For once the detective acted as peacemaker. “I don’t think,” he said slowly, “that scenes like this, rebound to the credit of the police force, particularly in the presence of so distinguished a journalist as Mr. Paul Renishaw, who has every opportunity of showing us up in an exceedingly unpleasant light in the columns of The Moon. In the circumstances, don’t you think it would be better to waive any difference as to any question of official rule, and to treat the matter as one between gentlemen, and not as between potent police officials and potential criminals. Thus, why should we not tell Mr. Renishaw and Mr. Hudson quite frankly what our instructions are—and leave to the one his honour not to make use of his newspaper for the publication of any facts of this arrest, that might prejudice the police investigations, and to the other his good sense to understand that in arresting him, we have simply obeyed our instructions, and the whole gravity of the situation falls upon the North-East Riding Police.”
By this time both inspectors’ anger had considerably cooled; and, with something approaching a sigh of relief, the station inspector now turned and picked up some telegrams that lay on the desk at the far end of the counter.
“I think that is a very good suggestion,” he said with a certain air of pomposity, “and so, if Inspector Lawton is willing, I will tell Mr. Hudson, or rather the prisoner, as we must now call him, that half-an-hour ago we received a long message from Scarborough, in common with all the other Metropolitan police-stations which said that information had come to hand that the murderer of that poor woman on the Filey Road, answered the description of himself, and that evidence had been forthcoming that he had married her five years ago at Peterborough, and would we please use every diligence in arresting him.
“It is now therefore, my duty,” he went on in a tone of increasing earnestness, “to formally charge you with the wilful murder of your wife, Aimée Lucille Fausta Hudson, and to warn you that any reply you may make to this charge will be taken down in writing against you, and may be used against you at the trial, notwithstanding any pretext that may have been holden out to you to now make any confession or admission of your guilt.”
Paul drew in a deep breath of anxiety, fearful lest his friend should make some remark that might mean mischief to him in the future—but, luckily, Arthur was not the kind of man to lose his self-possession in a critical juncture like that, and he answered quite boldly:—“My reply to this is, the Scarborough police have made some preposterous mistake. I am not guilty. The woman you mentioned was not my wife. I have never been married. I have never been to Scarborough in my life.”
These answers were duly recorded by all the three police officers present; and then came the bitterest blow of all—Arthur was told that he would have to surrender his liberty; that no bail was allowed in the case of a murder charge; and that the best thing that he could do was to go quietly to a cell in the police-station with all the fortitude he could command, and await the morning, when he would no doubt be brought before a magistrate and formally remanded until the police at Scarborough would be in a position to send some officer to take him to that far distant part of Yorkshire.
Very sad, and in a sense, tragic, was the parting between these two old friends. Once or twice indeed, Paul Renishaw was on the point of breaking down altogether, but the sight of Arthur’s brave and honest look steadied him like nothing else; and finally, he prevailed upon the officials to let him see Arthur safely ensconced in his cell, and then, with a heart over-full with anxiety, he set off to Emperor’s Gate to see Russell Langford, in the hope he might discover from the lawyer, who had been present at the inquest, and had no doubt had long consultations with the Scarborough police, why this extraordinary action had been resolved upon.
When, however, he actually arrived at the door of the lawyer’s flat, he was surprised to see that apparently every light was extinguished, and realising that something untoward must have happened he went reluctantly home.
Unfortunately life does not stand still for any one of us; and since she had left Arthur’s office, poor Winifred Pontifex had been carried through a maze of bewildering incidents, some of them, no doubt, trivial in themselves, but others of prime importance to the proper understanding of this narrative.
It is, of course, easy enough to resolve on a course of heroic action, when hope beats high within us and self sacrifice stands out before us irradiated by the glories of all its early brilliancy and beauty. It is, unfortunately, quite another thing to pursue it when the cold night has passed, when the early glow has worn off, and when, in the end, we see nothing stretch out before us but a long clear path of duty and renunciation.
For the first few hours, Winifred found life at St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage exceedingly pleasant. The Reverend Duncan Kilroy’s wife was all that Vera’s maid had led her to expect—a gentle, quiet, dove-like little woman, who never seemed to have got over the wonderful and beautiful thing that had happened to her when she married the loud-voiced and pompous Duncan. At first sight, it was obvious that she had no more an opinion of her own on household matters than she had on the Church and religion—the greasy, ever-perspiring Duncan ruled those with as much assiduity as he toadied to the richer members of his congregation. Happily, she took at once to poor tear-stained Winifred, and, for the first night, at least, the poor distracted girl’s lot was as tolerable as, perhaps, it well could be in such melancholy circumstances.
Next morning at breakfast a change came over the household—or rather over the seemingly exceedingly shallow and preposterous mind of the Reverend Duncan Kilroy. The day happened to be a Sunday; and at first Winifred was inclined to attribute this change of his to the weight of an exceedingly heavy undischarged amount of eloquence, that, as the day wore on, would naturally right itself.
As the meal progressed, however, Mr. Kilroy seemed to forget her presence, and extracted from an inner pocket a letter and a folded newspaper, the former of which he began to read carefully. Some day some subtle psychologist will explain why, when a communication like this affects ourselves, our eyes are drawn irresistibly towards it. For the moment it may be enough to record that in some curious way, Winifred felt that this letter had an important bearing on her own comfort: and when the Reverend Duncan turned over the note-paper with a heavy frown, she was startled to see a signature which she had very good reason to fear—that of Ventris Blake.
“Humph!” said Mr. Kilroy to his wife finally laying down the letter and removing his eye-glasses with a good deal of deliberation. “This is very curious, my dear Matilda Jane, very curious. I really don’t know what to say to it. I suppose I must do what the man asks, but really, with such an aristocratic congregation as mine, it is quite unusual to resort to sensational methods, better suited to the Church Army and our dear lamented brother Mr. Haweis.”
The little brow-beaten woman looked anxiously in the direction of her lord and master. “To what do you refer, Duncan darling?” she cooed, sympathetically. “I saw you had a letter from our good friend Mr. Ventris Blake, but, of course, I have no idea what he had to say to you.”
Mr. Kilroy coughed furtively. Then, with a quick glance from under his hairless eyebrows at Winifred, he cleared his voice ostentatiously and began: “Perhaps my dear Matilda Jane, the fairest thing for me to do, is to read you this rather puzzling communication. It runs as follows:—
“My Very Dear Friend,—
“In an hour of darkness and affliction like mine, it may seem rather worldly and thoughtless of me to write to you on such a purely earthly matter as the maintenance of my own good name. Yet, when I come to recollect those long and intimate talks we had in happy days doomed alas! it seems never to return again, I feel I shall not be misunderstood by you at least—nay, even more, I might have helped by your prayers, your advocacy, and your advice.”
For a second an indescribable sense of nausea seized poor Winifred, as she heard this horrible hypocrisy from a man she knew to be a most unutterable scoundrel. A wild longing started up within her to cry aloud and denounce him; but a quick glance at the fat pendulous jaw of the Reverend Duncan, whose voice now seemed broken with emotion, and at the silent flood of tears that were flowing from the poor, sympathetic little Mrs. Kilroy warned her how useless would be her protest, and with a great effort she restrained herself, and heard the clergyman proceed:—
“As no doubt you have seen from the daily papers, my poor, dear wife, has been cruelly killed at Scarborough. Indeed, I remember now, what a beautiful letter you wrote to me about this most awful occurrence. What, however, you cannot have seen, is the Saturday-night edition of the Sunday paper which I enclose with this, and from which you will gather, that as the days wear on, the mysteries connected with this terrible crime will only deepen. Please read the report with great care, and if you can, in your sermon, say something strong and kind and helpful about the great bereavement that has made my home and my heart desolate, no friend in London will be more thankful to you to-day than
“Your devoted,
“Ventris Blake.”
