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<h2>CHAPTER VI TO TORMOUTH</h2> "An absinthe!" "A packet of Caporal!" "Un bock pour vous, m'sieur?" "A vodka!" A frowsy waiter was hurrying through some such jangle of loud voices from the "comrades" scattered among the tables set in a back room in a very back street of Soho. The hour was two in the morning, and the light in that Anarchist Club was murky and blurred. Only one gas-jet on the wall lit the room, and that struggled but feebly through the cigarette smoke that choked the air like a fog—air that was foul and close as well as dim, for some thirty persons, mostly men but some few women, were crowded in there as if there was no place else on earth for them. One heard the rattle of dice, the whirr of cards being shuffled against the thumbs, the grating of glass tumblers against imitation granite. Two poor girls, cramped in a corner, were attempting to dance to the rhythm of an Italian song. They were laughing with wide mouths, their heads thrown back, [pg 89] weary unto death, yet alive with make-believe mirth. At one of the tables sat Gaston Janoc, the man who had been seen by Inspector Clarke talking in St. Martin's Lane to Bertha Seward, one-time cook in the Feldisham Mansions flat. Playing vingt-et-un with him was a burly Russian-looking man, all red beard and eyebrows; also a small Frenchman with an imperial and a crooked nose; while a colored man of Martinique made the fourth of a queer quartette. But somehow Janoc and the rough, red Russian seemed not to be able to agree in the game. They were antagonistic as cat and dog, and three times one or other threw down his cards and looked at his adversary, as who should say: "A little more of you, and my knife talks!" "Who are you, then, Ruski?" cried Janoc at last, speaking French, since the Russian only glared at him when he swore in his quaint English. Yet the Russian grumbled in English in his beard: "No French." "And no Italian, and no Spanish, and no German, and very, very small English," growled Janoc in English, frowning at him; "Well, then, shall we converse, sare?" "What is that—'converse'?" asked the Russian. Janoc shrugged disgustedly, while the little Frenchman, whose eyes twinkled at every tiff between the pair, said politely in French: "We await your play, m'sieurs." Twice, on the very edge of the precipice of open [pg 90] hostilities, Janoc and the Russian stopped short; but a little after two o'clock, when much absinthe and vodka had been drunk, an outbreak took place: for the Russian then cried out loudly above the hubbub of tongues: "Oh, you—how you call it?—tcheeeet!" "Who? I—me?" cried Janoc sharply, pale, half-standing—"cheat?" "Yes—tcheeet, you tcheeet!" insisted the bearded Slav. And now the little Frenchman with the crooked nose, who foreknew that the table was about to be upset, stood up quickly, picked up his thimbleful of anisette, and holding it in hand, awaited with merry eyes the outcome. Instantly Janoc, who was dealing, sent the pack of cards like an assault of birds into the Russian's face, the Russian closed with Janoc, and forthwith the room reeled into chaos. The struggle need not be described. Suffice it to say, that it lasted longer than the Russian had probably expected, for Janoc proved to have sinews of steel, though thin steel. His lank arms embraced the Russian, squeezing like a cable that is being tighter and tighter wound. However, he was overcome by mere weight, thumping to the floor among a tumbled dance of tables, chairs, and foreign drinks, while the women shrieked, the men bellowed, and the scared manager of the den added to the uproar by yelling: "M'sieurs! M'sieurs! Je vous prie! The police will come!" [pg 91] Only one soul in the room remained calm, and that was the diminutive Frenchman, who kept dodging through the legs and arms of the flood of humanity that surged around the two on the floor. He alone of them all saw that the Russian, in the thick of the struggle, was slipping his hand into pocket after pocket of Janoc under him, and was very deftly drawing out any papers that he might find there. In two minutes the row was ended, and the gaming and drinking recommenced as if nothing had happened. The Russian had been half led, half hustled to the front door, and was gone. Immediately after him had slipped out the bright-eyed Frenchman. The Russian, after pacing down an alley, turned into Old Compton Street, twice peering about and behind him, as if disturbed by some instinct that he was being shadowed. And this was so—but with a skill so nimble, so expert, so inbred, did the Frenchman follow, that in this pursuit the true meaning of the word "shadowing" was realized. The Russian did not see his follower for the excellent reason that the Frenchman made himself an invisibility. He might have put on those magic shoes that shadows shoot and dash and slink in, so airily did he glide on the trail. Nor could mere genius have accomplished such a feat, and with such ease—were it not for the