scheming and falsehood. You were afraid to face my father like a man. You ruined my life—and now that I am about to build it up again—you come—I don’t believe it—it is another lie—for some purpose of your own.” Hugh looked steadily at her for some moments, and, without condescending to reply, turned on his heel and stalked towards the door. His hand was on the knob, when she rushed forward, caught him by the coat sleeve, and fell at his feet.

“Forgive me, Hugh. Forgive me—I did not know what I was saying—all this is driving me mad—forgive me—pity me—you once loved me Hugh—I can’t lose my money—keep our secret for God’s sake.”

She sobbed out her incoherent and imploring words in hoarse, frightened tones. A wave of supreme scorn swept through him. Even an hour ago this craven agony of fear and avarice would have been inconceivable. But he raised her gently to her feet, and drew her a short way from the door. She stood trembling and shrinking before him.

“I have already told you, Minna,” he said, in a low voice, “you can keep your money, if you value it more than my life.”

In another moment he was gone. Minna staggered to a couch and lay there, her hands clutching at the loosened coils of her dark hair, in death grapple with the devils that had taken possession of her.

But none the less she parted from old Anna Cassaba the following morning without breathing to her a word concerning Hugh’s danger.

“You will come very soon, dearie, and let me show you your dear mother’s beautiful country?” said the old woman, amid the final adieux.

“Very soon,” sobbed Minna, clinging round her neck. “And then we’ll begin a new life and forget all this horror. I want to forget it all—forget I was ever married—forget his existence—and everything!”

Later in the day she accepted the urgently offered hospitality of Aaron Bebro, one of her father’s oldest city friends, whose motherly wife, forgetful of past disdain and derision, gave her warm-hearted welcome. She took the girl to her capacious bosom and cried over her a little; and Minna was miserable and frightened enough to feel grateful.

During dinner that evening a servant entered and whispered into Mr. Bebro’s ear. He rose hurriedly and left the room. Presently he returned looking greatly agitated. To his wife’s enquiries he replied that it had been a business message. But Minna was seized with a horrible foreboding and sat through the remainder of the meal sick and dumb, while her kind hosts pressed upon her food and drink. She dared not ask, though she knew what the answer would be.

Dinner over, he signed to his wife and grown-up daughter to leave him alone with their guest.

“I have some very serious news for you, my dear young lady. A messenger from Scotland Yard came just now.”

“Have they—arrested anyone?”

“The last person in the world one would have guessed. Prepare yourself for a great shock.”

She writhed under these kindly futilities; the more so because she knew that some expression of horrified astonishment was naturally expected from her. A ghastly farce.

“It is Mr. Hugh Colman. It seems impossible, but the officer told me there is a great deal against him.”

She could express no surprise, but sat paralysed, dreading lest her apparent phlegm should give away her secret.

“There must be some mistake,” she said, at last, hoarsely. “He was our friend—dining with us that night. And he went to the funeral.”

“I remember seeing him there,” said Aaron Bebro.

“Will he be brought before the magistrates in the morning?”

“Of course.”

“Shall I have to go—to give evidence?”

“Not to-morrow, I am glad to say; but perhaps afterwards.”

Minna rose from her chair.

“This is a dreadful shock,” she said, in steadier tones, “and it has upset me. I think I shall go to my room. You will make my apologies to Mrs. Bebro—and thank you for your kindness.”

She looked him full in the face and held out her hand, which he pressed warmly.

“You are a brave girl,” he said. But once in her own room, her nerve gave way. She stood before the mirror and laughed hysterically.

“Yes,” she cried, “I am a brave girl.”

CHAPTER XI

He was remanded for a week: a week of feverish public excitement and of great suspense for those that loved him. His name was dragged through the mire of the roadways, then held up to execration. He had feasted at an old man’s table, and, before the generous glow of the host’s wine had had time to cool, had foully murdered him for money. Imagination boggled at the conception of a meaner miscreant. Thus the man in the street, who is seldom guided by the abstract principle of British justice. The press began to spread abroad a horrible fame. A poet, a brilliant advocate, a man in the public eye; they extolled his achievements. Those to whom his name had been hitherto unknown forgot their ignorance and feigned long acquaintance. His poems were read by self-conscious hundreds. Stories of forensic triumphs recapitulated by half-penny evening newspapers, with sensational exaggeration, brought his fame as an advocate whither no poetry ever penetrated. His friends stood by sickened and helpless.