“Poor man! poor man!” muttered Mrs. Kilroy, directly the reading of this extraordinary effusion came to an end, and the Reverend Duncan laid down the note beside his plate, and once again exchanged a look with Winifred, whose face now looked cold and stern. “Do tell me what the cheap Sunday paper says about the crime. I remember poor, darling Mrs. Blake very well, and I always thought she was a very nice and sweet woman.”
Mr. Kilroy blew his nose vigorously with the large red pocket handkerchief which he always scrupulously affected, and, picking up one of the least known of the Sunday papers—which, truth to relate, was practically the sole property of Mr. Ventris Blake, and always directly inspired by him, with all his little nasty personalities, innuendoes and suggestions, against which even the best people were powerless, because the concern was so heavily encumbered with mortgage debentures—he read aloud as follows:—
“THE TERRIBLE AFFAIR AT SCARBOROUGH.
“MYSTERY UPON MYSTERY.“At a late hour last night, news of the most surprising nature reached this office, about the murder of Aimée Blake, which it is not too much to say, has stirred fashionable London to the most profound depths since the intelligence was first flashed across England by our youthful but ever enterprising contemporary, The Moon.
“Naturally, at this point, we have to speak with a great deal of reserve, for up to the present the police have made no move in the direction indicated, and by our informant, it is thought doubtful whether Scotland Yard is acquainted with the extraordinary development we show, as under:—
“We are assured, on very good authority, that the murdered woman was not really the wife of Ventris Blake, the beneficent millionaire of Park Lane. But, some five years ago, when she was a poor and struggling artist in Northamptonshire—when her pictures would not sell in the provincial town in which she had taken up her quarters, and where, like most provincial towns, the art of Portraiture was very largely at a discount—she was married secretly to a certain wealthy house-agent in the city of London, who promptly deserted her and later gave out that he was dead, whereas, he was very much alive and betrothed to a very charming girl, whose beauty was the talk of last year’s Drawing-Room.
“Next week we hope to have more to say about this Romance in High Life. Meanwhile, we venture to offer our sympathies to Mr. Ventris Blake, who seems to us to have been very cruelly used all the way round.”
The Reverend Duncan Kilroy, folded the paper up very carefully and restored it to his pocket. Then he took up his cup of coffee and drained it slowly. “Of course,” said he reflectively. “I see what Mr. Blake wishes me to do—it is to make some allusion to this event in the course of my sermon, and to beg his friends amongst the congregation to withhold any judgment they might be inclined to form until at least these new particulars leak out. The thing he proposes is irregular, very irregular, but when I recollect the thousands of pounds the poor dear fellow has spent in the parish, I can well understand his anxiety to be put right with my people.”
“Certainly,” said Mrs. Kilroy stoutly. “Really Duncan, you ought to waive a point in this matter, and oblige him, for you know he once obliged you.” And even the Reverend Duncan had the grace to blush at this reminder of how he bled Ventris Blake of two thousand pounds to get himself out of the clutch of a certain unscrupulous money-lender.
“Well, well,” he said quickly, “I must trust to the words that are given me at the time to say the right thing and to make a right impression. I suppose, Miss Pontifex,” he went on, turning to where sat Winifred, too disgusted to raise even a word of protest against the foul calumnies on her sweetheart, “you will honour us with your presence in the Vicarage pew this morning. I am sure my friend Mr. Langford would wish that a niece of his should take advantage of all spiritual occasions that present themselves to her—and even my poor little address may do something to assist you in realising the importance of the new career you have undertaken in this household, and give you strength to bear all the afflictions that are the common lot of we poor mortals.” And with something between a groan and a grunt he applied himself to the huge plateful of porridge in front of him, and left poor Winifred alone with her troubles.
Luckily Monica soon distracted her attention, with her little childish wants—and almost before the girl had time to realise the hideous trial she was destined to bear, she found herself in the front pew in the fashionable church of St. Sepulchre, listening to a sweet-voiced young curate, who read the beautiful morning service of the English Church, with all the fiery passion of a boy who has been recently ordained, and who feels very keenly the sacred responsibility of his calling. As the minutes slipped on too, the organ notes that rose and fell in the Gregorian setting of the psalms, brought balm to her troubled spirits, and for a time, the weight of anxiety seemed to press no longer upon her, and she found herself joining with strange prayerful earnestness, in that eternal cry of the stricken Psalmist:—
Lord I cry unto thee; make haste unto me; give ear
Unto my voice, when I cry unto thee.Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense;
And the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.Mine eyes are unto Thee, oh God the Lord: in Thee is my
Trust; leave not my soul destitute.
Hence, by the time the sermon was reached, her mood was one of peace, yet exaltation, and almost without a tremor she saw the Reverend Duncan Kilroy climb into the pulpit and begin his discourse.
As usually happened at St. Sepulchre’s, there was a rustle of skirts and the shuffle of feet, as the fashionable crowd settled themselves down for a meditation that would be totally undisturbed by any of the Reverend Duncan’s laboured commonplaces. This time, however, he had got a genuine surprise for them, for, without waiting to give out his text, he leaned impressively over the front of the pulpit, and spoke apparently with great feeling:—
“My dear friends,—I cannot begin this discourse without I express to you the profound detestation and horror felt by the terrible calamity that has fallen upon our good parishioner, Mr. Ventris Blake. Happily, by the latest reports, I see that the shame and the horror of the tragedy of his wife may to some degree be removed from him. Pray heaven it is indeed so, and that the story I read to-day that Mrs. Blake was not really his wife at all—”
He stopped suddenly. Somebody had risen in front of him.
“That is a wicked lie,” suddenly cried a woman’s voice at the back of the church; and before the congregation could recover from the profound astonishment into which they had fallen by Mr. Kilroy’s own innovation, they were horrified to see the young woman, clad from head to foot in black, run swiftly down the aisle and up the stairs of the pulpit, when she caught the clergyman tightly by the surplice.
“That’s a lie,” she repeated fiercely, “and you, Duncan Kilroy, know it. How dare you stand there. Come down at once!”
Of course the sensation created by this strange woman’s sudden appearance on the pulpit-stairs at a fashionable church like St. Sepulchre’s, at the height of a Sunday morning’s service, was tremendous. Half the congregation rose, horrified, to their feet—there was a sound of shrieks and of cries, during which several ladies, including Mrs. Kilroy, fainted—then a hub-bub of eager, excited conversation, followed by a rush of church-wardens and sidesmen to the East-end, to secure the offender.
The strange woman, however, did not lose her self-possession, but, with a look of some wild creature, she turned away from the cowering wretch in the pulpit above her, and faced the noisy little crowd of fat and prosperous-looking church officials, that puffed and panted about her.