expertness that was wedded to genius. When the Russian emerged into the wide thoroughfare close to the Palace Theater, he stood under a [pg 92] lamp to look at one of the papers picked from Janoc's pockets; and only then did he become aware of the Frenchman, who rose up out of the ground under his elbow with that pert ease with which a cork bobs to the surface of water. "Got anything of importance?" asked the Frenchman, his twinkling eyes radiant with the humor of the chase. The Russian stared at him half a minute with the hung jaw of astonishment. Then, all at once remembering his rôle, he cried hoarsely: "No English!" "Oh, chuck it!" remarked the other. Again the Russian gazed at the unexpected little phenomenon, and his voice rumbled: "What is that—'chuck it'?" Suddenly the Frenchman snatched Janoc's paper neatly with thumb and finger out of the Russian's hand, and ran chuckling across Charing Cross Road eastward. The Russian, with a grunt of rage, made after him with his long legs. But, from the first, he saw that he was being left behind by the nimble pace set up by a good runner. He seemed to understand that a miracle was needed, and lo, it occurred, for, as the two crossed the road in front of the Palace Theater, the Russian lifted his voice into: "Stop him! Stop thief! Police! Police!" Not only did he yell in most lucid English, but he also plucked a police whistle from his coat and blew it loudly. [pg 93] No policeman happened to be near, however, and the deep sleep of London echoed their pelting steps eastward, until the Russian saw the paper-snatcher vanish from sight in the congeries of streets that converge on the top of St. Martin's Lane. He lost hope then, and slackened a little, panting but swearing in a language that would be appreciated by any London cabman. Nevertheless, when he, too, ran into St. Martin's Lane, there was the small Frenchman, standing, wiping his forehead, awaiting him. The Russian sprang at him. "You little whelp!" he roared. "I arrest you——" "Oh, what's the good, Clarke? You are slow this evening. I just thought I'd wake you up." "Furneaux!" "Fancy not knowing me!" "It was you!" "Who else? Here's your Janocy document. You might let me have a look at it. Share and share alike." Clarke tried to retrieve lost prestige, though his hand shook as he took the paper. "Well—I—could have sworn it was you!" he said. "Of course you could—and did, no doubt. Let's have a glimpse at those documents." "But what were you doing in the Fraternal Club, anyhow? Something on in that line?" [pg 94] "No. An idle hour. Chance of picking up a stray clew. I sometimes do dive into those depths without special object. You managed that to a T with Janoc. Where are the other papers? Hand them over." "With pleasure," said Clarke, but there was no pleasure in his surly Russian face, in which rage shone notwithstanding a marvelous make-up. Still, he opened the paper under the lamp—a sheet of notepaper with some lines of writing on the first page; and on the top of it, printed, the name of a hotel, "The Swan, Tormouth." The two detectives peered over it. To the illimitable surprise of both, this letter, stolen by Clarke from Janoc's pocket, was addressed to Clarke himself—a letter from Rupert Osborne, the millionaire. And Osborne said in it: <blockquote> Dear Inspector Clarke:—Yours of the 7th duly to hand. In reply to your inquiry, I am not aware that the late Mlle. Rose de Bercy had any relations with Anarchists, either in London or in Paris, other than those which have been mentioned in the papers—i.e., a purely professional interest for stage purposes. I think it unlikely that her connection with them extended further. <div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> I am, Sincerely yours, Rupert Osborne. </div> </div> </blockquote> Furneaux and Clarke looked at each other in a blank bewilderment that was not assumed by either man. [pg 95] "Did you write to Mr. Osborne, asking that question?" asked Furneaux. "No," said Clarke—"never. I didn't even know where Osborne was." "So Janoc must have written to him in your name?" said Furneaux. "Janoc, then, wishes to know how much information Osborne can give you as to Mademoiselle de Bercy's association with Anarchists. That seems clear. But why should Janoc think that you particularly are interested in knowing? Clarke flushed hotly under the paint, being conscious that he was investigating the case on his own private account and in a secret way. As a matter of fact, he was by this time fully convinced that Rose de Bercy's murder was the work of Anarchist hands, but he was so vexed with Furneaux's tricking him, and so fearful of official reprimand from Winter that he only answered: "Why Janoc should think that I am interested, I can't imagine. It beats me." "And how can Janoc know where Osborne is, or his assumed name, to write to him?" muttered Furneaux. "I thought that that was a secret between Osborne, Winter, and myself." Clarke, equally puzzled, scratched his head under his wig, which