“If he gets off, there’ll be a boom in Colmans,” said a cynical clubman to a friend. “He’ll be the darling of the boudoir and the champion of the thieves’ kitchen. He always was a lucky beggar.”

“Hush, there’s Merriam at your elbow,” whispered the other.

But Gerard had overheard. He gave the speaker an inscrutable look and passed on.

Habitually taciturn, Gerard spoke very little of his feelings in the matter. His acquaintances who knew of the close friendship refrained from allusion. At home he smoked in silence. Irene, measuring his anxiety by her ideal of the love between Hugh and himself, respected his reserve. But her own pain burned within her and shone from her eyes in a strange light. She waited anxiously with him for a promised visit from Harroway, the solicitor, after his first interview with the prisoner. Harroway was shown into the smoking-room, sat on a straight-backed chair away from the fireplace, and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. He was a short, stout, florid man, and had walked fast from the police station; trouble and perplexity had also disturbed legal coolness.

“It’s like trying to ride through a brick wall,” he said. “He won’t open his mouth. Same story to me as to the magistrate. Can’t bring a single witness to prove his whereabouts.”

“That’s absurd,” said Gerard. “A man can’t exist a whole night in London in Stygian solitude.”

“That’s what I told him. A cabman, a servant, a barman, a coffee-stall keeper—anyone would do. Somebody must have seen him. He says: ‘I left The Lindens at eleven-thirty and I got home at six-thirty. Assume that I have lost my memory completely for those seven hours and do what you can for me.’”

“But can he have lost his memory?” said Irene. “Such things have happened.”

Harroway shook his head significantly. “Not he. It’s pure suicidal obstinacy. You know the kind of man. I’m sure I don’t know what to do. There’s enough against him already—that confounded security of his was in the missing deed-box. God knows what more the police have up their sleeve. An alibi is the only thing. I told him. Replies that there is no question of proving an alibi. You know he might almost as well plead guilty at once. What is one to do, Merriam?”

“Cherchez, la femme,” replied Gerard.

“Well, can either of you give me any idea? You, Mrs. Merriam——?”

“There is someone he is fond of in a way,” said Irene. “But who can it be? It is someone I don’t know. But surely, if it is a woman, she will come forward.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” said Gerard.

“I asked him point-blank,” continued Harroway, “Is the woman——? But before I could get any further, he turns upon me with one of his Paladin airs, and tells me he never suggested that a woman was involved.”

“That settles it,” said Gerard. “Either that or guilt.”

“Heaven knows,” sighed Harroway. “And that’s the man I had set my heart upon making the biggest criminal advocate of the day.”

“Oh, you must go and use all your influence over him, Gerard,” said Irene, anxiously.

“Do you think I have ever stopped him from doing a pig-headed action, all the years I have known him?”

“But he loves you above everybody. He must listen to you.”

“Why not yourself?” asked Gerard, in a curious tone that caused the solicitor to glance sharply at him. “We will both go, Gerard—together.”

“Not a bit of good,” said Harroway, rising to depart. “He sent many kind messages—says he’ll write at length. But won’t see you. Won’t see a soul but me. He’s as proud, in that cell, as Lucifer. But what the dickens he’s got to be proud about in getting himself into this ghastly mess is more than I can imagine.”

The solicitor gone, Irene turned to Gerard.

“Harroway thinks it will go ill with Hugh.”

“So do I—if he keeps up this attitude.”

“There is something beneath,” said Irene, moving to the stool by the fire, near his feet, and putting her hand on his knee. “We had a talk on the day before. I wrote to you at Edinburgh about it. He was on the point of committing some folly—hoped we would not think him a scoundrel. What does it mean?”

Gerard stretched out his arms and clasped his hands behind his head.

“I’m sure I don’t know. The man was always like that. One never could tell his next escapade. What’s the matter? You’re shivering.”

“Oh, I am frightened, Gerard, dear. I have a foreboding that ill will come of it—for all of us.”