“Do not touch me,” she cried, with an imperious wave of her arm. “I have done no more than my duty, and I am not ashamed of one word I have said to you. That is the man,” pointing to the cowering clergyman, whose face now was horribly grey with fear; “that is the scoundrel you ought to drag to judgment. He knows he lies to you, when he says that poor Aimée Blake was not the wife of Ventris Blake at all. He knows when he gets your sympathy for that man in Park Lane, he is taking part in a crime to ruin a fellow creature that never did him a moment’s harm. Look at him!” her voice now rising to a shriek, “he dare not deny my words, he cannot; call on him, not me, to explain.” And with a magnificent gesture as of an outraged queen, she swept all the startled crowd away from her path, and, before anybody could stretch out a finger, she had stepped swiftly out of the church.
No doubt, she would have been followed, and questioned, if not given into custody, had not the condition of poor Duncan Kilroy at this point claimed the entire congregation’s attention. By this time, he had recovered some semblance of his composure; and advancing to the front of the pulpit, he had raised his arm and attempted to offer some words of explanation, but although his mouth moved, and his muscles twitched, his flock were terrified to see he could not utter a single word.
Of course Winifred had started to her feet with the rest of the congregation, immediately the woman sprang so fiercely at her employer, but when she found herself swept down the main aisle by the pressure of the crowd, who ran in various directions to fetch water and chairs for different terrified old ladies and their own minister, an irresistible desire seized her to follow this strange creature herself and to learn what mystery it was that had driven her to so outrageous a course as to denounce the Reverend Duncan Kilroy in his own church.
“After all,” she reasoned quickly, “it is my duty to follow up this clue for the sake of the man I love. To me it is quite obvious that this woman has not risked so much as this without some remarkable motive. Certainly she must know a great deal more about Ventris Blake and Mr. Kilroy than she has just told the congregation. At all events, she spoke out very nobly and bravely for Arthur, and maybe, when she sees who I am, she may show me how I could help Arthur too.”
While these thoughts were flashing like lightning through Winifred’s brain, her feet were carrying her almost unconsciously in the direction of the open street, so that, by the time she had reached this last conclusion, she was rejoiced to discover herself in Piccadilly, where, away in the direction of the Circus she could see the strange woman she wanted to speak to, hurrying out of sight.
Just at that moment too a hansom happened to pass, and signalling the driver, Winifred, careless of what Mrs. Kilroy or the world might say of her, jumped into this cab and told the driver to track down this stranger—and she would give him half a sovereign.
Encouraged by the bribe, the man lashed his horse, and, in two or three minutes, had succeeded in coming upon the strange woman in Shaftesbury Avenue, where she was evidently intent on finding some street she had been told about, but had never previously been to—in Soho.
Luckily the driver proved to be a discreet whip, and, as soon as he drew level with the person he had been sent in search of, he allowed his horse’s gallop to drop into a walk; and thus, until the Palace Theatre was reached, the two women—the one so eager to escape attention, the other so anxious to learn her secret—proceeded on the same path. No sooner, however, did they get level with Compton Street, than the strange woman made a quick turn to the left, and, advancing rapidly towards the end of the street, she drew up in front of a cheap-looking Italian café, decked out in white paint and gold that had long since grown dirty and faded, on which, in bold staring letters was inscribed the name of the Café Faustina.
For a moment, but only for a moment, she hesitated at the entrance, then without looking round, she pushed her way through the swing doors, and disappeared entirely from sight.
Now, intensely eager to bring the affair to a conclusion, Winifred sprang out of the hansom and handed the driver the half sovereign she had promised him. At any other time, in any other circumstances, her natural reserve would have prevented her taking any strong line like this, and she would have stood for some time on the pavement, faltering helplessly. As it was, however, she realised what tremendous issues hung upon her dexterity and promptness, and, nerved by the thought that she was doing this for the man whom she loved more dearly than her own life, she too pushed open the swing doors and entered the café.
As chance would have it, the woman she had followed so eagerly was seated at a small marble-topped table, her face buried in her hands, apparently sobbing violently. Far away, at the end of the restaurant, could be seen two or three foreign-looking waiters, busily preparing in a recess,—and only Winifred could see that this strange creature was in tears.
With a tense movement of the hands and shoulders, Winifred advanced to the place where this woman was seated, and sat down in front of her. For several minutes, the stranger did not seem conscious of her presence, but, bit by bit, her sobs grew less violent, and finally, when a waiter advanced with a tray full of tea things, which she had evidently ordered the instant she entered the café, she recovered her composure with an effort and sat up and faced Winifred.
Curiously enough, she betrayed no excitement on seeing the girl in front of her, looking at her with great, anxious pleading eyes. On the contrary, her expression seemed softened, and she stretched out a caressing hand and touched Winifred gently on the arm.
“Ah! Miss Pontifex,” she said, in a low penetrating voice, that revealed at once the owner was a trained actress, “so it was you who followed me all the way from St. Sepulchre’s this morning, was it? I knew somebody had come after me, but, truth to tell, I was too upset to worry about you, or even to look who you were.
“Ah!” she went on, after another pause, “we women are strange creatures, aren’t we? First we resolve that nothing on earth shall prevail on us to pursue a certain line of action. Then the mere fact that we have resolved not to do it makes the idea burn and burn within us, until we feel we must do this thing, or perish. Lastly, in one mad moment, we do it—do it with all the power and passion we are capable of; and what happens? Why we sit down and cry, like tired children, when their toys, like men’s love, have proved mere folly and they wonder how they ever came to see any beauty in those painted figures.”
“Perhaps,” put in Winifred gently, “it is not all so black as you think. Somehow, it always seems to me that when a person does a thing that is right, the thing itself brings its own consolation, however tired or upset you may be as the result of your effort to do good.”
The strange woman raised her face to Winifred’s and smiled faintly. It was not what the world might call a pretty face—perhaps, there was too much fire in those dark brown eyes, too much passion about the finely chiselled mouth and chin—too much breadth and depth in the forehead, over which the hair had been arranged with many a dainty touch and artifice. But, notwithstanding that the features spoke of the artificial life on the stage and a heart too quickly torn by wild whirling gusts of affection and emotion, it was a face which another woman would instinctively trust; and even as she looked, Winifred felt that in this strange wild creature she had found a very sincere friend.
“We must stop these idle speculations, though,” said the woman softly, “after all, you did not come here to talk to me of the Higher Moralities, did you, Miss Pontifex? You wanted to hear something personal and immediate, that I could tell you, didn’t you? Now, what is it, let us come to the point.” And she gave the girl in front of her, a quick, enquiring look.
“I quite admit that,” returned Winifred promptly, bravely encountering the scrutinising look that had been cast upon her. “As you seem to know my name, no doubt you will know that I am very keenly interested in the case Mr. Kilroy mentioned, for I am engaged to Mr. Arthur Hudson.”
“I know, I know,” repeated the woman slowly, and then she added, in an accent that was almost a prayer: “Poor girl, poor girl.”
Winifred’s lips trembled, but she went on steadily with the conversation. “Do you mind,” she said, still very gently, “telling me, in confidence, why you got up in the church just now and openly accused Mr. Kilroy of telling a falsehood? He is not a strong man, perhaps, maybe he is not a good man, but I didn’t think that he was quite a bad man.”
“He is—a very bad man,” snapped the woman fiercely. “He is one of Ventris Blake’s most dangerous puppets. Take my advice, get out of that house as soon as you can; the place is accursed, and sooner or later that man’s sins will rise to judgment.”
“But can’t you tell me precisely what he has done wrong in connection with this murder of Mrs. Blake,” persisted Winifred, half terrified by the tornado of denunciation she had brought upon herself. “After all, nobody can do any good unless you give them the facts.”