had been insufferably hot in that stifling room. "Janoc and his crew must be keeping an eye on Osborne, it seems—for some reason," he exclaimed. [pg 96] "Heaven knows why—I don't. I am out of the de Bercy case, of course. My interest in the Janoc crowd is—political." "Let me see the letter again," said Furneaux; and he read it carefully once more. Then he opened the sheet, as if seeking additional information from the blank pages, turned it over, looked at the back—and there at the back he saw something else that was astounding, for, written backwards, near the bottom of the page, in Osborne's handwriting, was the word "Rosalind." "Who is 'Rosalind'?" asked Furneaux—"see here, an impression from some other letter written at the same time." "Don't know, I'm sure," said Clarke. "A sister, perhaps." "A sister. Why, though, should his sister's name appear at the back of a note written to Janoc, or to Inspector Clarke, as he thought?" said Furneaux to himself, deep in meditation. He suddenly added brightly: "Now, Clarke, there's a puzzle for you!" "I don't see it, see any puzzle, I mean. It might have appeared on any other letter, say to his bankers, or to a friend. It was a mere accident. There is nothing in that." "Quite right," grinned Furneaux. "And it was a sister's name, of course. 'Rosalind.' A pretty name. Poor girl, she will be anxious about her fond and doting brother." "It may be another woman's name," said Clarke [pg 97] sagely—"though, for that matter, he'd hardly be on with a new love before the other one is cold in her grave, as the saying is." Furneaux laughed a low, mysterious laugh in his throat. It had a peculiar sound, and rang hard and bitter in the ears of the other. "I'll keep this, if you don't mind," he said, lapsing into the detective again. Meantime, Furneaux knew that there were other papers of Janoc's in Clarke's pocket, and he lingered a little to give his colleague a chance of exhibiting them. Clarke made no move, however, so he put out his hand, saying, "Well, good luck," and disappeared southward, while Clarke walked northward toward his residence, Hampstead way. But in Southampton Row an overwhelming impatience to see the other Janoc papers overcame him, and he commenced to examine them as he went. Two were bills. A third was a newspaper cutting from the Matin commenting on the murder in Feldisham Mansions. The fourth had power to arrest Clarke's steps. It was a letter of three closely-written pages—in French; and though Clarke's French, self-taught, was not fluent, it could walk, if it could not fly. In ten minutes he had read and understood.... <blockquote> St. Petersburg says that since the secret meeting, a steady growth of courage in the rank-and-file is observable. As for the Nevski funds, an individual highly placed, whose name is in three syllables, is said to be willing to come to the rescue. [pg 98] Lastly, as to the traitress, you will see to it that she to whose hands vengeance has been intrusted shall fail on the 3rd. </blockquote> This was in the letter; and as Inspector Clarke's eyes fell on the date, "the 3d," his clenched hand rose triumphantly in air. It was on July the 3d that Rose de Bercy had been done to death! When Clarke again walked onward his eyes were alight with a wild exultation. He was thinking: "Now, Allah be praised, that I didn't show Furneaux this thing, as I nearly was doing!" He reached his house with a sense of surprise—he had covered so much ground unconsciously, and the dominant thought in his mind was that the race was not always to the swift. "Luck is the thing in a man's career," he said to himself, "not wit, or mere sharpness to grasp a point. Slow, and steady, and lucky—that's the combination. The British are a race slower of thought than some of the others, just as I may be a slower man than Furneaux, but we Britons rule the world by luck, as we won the battle of Waterloo by luck. Luck and prime beef, they go together somehow, I do believe. And what I am to-day I owe to luck, for it's happened to me too often to doubt that I've got the gift of it in my marrow." He put his latch-key into the door with something of a smile; and the next morning Mrs. Clarke cried delightedly to him: "Well, something must have happened to put you in this good temper!" [pg 99] At that same hour of the morning Furneaux, for his part, was at Osborne's house in Mayfair, where he had an appointment with Mrs. Hester Bates, Osborne's housekeeper. He was just being admitted into the house when the secretary, Miss Prout, walked up to the door—rather to his surprise, for it was somewhat before the hour of a secretary's attendance. They entered together and passed into the library, where Hylda Prout invited him to sit down for a minute. "I am only here just to collect and answer the morning's letters," she explained pleasantly. "There's a tree which I know in Epping Forest—an old beech—where I'm taking a book to read. See my picnic basket?