“What the dickens has it got to do with you and me?” said Gerard.

She sat silent for awhile, looking into the flaming abysses and fantastic crags of the fire. Then suddenly she turned, excited, clasped his knees and looked passionately into his face.

“We must move heaven and earth, Gerard. He is your second self. If he should—if anything should happen to him—he would be with us always, reproaching us with his dead eyes for not saving him. I owe him your life, my beloved—and mine—for without you I should die—Gerard, dear.”

She was a little excited, spoke a trifle shrilly. Gerard unclasped his hands and bent forward. Interpreting the gesture according to her heart, she knelt and swiftly closed his arms around her, and nestled close to him.

“You may be sure I shall do all I can,” he said.

She closed her eyes. The man’s calm strength of voice, the hidden strength of his frame reassured her fears.

“Forgive me for doubting while you are here to save him,” she murmured, in her blind faith.

A few moments later some domestic duty summoned her away. Gerard rose, and stretched himself and yawned.

“Oh, damn!” he said, irritably.

Then, lighting his pipe, he strode out the house, and tramped along the Heath Road, with the air of a man who is justifying to himself a series of expletives.

The week expired. Hugh was again brought before the magistrates and committed for trial.

The key turned in the cell-door in Holloway Gaol, and he was left alone for the night. In a state of semi-sanity he abandoned himself to the ghastly panorama of the day, as it passed and repassed in incoherent fragments before his eyes. He was prostrate with fatigue and strain, utterly brain-weary, incapable of lucid arrangement of ideas, almost of calculating the weight of the evidence against him.

Fresh facts had been brought to light. The butler had heard him speak in angry tones when he had entered the room with the spirit-tray. The entry in Israel’s private ledger assigning the stolen deed-box as the depository of the £5,000 security had been confirmed by the confidential clerk. Moreover, the empty box had been discovered, broken open, in the trunk of a hollow tree in the wood behind The Lindens. The prisoner had returned with a mysterious parcel of which he could give no account. On searching his rooms after arrest, the police had found the grate full of scrupulously reduced paper-ash. The inference was that this ash represented the stolen bond. It was another instance of the irony that marked this extraordinary freak of circumstances. Even his careful destruction of Minna’s letters and all memorials of her was turned into evidence against him. Medical testimony placed one o’clock and five as the extreme limits between which the murder could possibly have been committed. Probabilities pointed to three o’clock.

In his sleepless and disordered, fancy, the witnesses jostled each other in the box, giving inconsequent scraps of evidence. But clearest before his mind rose the picture of Minna, his wife, the sole person in the universe that could be absolutely certain of his innocence. There she stood, appalling in the wreckage of her beauty, a thin, black, pinched figure, hollow-eyed, drawn-lipped, telling the half truth that was more damnable than a lie. She had parted from Mr. Colman at eleven, had gone up to her room. Had heard no sound in the house till she was awakened in the morning to learn the horrible news. The relations between Mr. Colman and her father had always been most cordial. He had dined with them that evening, her father in the best of spirits. Mr. Hart had never mentioned that Mr. Colman was a client. Clients were not visiting acquaintances. That was all. She had not met his eyes, scarcely those of the Crown prosecutor or the magistrate when they questioned her. Had replied doggedly, in the deep, hard voice he had grown so familiar with of late. But one year ago it had stirred all the fibres in his body. To-day not a vestige of its richness remained.

She floated fantastic in his memories. Once during the night he fell into a brief half-sleep. She gave him again the brown-paper parcel—but loose this time, so that the paper slipped away, and revealed a halter. He woke sweating with the nightmare. Anything approaching sleep was thenceforth impossible. The dim, perpetual, inextinguishable light in his cell grew to a maddening irritation. He yearned for the soothing comfort of darkness. He wrapped his head in his bedclothes to shut out the light—but with the ill success familiar to all who have tried it. So, until the dawn, he remained staringly awake, and the phantasmagoria of his trial swept endlessly on.