“There is really no need to give anybody any facts,” declaimed the woman fiercely, “let them look into that man’s private life, and they will discover all that there is to be known. But they won’t, I know they won’t, for a millionaire is behind him, and what money can do in London to-day is enough to make the heart of every good woman break, for practically not even the best and wisest seem free from its influence.”
“But,” queried Winifred, still more puzzled, “how is it you know that Mr. Kilroy’s statement, that this poor woman was not the wife of Ventris Blake, was a lie?”
“Well, I do, and that is sufficient,” the strange woman rejoined sharply. “What is more, at the right moment, I intend to prove it, so neither you nor Mr. Hudson need have any fears about that certificate of that sham marriage at Peterborough. I will take care that you are cleared of all the odium that may arise from that.”
The woman spoke with such intense conviction that even Winifred felt that her words could be absolutely relied upon, and almost before she knew what she was doing, she had caught up her hands and pressed them warmly as an earnest of her heartfelt gratitude.
Then, unconscious of the fact that over an hour had passed since she sped out of the church in hot pursuit of this woman who had dared to go right to the pulpit-steps to denounce the vicar, poor Winifred stepped out quickly in the direction of St. Sepulchre’s gates. By this time, however, all the excitement had died down, the congregation had dispersed to their homes, there to discuss the scandal and shame of this remarkable occurrence, and on a conspicuous board had been written the warning-notice:—“In consequence of the sudden and regrettable indisposition of the Vicar, the Reverend Duncan Kilroy, M.A., D.D., there will be no service this evening in this church.”
Even in the Vicarage there was externally no reminder of the turbulent scene that had so recently engulfed at least one of its principal inmates. On the contrary, everything seemed to be managed so as to give the impression that the incident had practically no lasting importance. Thus, when Winifred entered, Mrs. Kilroy and Monica were just sitting down to dinner, and when Winifred herself took her place at the table, Mrs. Kilroy simply contented herself by saying her husband was not at all well, and then fell to discussing such commonplaces of life as the weather, cookery, and the difficulty of getting good voices in a London church choir.
Nevertheless, although everything appeared on the surface to go forward very much as usual, Winifred was conscious of a certain difference in Mrs. Kilroy’s attitude towards her. The old frank trust and good humour seemed to have vanished, and, in their place had come a subtle suggestion of resentment—a suggestion that in some vague, mysterious way, Winifred herself had been responsible for the trouble that had all at once fallen upon that household, and that sooner the black cloud was removed by the agency of the girl herself, the more tolerable would the domestic atmosphere become.
Winifred herself, however, was plunged in a series of melancholy reflections of her own. For one thing, she was genuinely concerned that she had heard no recent news of Arthur, and the paragraph which Mr. Kilroy had read that morning about his being linked up with the murdered woman, filled her mind with a score of serious misgivings. More than that, try how she would, she could not rid herself of the vivid impression which the strange woman had made upon her mind; and again and again, she asked herself whether she ought not to take careful notice of the advice that had been given to her, and to flee altogether from that roof, under which Ventris Blake appeared to exercise so potent a spell.
It was therefore, with a feeling of positive relief, that she saw a maid appear, and go to Mrs. Kilroy with a request from the Vicar that she should ask Miss Pontifex to come to him to his library for a few minutes’ private conversation. True, she had now conceived the greatest distrust and dislike of this smug greasy-looking parson, but nevertheless she recognised that he had considerable influence upon her future, and that it might be unwise to make an open enemy of him before she got to know exactly how much he could do to clear the good name of her sweetheart.
When she entered his room, she found him huddled up in a great armchair, close to the fire, a great red Turkish rug wrapped about his knees and the set expression of an early Christian martyr going resignedly to the stake, about his face.
With a feeble little plaintive cough, which seemed to rack his frame in inverse ratio to its loudness, he motioned her to a seat on the other side of the fireplace. For two or three minutes they sat thus, without a word being spoken. Then, he passed a fat flabby hand dramatically across his forehead, and in imagination, threw back a long curling lock that might years ago have been long enough to fall across his temples.
“This is a sad business, Miss Pontifex,” he murmured at length, carefully pumping up a sigh. “Very sad business. Can you explain it?”
Winifred looked puzzled. “I don’t quite understand,” said she. “Do you refer to the incident in Church, or,” she added maliciously, “to the bereavement sustained by Mr. Ventris Blake?”
The man winced. “I mean,” he exclaimed, slowly “your connection with that terrible depraved creature that dared this morning to defame the sanctuary of the Most High.”
“My connection,” repeated Winifred incredulously, “why I have never seen the woman before in my life.”
“Indeed,” exclaimed Mr. Kilroy cynically, “then perhaps you will explain how it came about that you were seen by my verger to race out of the church after that abandoned creature, to jump into a hansom, and to follow her up Shaftesbury Avenue, and finally to sit closeted with her for some fifteen or twenty minutes in a dirty little café in Soho.”
Winifred’s blood boiled at the tone the man had adopted towards her. There was something hidden in its depths that seemed to rouse all the latent pride and delicacy of feeling and sense of right treatment that is instinctive in every good woman’s nature; and for once she ceased to be the quiet, gentle, self-sacrificing girl, ever ready to lay aside her own prejudices to help a suffering fellow mortal, and became the quiet and resolute woman, quick, condemnatory, eager, critical.
“Are we not both labouring under some misapprehension, Mr. Kilroy,” she began, in that low, penetrating voice of hers, that somehow made the man in front of her writhe unconsciously. “As a matter of fact, I don’t think there is any necessity for me to explain anything that happened this morning to you, and certainly, I shall not do so unless you give me a certain amount of satisfaction. First and foremost, I should like to ask you what you mean by taking up the cause of a scoundrel like Ventris Blake, in the manner you have done? It is all very well to pretend the man has been rich and beneficent in his church offerings—there are hundreds of men like that in London, yet decent members of your cloth, wouldn’t soil their fingers with shaking the hand of such creatures, who would be better employed paying back their ill-gotten thousands to the countless widows and children they have ruined.”
“Mr. Ventris Blake is a friend of mine,” the man answered feebly, “he is misunderstood, of course. So are heaps of other noble and charitable souls. I believe in him, I know his worth.”
“That may be,” proceeded Winifred steadily. “That does not say that when he calls upon you to take as governess, a girl you have never seen before, you should do so, and simply turn yourself into a cheap vehicle for conveying insults from this very noble and self-sacrificing creature direct to her, when she is powerless to avenge them.”
“What do you mean,” gasped the clergyman, going very white.
“I mean,” proceeded Winifred steadily, “that I know very well all that has happened between you and Mr. Ventris Blake. I mean, I know that he ordered you to give me this situation, and that you dared not refuse him. I mean, I know that he sent that letter to you this morning, and that cruel paragraph in the newspaper, purposely that you should read them aloud to me at the breakfast table, which you did, without a thought of the terrible pain which you might inflict upon me. Now, I want to ask, how does this stand with your prayers and litany, when you call upon your God to defend the fatherless children and widows. I am a fatherless child—and I am not receiving from you the common consideration that I might expect from the ordinary man of the world, who has been bruised and battered by commercial life, but who still retains some recollection of the early lessons in chivalry he learned at his mother’s knee.”
“It is false,” Mr. Kilroy whimpered—but the girl was now standing over him, and her indignation was something terrible to witness.
“It is true,” she repeated firmly, “quite, quite true, and you know it, only you are such a pitiful coward that you dare not admit it even to me. Nor is that the worst of the questions I have to put to you. What did that woman in the church mean when she denounced you in public, as one who knew Ventris Blake was married to that poor murdered woman, and yet for some private sinister purpose of his own, did not scruple to pretend that this was not the fact?”
“I refuse to answer,” snapped Duncan Kilroy, rising too, and feeling that he had stood more than he could stand again.
“Go to your room at once, and think over the vile and wicked things you have said to me, and remember that although I may forgive you, and not avenge myself, your punishment will come sure and swift and complete enough.”
“It is like you to threaten,” sneered Winifred, now roused to fever heat, “threats like these are the stock-in-trade of men of your kind, but to anybody who knows as I do that the world is founded on right and justice, and that in the long run good always triumphs over evil, they are both futile and foolish. I will go to my room as you tell me, but it will not be to meditate on the home truths I have told to you, for I see it is useless to hope for any good out of you. Understand, I will not stay in this house to be made a target for Mr. Blake’s brutal witticisms. I shall go upstairs and pack my things, and leave the house at once.” Saying which she swept out of the room, and marched up to the nursery where she flung herself on her knees in front of her trunks, and began in a quick and methodical fashion, to pack away her things.
Thus engaged in an exercise that soothed her overwrought nerves and brought back to her mind the peace and dignity she had lost in the library, she did not hear a stealthy footstep ascending the stairs of the nursery, from the floor beneath. Indeed it was only when the Reverend Duncan Kilroy himself stood in the doorway, that she was conscious that she had been followed, and then she turned swiftly and found herself faced by a man almost beside himself with mortification and rage.
“You think,” he hissed, his face purple with passion. “You think I shall permit you, Miss Pontifex, to go out into the world and sow any falsehoods you like about me amongst the people I have a right to regard as my friends. In that, I can assure you, you are much mistaken. I have no intention of permitting you to play ducks and drakes with my good name, even if you choose to do so with your own—so please consider yourself a prisoner until you come to a better frame of mind.” And saying that, he suddenly shut the door, turned the key, and fled down the stairs, leaving Winifred fast under lock and key in a room, the windows of which, were tightly barred with iron.
Meanwhile, the Sunday papers had hurried out a special edition. Even then, the newsboys were tearing up and down Piccadilly, shouting: “The Murder of a Millionaire’s Wife! Extraordinary development! Arrest of a well-known London house-agent. A terrible scandal in high-life feared.” Meanwhile too, Paul Renishaw was knocking vainly at the door of the Vicarage in the hope of seeing Miss Pontifex. Winifred was a prisoner, and was doomed to undergo some very bitter experiences before she escaped from the clutches of the Reverend Duncan Kilroy, M.A., D.D.
Left alone in a police-station cell the night but one following his arrest, Arthur Hudson fell a victim to the most profound dejection. It was all very well to keep up a brave face before Paul Renishaw, the detective, and the two inspectors, when the charge was new, had been suddenly sprung upon him, and he did not realise its dire importance; but here, in the silence of the gloomy white-washed corridor, in a bare apartment only eight or nine feet square, in which a single gas-jet burned but feebly, the horror of it all smote him with a sense of insufferable shame.
In vain he forced himself to sit upon the narrow truckle bed that had been allotted to him, and to affect an interest in the dull-looking objects with which his cell was furnished—the iron toilet set, the tiny mirror, the roughly used brush and comb, and a copy of the police-station regulations, that had been glued upon a card, glazed and hung upon the blue-washed wall. All the forces of his manhood seemed to rise in hot rebellion against a calm acquiescence in these indignities, and finally, he sought relief in pacing up and down the narrow cell, a prey to a thousand grave terrors.
Now and then, however, the deathly silence would be disturbed by the advent of some fresh prisoner,—once a boy sobbing piteously; next, a drunken woman, shouting snatches of ribald songs, alternated with bursts of frightful blasphemies; and occasionally, some strong man, who sternly resisted capture and who seemed to fight every inch of the way from the street to the cell. The clang of the iron doors upon these poor wretches had, however, a curiously soothing effect upon them. Once or twice, it is true, they tried to plead for release, or to beg piteously that some relative or friend should be sent for, but the gruff voices of their gaolers soon put an end to their appeals, and as hour after hour boomed from the great clock of St. Paul’s, great silence took possession of the building.
Then it was indeed, that poor Arthur’s brain gave him the most poignant torture. In spite of his strong will, it would travel back to the memories of happier times, would recall how only yesterday all the world seemed to smile upon him and his fortunes, and not a trouble threatened him. With a deep groan, which he could not repress, he recalled how he loved one of noblest and sweetest of girls, and how everything was hastening gaily forward to his marriage—hastening like the sunny days of summer, when they rush pell-mell to the rosy fulfilment of a gorgeous autumn—and then it seemed impossible that any blow should affect his heart’s best happiness.
How strangely, how softly, and yet, how irresistibly the change had come about! Somehow, it seemed that in one tiny hour at the office in Cheapside, the whole face of life had changed for him. Somehow, all his plans and hopes had seemed to get out of joint from that particular moment on which Ventris Blake had crossed his threshold. To all outward appearances, it was only a plain matter of business on which the millionaire had called—the transaction had been concluded without any hitch—the usual friendly courtesies had been exchanged at the close,—and yet, look what a terrible network of crime, intrigue and bitterness had thrown its folds around him ever since!
Winifred had been forced to flee from her home. Mrs. Blake had been found beaten to death on a lonely road near Scarborough. Russell Langford had been reduced to a state of abject terror. He, Arthur, had been branded as a man who had secretly married a woman in a far off town in Northamptonshire, and then deserted her, and then posed as a single man to win another young girl’s affection. Even that was not sufficient to satisfy the malignity of the unscrupulous fate that had attacked them, for now, to crown all, he had been seized on this awful charge of murder—the murder of a woman he had never seen, of a woman he had never even heard of, yet who would be held out to the world as his own distracted and deserted wife.
At first it seemed impossible to believe that all these things could follow from an hour’s association with one man, even such a man as Ventris Blake. With a touch of childish ingenuity he tried to imagine that all this catalogue of trouble was so much imagination, and that he had simply to rub his eyes to wake up again in the dear old flat at Emperor’s Gate, to see Winifred in her favourite attitude, nestling by the side of the fire. He did shut his eyes, and he did open them, but it was not to the bright homelike scene his memory had painted: it was to the four bare walls of a police-station cell, and to the moan of some drunken ruffian turning uneasily in his sleep.
Finally, worn out with the horror of it all, the futility, the ever deepening sense of tragedy that seemed to mock all his puny efforts to free himself from the march of ironic circumstances, he felt it was useless to struggle further.
“I can’t escape this awful thing that has fastened its poisonous fangs about me,” he moaned, as worn out with the night’s terrors, he flung himself on to his narrow bedstead, and buried his face in his hot and feverish hands. “The whole world seems arrayed in force against me; everywhere I turn I see some pit dug for my feet. Why need I go to any more anxiety or worry in the matter? I am marked for ruin; now let ruin come.” And his frame shook with a storm of dry impetuous sobs.
A few minutes later his brave, reliant nature asserted itself, and throwing back his shoulders, he rose once again to his feet—maybe a little ashamed of his previous weakness.