Faces of friends, anxious, incredulous, seen in the crowded little court, rose up before him. Gerard’s and Irene’s most continuously. She wore a tight-fitting dark-blue jacket and a little toque to match, set amid the fair waves of her hair. He remembered vividly every detail—the white stitching of her black gloves. He strove to keep her image before him—the sweetness of her smile, the trust in her grey eyes. But Minna, hard and sullen, came and blotted out the more gracious fantasy. Again he recalled Irene—the last scene, before he was led away to the prison van, when friends crowded round the dock; Gerard among the first.

“It’s bound to come right, Hugh. We’ll do our best.”

Irene had struggled forward and the others had fallen back. And she had put up both hands, which he, leaning over, had taken in his; and he had seen the great pain burning beneath her eyes.

“Oh, Hugh, if our love for you can do anything—use it—God bless you!”

A hurried speech, uttered in the swiftness of the hand-clasp. He tried to keep it with him as a charm against the bugbears of the night. But until the warder came at half-past six to wake him, they swam before him in a whirling, reiterative circle, recurring almost rhythmically like the separate monstrosities of horses in an infernal merry-go-round.

Day came, and with it clearness of mind and logical sense of proportion. When Harroway, the solicitor, arrived, he discussed the situation with practised acuteness. His defence was clear. The stealing of the security was too ludicrous an expedient for a man of his intelligence. Besides, its legal value was that of a blank sheet of foolscap. Of this Hart’s confidential clerk had full knowledge. Would a jury believe a man to be so idiotic as to commit a murder in order to steal that which he knew to be worthless? Was it likely that a man who had committed a murder at three o’clock would deliberately postpone his return home—a quarter of an hour’s walk—until an hour when his arrival would be certain to attract attention? But Harroway shook his head dolefully.

“Of course we’ll put all that forward. But the self-incriminating stupidity of criminals is a by-word. If the attorney or solicitor-general is prosecuting and takes his privilege of answering Gardiner, he will convince the jury of this little fact. It would be much more to the point if you would tell us how to prove an alibi. That’s the infernal part of it. No one is such a damned fool as to believe that you were lying drunk and invisible in a gutter all night. You can prove an alibi if you like, can’t you?”

“Certainly,” replied Hugh, with a baffling twirl of his moustache. “But I am going to do no such thing. Please consider that final. If you and Gardiner can’t get me off without it—well, I’ll hang. Jouir, mourir et ne rien dire! And that’s the end of it.”

He put his hands in his pockets and shrugged his shoulders magnificently. The stout solicitor rose with irritation.

“You are a confounded anachronism. You were meant for the Marquis de—de—God-knows-what in the French Revolution. You would think it a fine thing to stay the hangman until you had used your toothpick. You don’t understand that a life like yours is of value nowadays. You are risking it—braving the gallows for some infernal woman. It stands to reason. I am sick of women!”

“So am I, Harroway,” replied Hugh, coolly. “You seem to have got them on the brain. Let us change the conversation.”

Soon afterwards Harroway departed, and the day wore on. The next passed and the next, and other days followed in dreary succession. They added ten years to his life. In spite of defiant resolve to consider no phase of the prison discipline and degradation, the taint of the cell ate into his flesh and weakened his soul with strange cowardices. Sometimes the weight of evidence crushed him overwhelmingly and he shook in an agony of terror at the consequences. The strain of silence and secrecy suffocated him. Like a diver who has just exceeded his habitual period of immersion, he felt that in another moment his temples would burst and his heart fail. Then he would ask himself passionately the reason of his silence, rebel against the self-imposed imprisonment of speech. Was she worth the folly of this sacrifice—she whose inconceivable avarice seemed to have annihilated elementary human emotion? If the loss of her money should kill her—were it not better that she should die? To brave the trial, secure acquittal, live through the eternal after-stain of suspicion—for that he was prepared. But to face the gallows—accept her gift of the halter—his courage failed him. The cold sweat of the nightmare broke out from head to foot. He clung desperately to life.

Once a shaft of sunlight streamed into his cell and abutted on the opposite whitewashed wall. He sat on his wooden chair and leaned against the bed and watched the dust dancing in the gold. Touching some hidden chord of forgotten association—a child’s poetic fancy long ago, perhaps, translating the glory of glistening motes in the quivering mystery of the beam—it awakened an unutterable torture of yearning for the free air of the world. He threw himself on the bed and buried his face in the pillow to prevent a cry from passing his lips.