“Bah! what a coward I am,” he told himself, with well simulated fierceness. “Here am I, wasting hours of pity and anguish over my own wretched fortunes, whereas I ought not to think of myself at all—all my mind ought to be fixed on the terrible trouble this last blow will prove to poor driven, distracted Winifred.”
Throwing out his arms with a gesture of infinite weariness, he recommenced to promenade the cell. Somehow, the mere thought of Winifred brought back to him all his early faith and courage. His eyes too, caught a glimpse of the day-light breaking over the distant buildings, now dull and leaden, as though fearful of breaking entirely through the blackness, and, anon, white and clear, as though the true victorious forces of life must always be the forces of light.
This, it is true, was only one of nature’s simple object lessons, and perhaps, only those who have spent long hours of heartbreaking misery in the deep, dull silence of a black winter night, can ever fully understand all that it meant to Arthur at this particular moment. Certainly, it brought back to him hopes that had long vanished, and a belief that, although his path was so dark he saw nowhere an avenue of escape, there still remained to him a faith he had too long forgotten; and, throwing himself on his knees, his overcharged heart found refuge in a deep and impassioned prayer.
A few minutes later, he had crept into his bed and slept so soundly that it needed the constable in charge to come and shake him by the shoulder, before he could be brought back to a sense of the dull threatening realities that awaited him. Then, with a merry laugh, he sprang up and threw on his clothes, and soon found himself busily discussing a breakfast of ham and eggs, and steaming hot coffee, which the officials, at his request, had thoughtfully provided for him out of the money they took from him when they searched him.
Shortly afterwards, there was a sound of a well-remembered tread in the corridor, and Paul Renishaw bustled into the cell, accompanied by one of the smartest solicitors he had been able to secure at such short notice. For at least an hour, these three men engaged in a long and earnest conversation, and, accustomed as he was to all manner of cases and defences, even the solicitor, Mr. Spencer Holmes, was forced to admit this charge against Arthur was one of the most extraordinary he had ever heard in his experience.
Time moved forward very quickly after this, and long before he expected the summons, Arthur found a constable call to him to follow him into the presence of a magistrate, who had undertaken to deal with the formal evidence of the case, prior to the removal of the prisoner to Scarborough.
With a bright step and confident air, poor Arthur marched off in the wake of his guide, along a series of corridors, and up two or three flights of stairs, until at length he reached the yard of the police station, where he found an old and dingy four wheeled cab in waiting for him. Into this he was thrust, with two or three pleasant jests and much good humour, and finally driven off to Bow Street, in the company of his acquaintances of the previous night—Inspector Lawton and the Detective, an officer named Dawson.
Unfortunately, the news of his arrest had been published in the morning papers, and a seething, excited mob had gathered in the vicinity of Drury Lane, so that although the cab was driven with remarkable swiftness, Arthur did not fail to hear the storm of hisses and coarse oaths with which the mob greeted his appearance. At first, indeed, he could hardly believe that this loathsome demonstration was specially intended for him, but as the officers in plain clothes formed a cordon round the vehicle, and constables in uniform pressed forward to their comrades’ assistance, he realised, with an awful sense of desolation, that at one bound, as it were, he had reached the position of a notorious suspect.
The scene, when he reached the police court itself, was also in no sense designed to restore his lost dignity and pride. True, there, seated at the solicitor’s table, right in front of him, was his own advocate, Mr. Spencer Holmes and Paul Renishaw, but the rest of the court was filled by a mob of curious sight-seers and press-men and artists, who fixed their eyes upon him, as though he were some extraordinary wild beast just let loose from a cage.
The crowning indignity came, when a road was cleared through a gangway, and before he actually realised what had happened, he found himself thrust into the dock.
The dock! Never never would he have believed that such a horrible degradation as this would have been his, and as the door closed upon him with a thud, he reeled and for a moment might have fallen, had not a sturdy warder caught him roughly by the arm, and thinking he had stumbled over a step, told him roughly to stand up. Those hundreds of eyes that watched him so pitilessly, so curiously, so relentlessly, however, brought him quickly back to his senses, and setting his teeth tightly together, he advanced to the front of the dock and bowed courteously to the magistrate.
Almost immediately after this the proceeding began, and Inspector Lawton went into the box and told how he had arrested the prisoner the previous night in New Bridge Street, on instructions received by telegraph from the Scarborough police, and how one of their detectives had come down from the North to take the prisoner back with him on a charge of having murdered his wife.
Hereupon Mr. Spencer Holmes got up and protested against this course of action. He declared the arrest was some hideous blunder on the part of the Scarborough police, and that it would be monstrous for the magistrate, simply on the mere word of some country officer, to take one of the most prominent men in the City of London, and to send him half across England to meet a charge which he did not hesitate to describe as some most preposterous hallucination on the part of some demented eye-witness.
Just then a faint rustle was heard at the far end of the court, and all at once appeared the well-known figure of Russell Langford, who hastened as quickly as he could, clad in barrister’s wig and gown, and bearing a huge brief, in the direction of the seat specially reserved for Counsel.
“Excuse me, your Worship,” said he, “but I have an important application to make to you in this matter.
“I am sorry to appear so late before your Worship,” he began with a low bow to the presiding magistrate, but keeping his eyes steadily all the while out of the way of the hot and scornful glances Arthur shot at him from the dock. “The fact is, I have only just been instructed to appear in this case on behalf of the relatives of the deceased, including her supposed husband, Ventris Blake, who unfortunately cannot be here to-day as he is simply prostrated with grief by this tragic end of what he always regarded as a perfect life of married confidence and happiness.”
For a moment, the eminent advocate paused, and, pulling out his handkerchief, pretended to blow his nose vigorously, as though he himself felt a little overcome by this contemplation of a poor martyred husband’s sufferings.
“What an infernal humbug you are,” Paul muttered sotto voce. “You know you are talking the veriest piffle.” But, although Langford distinctly caught every word his friend said, he did not think it wise to take any notice of it. Then the journalist, too, shrugged his shoulders. “After all,” he reasoned swiftly, “this shoddy emotionalism is not the only humbug in public life.”
“Luckily,” proceeded Langford, fixing his eyes upon the magistrate, “I was in time, just now, to catch the gist of the speech of my learned friend, Mr. Spencer Holmes, who appears, I take it, on behalf of the accused. From it, I gather, he has taken practically a unique line in defending the case at the outset, and has even gone so far as to suggest that these proceedings are an absolute travesty of justice. In those circumstances, and as the Treasury have not yet had time to be fully communicated with, I trust you will allow me to step a little out of the usual course, so that we can avoid any appearance of a miscarriage of justice in this matter. The concession I suggest is not a very important one: it is merely to call two or three witnesses who have just arrived from Scarborough, but who can, I venture to think, put a totally different complexion to that indicated by my learned friend.”
“That would certainly give me satisfaction,” replied the magistrate, slowly. “I own that I too was considerably startled at the line the prisoner’s advocate thought fit to adopt.”
“Well,” proceeded Langford, “I will first of all call Martha Shacklock.”
An old country woman of about sixty, clad in a rusty black silk dress, a shawl, and a bonnet that had probably done duty for the last half century, now stepped forward, and with a low curtsey to the magistrate, the solicitors, and even poor Arthur himself, she entered the witness box and was duly sworn. Her evidence was clear, and certainly not a little astounding to all the friends of the accused. She deposed that she kept a small refreshment house in a small hamlet, about one mile distant from Scarborough. When the town was crowded, it was quite a common thing for her to let beds to visitors, which she was able to do at a very cheap rate. As a consequence, she was not surprised when a man whom she deliberately swore was no other than the man standing in the dock, came to her house the night before the murder, and arranged to take a room, which he promptly took possession of and did not leave until the following evening about six. His behaviour was so curious, she admitted, that even if he had not gone then, she would have turned him out. He had nothing to eat all the time he was in the house, and so far as she knew, he was not seen by a single person belonging to her household, except herself.
It was in vain that Mr. Spencer Holmes cross-examined her very closely on this question of the identity of Arthur and the man who stayed at her house. Her evidence remained unshaken, while even poor Arthur was left wondering whether, after all, something extraordinary had not happened to him, and he had really temporarily lost his memory and his senses.
This sense of confusion was only deepened by the next witness, a bright, intelligent lad of fifteen, who gave the name of Peter Brian, and said that he was employed as errand boy at a gardener’s and florist’s, on some land and greenhouses adjoining the house occupied by the last witness. He took up the tale of the prosecution at a point an hour later than the murder was alleged to have been committed. He explained that he was stopping late that night to bank up some fires in a distant portion of his employer’s grounds, when he was startled to see a man run hurriedly through the gloom, in the direction of a greenhouse that stood by itself, and was, as a rule, not used for any purpose at all. A moment later, a bright light appeared in the interior of this place, and creeping stealthily towards it, he reached the end farthest from the door, and peered through the glass. There he saw a man bending over a sink, washing some blood off his hands and waistcoat. That man, he would swear positively, was the prisoner in the dock, Arthur Hudson. He saw his face distinctly by the light of a candle that had been fixed in a beer bottle on one of the ledges.
A candle by the way, that was subsequently proved to have been removed from Mrs. Shacklock’s. For nearly ten minutes, the witness declared that he watched this man remove traces of his guilt. Amongst other things, he said, the man changed his clothes, and put on a suit which he had brought in a bundle in an old copy of a Scarborough paper, “The Scarborough Daily Post.”
Finally, the boy asserted, just as he had finished putting on a fresh suit, the prisoner happened to turn round and catch sight of his face peering through the glass, closely watching his movements. With a savage oath, the man made one wild grab at the candle and the beer-bottle, and without a moment’s hesitation, he flung it full smash at the glass, at the point where he stood.
Witness ducked level with the stonework, and the splinters of glass and the bottle passed harmlessly over his back, but terrified, he did not stay in that position any longer, but ran as hard as he could, in the direction of some apple trees, one of which he climbed, but was so terrified at what had happened, that he dared not come down again until his master appeared in the garden the next morning, at eight o’clock, when he told him about the murder.
Together they searched the garden, but of course, they got no sign of the prisoner. Later, they entered the greenhouse, and took up the clothes that had been cast aside by the man, after he had washed the bloodstains off his hands. These bore the name of Arthur Hudson, Esq., on a small label, on the band of the trousers, and the inside pocket of the jacket. Also a number, and the name and address of a firm of tailors in Bond Street, London.
Unfortunately, cross-examination failed to shake the testimony of this witness—and with something like an expression of despair, Arthur heard the next witness called. This proved to be a cattle-drover of the name of Benjamin Smearthwaite, who swore that he was a cattle-drover, employed on a farm on the far side of Filey. He remembered the day of the murder exceedingly well. He was engaged in driving sheep to a market at Scarborough.
About two miles out of that town, he found the flock rather troublesome, and his dog rather lazy, so he pulled up a great stake, out of the hedge, and made use of that, particularly when the sheep were frightened by the passage through their midst of several exceedingly noisy motor cars. Finally, the flock quieted down, and the dog took up his work as usual, and he was just about to throw the stick away, when a man, he would swear positively was the prisoner, appeared over a hedge and asked him if he would mind selling him the stake he was carrying.
He admitted he thought the request was an odd one, but thinking he might as well get a pot of beer for nothing, as well as anybody else, he took threepence for the stake, and wishing the stranger good-night, he went on his way rapidly towards Scarborough. Not until he saw a report of the murder in the Scarborough paper did he think any more of the occurrence. Then he made a point of getting to see the stick with which the woman had been beaten, and he could swear most solemnly that that stick was the one he had sold to the prisoner for threepence.
“There is only one more witness, your worship,” now explained Russell Langford, bending down, and turning over the pages of his brief, very quickly, “that is, Mr. Israel Sawdry:” and he beckoned to a smart-looking man of about thirty-five, with a strong, Hebrew cast of countenance, who had been seated on one of the benches reserved for witnesses, and who now stepped eagerly into the box.
“You are,” said Langford, addressing the witness, “the private secretary of Mr. Ventris Blake, who was usually considered the husband of the dead woman.”
“I am,” returned Sawdry, “I have been so for the last forty-eight months.”
“Look at that photograph,” proceeded Langford, handing the Jew a beautifully executed cabinet photograph of the murdered woman. “Do you recognise it?”
“Yes,” said the witness, after a careful inspection of the portrait, which was subsequently handed to the magistrate. “I do recognise it. I recognise it as the portrait of a girl I knew very well when I was employed at Peterborough as clerk in the offices of a large firm of brickmakers. For a time, she tried to make a living painting portraits and selling pictures, but it was a very up-hill fight, and I was not surprised when one day she came to me and told me that she was going to be married to a Mr. Arthur Hudson, who was very well off, and was in business with his uncle, a house-agent, in Cheapside. As a matter of fact, I congratulated her very warmly, and then it was she asked me to be a witness of her marriage the next morning before the Superintendent Registrar of Marriages in Peterborough. To this I consented, and the next morning I attended, as she had requested, and saw her wedded in true legal form to this Mr. Arthur Hudson, who I will swear is positively the same man as the man in the dock.”
“That, I think,” said Russell Langford triumphantly, “will dispose of any question as to whether the deceased was really married to the prisoner or not.”
“Indeed it won’t,” suddenly exclaimed a woman’s voice at the back of the court, “you wait. At the right moment you will see as this will prove to be one of the wickedest conspiracies ever engineered against an innocent man.”
Unfortunately, although the court was searched high and low by the officers connected with the case, not a trace of the woman who had made that startling declaration could be found. Everybody, it is true, heard the voice. Everybody was agreed as to the exact words she had made use of when she shouted that Arthur was innocent and that the case was founded on a diabolical conspiracy: but nobody in the whole of that crowded assembly could turn and say definitely that the words had been spoken by any woman or girl who happened to be standing near them.
Indeed, after several minutes’ quick and vigilant search, the only satisfactory piece of evidence on the point that proved to be forthcoming was that of a constable; and curiously enough, this man had not been in the court at the time the interruption had occurred. On the contrary, he had been stationed outside the door by which the general public were admitted to a kind of rough pen at the back of the building, but he was able to explain, that just when he caught the hum of suppressed excitement that followed this extraordinary interruption, the door of the public gallery was suddenly snatched open, and a woman in black stepped hurriedly out of the court, and with a muttered explanation that she had suddenly turned faint, stepped swiftly out of sight, down the corridor. He could not, however, give any description of her features or her clothes.
“She was just a woman in black,” he mumbled confusedly when he was pressed rather closely by the magistrate. “In age, she might have been anything between twenty-five and thirty-five. The impression she gave me was that she was an actress who had just lost her husband, but I was really so interested in getting to hear what was going on inside the court to cause all that hub-bub, that I didn’t really take much notice of her. I am sure I couldn’t identify her if she were put before me this very moment.” And, with this final shot, the poor badgered officer was permitted to leave the box.