But such crises of weakness were rare, and they were always followed by long intervals of dogged and half-cynical calm. He had sunk far beneath his ideals of honour in his marriage with Minna Hart. Her taunts had been just. He, Hugh Colman, who had ever before sinned en prince, and had never shrunk from the eyes of man or woman, had played the part of a skulking villain. He had married her for her flesh, for her money, thereby wronging her. He had made her the toy of a week’s passion, and then neglected and wounded her. Now was the hour, if any there could be in the world, when he might make expiation both to her and to himself. He would take his chance, meet his destiny, this time at any rate, like a man. He would not redeem twenty lives at the price of her money. In his contradictory way the man was as proud as Lucifer.

The knowledge of the anxiety of his sisters, the dear peaceful women who worshipped him as the paragon of all the excellencies, was a perpetual pain. He wrote to them reassuringly, minimised the danger, expatiated upon the point of honour, and, knowing their sensitive spot, brought forward, with some twinges of self-contempt, the family pride. Death before dishonour—but death a remote contingency; thus could his message be summarised. Old Geoffrey Colman, who had been illustrating the proverb that threatened men live long, also wrote on the subject of the family honour. To save it, he was willing to buy up the security—the history of the reversion was the property of a million wagging tongues. But this Hugh peremptorily declined. The debt now lay between himself and Minna. There was the pound of flesh, but not a drop of blood. Sacred should be the letter of the law.

The days passed, he scarce knew how, eventless, dull, yet filled with cravings for the vivid life of action that had been first his inheritance and then his prize. Their inactivity weighed upon him. He envied his fellow-prisoners, upon whom sentence had been passed and who had their daily tasks to execute. Chapel, exercise, meals, reading, sleep—his sole avocations. Now and then came Harroway and with him Charles Gardiner, Q.C., his friend and counsel.

Other visitors he refused to receive. Sensitive and pliant as was his nature, yet it was traversed by a seam of flint that rendered it self-sufficing. He was one of those men, capable of chivalrous impulse and lasting loyalty, who nevertheless are unable to reveal themselves entirely to dearest friend or belovedest woman; who reserve, as a jealous right, a portion of themselves for their own exclusive possession. Not only were his lips of necessity closed on this matter, but also, in the battle against circumstances which he had undertaken to fight single-handed, too vivid expression of sympathy was distasteful. His sisters would have clung about his neck and unmanned him. Irene, who would have understood his reticence, he could not receive without Gerard. And his pride shrank from the idea of meeting even Irene. The moment’s speech and hand-clasp after the trial had been sufficient to convince him of her trust in his innocence. But the thrilling pity and admiration in her eyes, he could not bear. Already she had written: “You are shielding a woman’s honour at the risk of your life; but what woman’s trumpery honour is worth such chivalry?” And he had written back in grim truthfulness: “It is no woman’s honour that I am protecting, and my attitude is far from heroic.” But he knew her well enough to realise that she would not believe his disclaimer. To destroy her feminine conception of his character was impossible; but he could not bear to masquerade in her presence in the guise of a hero.

And Gerard? During the hours of solitude, when the confused impressions of past years had bitter opportunities of crystallisation, he had suffered the shock of the discovery that their present friendship was but the simulacrum of the old. A quaint fancy figured it forth in his mind. Once clad in shells of armour, as most men are clad, they had stood together, gauntleted hand in hand, for mutual defence and common purpose. Long since they had crept out, donned other mail, but still stood the hollow figures in futile clasp, somewhat of a mockery. And a woman came and led them, now and then, each into their old habitations, whereupon they moved the hands up and down, in spasmodic greeting.

Conceits aside, something had come between them. It was not Irene, he thought, for she had kept them together, making her boast of their perfect friendship. Was the phenomenon negative, merely the cessation of mutual attraction? He could not tell. It was sufficient dismay to find that, at this time of peril, there were many other men with whose companionship he could have borne sooner than with Gerard’s. But rather than allow Irene to suspect this, he would have undergone any tortures of isolation. So he awaited his trial in proud loneliness.

And from Minna, not a sign of solicitude.