The magistrate, however, looked exceedingly grave, “I feel it my duty,” he said with great seriousness, “to complain that there has been a good deal of improper matter introduced into this case at this early stage. I do not, of course, know what facts are in possession of my friend, Mr. Spencer Holmes, but he has certainly taken a most singular line in proceedings that are only formal, and can have no more bearing on the actual result of the case than the merest formalities connected with the arrest of any prisoner, even on a simple charge of being drunk.
“As for that interruption, to which we have just listened with so much grief and astonishment, I can only say, that I regard it as most improper. Never in the whole of my judicial experience have I known anybody dare to make so odious a reflection in an open court. English justice is not the travesty of justice one sees in other civilised countries; it is pure, it is fair, it is free to all. The prosecution of this man in the dock will not be conducted by any partizan of the murdered woman, or by any secret enemy of his, but by that most impartial body, the Treasury, who will have no interest in securing his conviction, or in the triumph of false evidence, but who will approach the matter from an absolutely impartial stand-point, anxious only that a very brutal crime, which has been committed in our midst should be traced to the wrong-doer.
“As for that wretched woman who spoke hysterically of conspiracy and so forth,” added the magistrate, shaking a warning finger in the direction of the public, “I can only assure her that the Treasury will welcome any evidence she may give to prove her own most amazing contention. She need not fear that any blame will be attached to her in connection with the contempt of court she has shown this afternoon. I am quite willing to overlook that gross breach of decorum, if she will make the only amend for it that is in her power—that is, by going secretly to the law officers of the Crown, and telling them, in plain and unmistakable terms what she knows that has induced her to make so amazing a declaration.”
He stopped, and turning to his note-book again, he motioned to Arthur’s solicitor, Mr. Spencer Holmes, to make any observations he felt necessary, before the proceedings terminated.
There was a pause, during which the advocate held a quick but animated discussion with his client in the dock, and then the lawyer turned and briefly addressed the magistrate. He said that he had to admit quite frankly that he could not resist such an overwhelming flood of sworn testimony as that which had been presented that day, to prove that his client had been in Scarborough at the time of the crime; had taken a bed in the neighbourhood; had purchased the bludgeon with which the murder had been committed; and had been finally observed to wash his hands free from some fatally incriminating blood-stains, and to leave behind him a suit of clothes, plainly marked with his name.
“None the less,” he proceeded, “I shall, I believe, at the right moment, be prepared with a perfect alibi. Strange as it may sound, I could at this moment, offer equally overwhelming testimony that my client at the time he has been sworn to have been in Scarborough was actually here in London, indeed, at the very house occupied by the learned counsel for the prosecution. More than that, I could at this very moment put into the box this distinguished journalist who is sitting by my side and instructing me Mr. Paul Renishaw, who was actually with the prisoner here in town when the man was supposed to be lurking about some lonely roads and gardens near Scarborough.
“The matter, however, is one that is bound to be thrashed out in a superior court to this, and so I will not occupy any further time, except to say with all the impressiveness I can, that this is in truth one of the most extraordinary cases ever heard at Bow Street, and that it will prove to be either one of the most shameless attempts to evade a well-merited punishment, or,” and here his voice sank into a low whisper, “as that woman has just told us, one of the foulest conspiracies ever engineered against an honest and upright man on either side of the Atlantic.”
The magistrate looked up and frowned, but made no further protest. “The prisoner will be remanded to the care of the Scarborough police,” he said gruffly. “The next case, please.” And the next moment, Arthur found himself caught by the arm, and conducted by the warder who was seated next to him, to the cells beneath, where, as a special favour, he was quickly joined by Paul and his solicitor.
“There is nothing to be done,” the latter said, “until the case comes up before the bench in Yorkshire. I think I possess now all the main features of the defence, and I will get to work on them at once. Meanwhile, you must keep up a stout heart,” and with a bright nod, he hurried off and left the two friends alone.
Directly he did so, Arthur turned impetuously to Paul. “There is one thing, old chap,” he said very earnestly, “that has worried me during those proceedings in the court, more than anything I can tell you. It isn’t a matter that concerns myself at all, as it happens. It is just the safety of poor Winifred. Who, for instance, has told her that I have been seized by the police, and forced to take my trial on the most awful charge that can be preferred against any man, that of wife murder? And, is it not rather curious, that ever since she visited me at my office in Cheapside, and told me that she was going to take that situation at St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage, I have not heard a word from her? Remember, that there she is under none of the restrictions she was when she was staying with the Langfords’. Practically any hour she could send a message to me, or a telegram, and yet, I have had nothing from her, not even one hurriedly penned little note.”
“It is indeed most curious,” agreed Paul, commencing to stride up and down the cell. “I confess, I can’t make it out. I certainly expected that when the news of your arrest leaked out, she would have got leave of absence from Mrs. Kilroy, and would have insisted on coming down here and comforting you herself, and would certainly have strained every nerve to be present at the proceedings in court. I forgot though, to tell you, that I went myself to St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage, when you were arrested to break the news to her.”
“And what did she say?” cried Arthur eagerly. “Wasn’t she sure it was all some hideous trap of Ventris Blake?”
“Alas! I didn’t see her. I rang several times at the door, and finally a disagreeable housemaid came and told me sharply that Miss Pontifex was engaged in the nursery, and had left word that she must on no account be interrupted.”
“That sounds odd,” remarked Arthur, rather startled.
“Very odd,” echoed Paul, and the strange character of his reception assumed a much more unfavourable aspect than it had done when he had turned and left Mr. Kilroy’s house.
“Well, at all events, our duty is quite clear,” proceeded Arthur firmly. “We must make a point of seeing her for ourselves, and telling her precisely how black everything looks, but none the less, she has got to keep up a stout heart. Somehow, I have got a terrible feeling that some danger is threatening her. I can’t explain it—I can’t understand it—no, I can’t even realise it myself, but there it is, hanging on my mind with a weight like lead, and I am sure I shall never rest until I find out it is groundless, or you help me to take steps to get this sense of calamity removed.
“As you know, Ventris Blake has set his mind on marrying Winifred. He is not the man to have any nice sense of honour, to feel that because his wife is only just three or four days dead he should have his mind set on thoughts other than marrying and giving in marriage again. No, he is just that cold, determined brute that he will set to work at once to force the poor girl to repudiate me and to accept him. Indeed, he is not likely to let anything stand in his way to accomplish this almost at once, particularly as he has now got me safe under lock and key, and he feels that Winifred herself has not a friend in the world.”
“Don’t worry, old chap,” said Paul, warmly. “I quite appreciate all the difficulties of her position, and of yours; and I can quite understand what a grave, ever-increasing load of anxiety this ominous silence of hers must prove to you. Never mind, I will go and see her myself, directly I leave Bow Street.
“For the time, let me beg you not to harass yourself about it, but to think very seriously for the next few days how it has come about that the Scarborough police have been able to present so concise, so complete, and withal so utterly damning a case against you. Surely, if you will only get your mind free of its present troubles, you will be able to pierce the heart of this mystery, and will be able to find out who it is that has got some extraordinary grudge against you, or who it is that so nearly resembles you, that without much effort, he can make up to deceive ninety-nine people out of a hundred that he is not the man he really is but none other person than yourself.”