—tomato and cress sandwiches, half a bottle of Chianti, an aluminum folding cup to drink from. I'll send for Mrs. Bates in a moment, and leave her to your tender inquiries. But wouldn't you prefer Epping Forest on a day like this? Do you like solitude, Inspector Furneaux? Dreams?" "Yes, I like solitude, as boys like piracy, because unattainable. I can only just find time to sleep, but not time enough to dream." Hylda lifted her face beatifically. "I love to dream!—to be with myself—alone: the world in one compartment, I in another, with myself; with silence to hear my heart beat in, and time to fathom a little what its beating is madly trying to say; an old tree overhead, and breezes breathing [pg 100] through it. Oh, they know how to soothe; they alone understand, Inspector Furneaux, and they forgive." Furneaux said within himself: "Well, I seem to be in for some charming confidences"; and he added aloud: "Quite so; they understand—if it's a lady: for Nature is feminine; and only a lady can fathom a lady." "Oh, women!" Hylda said, with her pretty pout of disdain,—"they are nothing, mostly shallow shoppers. Give me a man—if he is a man. And there have been a few women, too—in history. But, man or woman, what I believe is that for the greater part, we remain foreigners to ourselves through life—we never reach that depth in ourselves, 'deeper than ever plummet sounded,' where the real I within us lives, the real, bare-faced, rabid, savage, divine I, naked as an ape, contorted, sobbing, bawling what it cannot speak." Furneaux, who had certainly not suspected this blend of philosopher and poet beneath that mass of red hair, listened in silence. For the second time he saw this strange girl's eyes take fire, glow, rage a moment like a building sweltering in conflagration, and then die down to utter dullness. Though he knew just when to speak, his reply was rather tame. "There's something in that, too—you are right." She suddenly smiled, with a pretty air of confusion. [pg 101] "Surely," she said. "And now to business: first, Mrs. Bates——" "One moment," broke in Furneaux. "Something has caused me to wish to ask you—do you know Mr. Osborne's relatives?" "I know of them. He has only a younger brother, Ralph, who is at Harvard University—and an aunt." "Aunt's name Rosalind?" "No—Priscilla—Priscilla Emptage." "Who, then, may 'Rosalind' be?" "No connection of his. You must have made some mistake." Furneaux held out the note of Rupert Osborne to Janoc intended for Clarke, holding it so folded that the name of the hotel was not visible—only the transferred word "Rosalind." And as Hylda Prout bent over it, perplexed at first by the seeming scrawl, Furneaux's eye was on her face. He was aware of the instant when she recognized the handwriting, the instant when reasoning and the putting of two-and-two together began to work in her mind, the instant when her stare began to widen, and her tight-pressed lips to relax, the rush of color to fade from her face, and the mask of freckles to stand out darkly in strong contrast with her ivory white flesh. When she had stared for a long minute, and had had enough, she did not say anything, but turned away silently to stand at a window, her back to Furneaux. [pg 102] He looked at her, thinking: "She guesses, and suffers." Suddenly she whirled round. "May I—see that letter?" she asked in a low voice. "The whole note?" he said; "I'm afraid that it's private—not my secret—I regret it—an official document, you know." "All right," she said quietly. "You may come to me for help yet"—and turned to the pile of letters on the desk. "Anyway, Rosalind is not a relative, to your knowledge?" he persisted. "No." She stuffed the letters into a drawer, bowed, and was gone, leaving him sorry for her, for he saw a lump working in her throat. Some minutes after her disappearance, a plump little woman came in—Mrs. Hester Bates, housekeeper in the Osborne ménage. Her hair lay in smooth curves on her brow as on the upturned bulge of a china bowl. There was an apprehensive look in her upward-looking eyes, so Furneaux spoke comfortingly to her, after seating her near the window. "Don't be afraid to speak," he said reassuringly. "What you have to say is not necessarily against Mr. Osborne's interests. Just state the facts simply—you did see him here on the murder night, didn't you?" She muttered something, as a tear dropped on the ample bosom of her black dress. [pg 103] "Just a little louder," Furneaux said. "Yes," she sobbed, "I saw his back." "You were—where?" "Coming up the kitchen stairs to talk to Mr. Jenkins." "Don't cry. And when you reached the top of the kitchen stairs you saw his back on the house stairs—at the bottom? at the top?" "He was nearer the top. I only saw him a minute." "A moment, you mean, I think. And in that one moment you became quite sure that it was Mr. Osborne? Though it was only his back you saw?" "Yes, sir...." "No, don't cry. It's nothing. Only are you certain sure—that's the point?" "Yes, I am sure enough, but——" "But what?" "I thought he was the worse for drink, which was a mad thing." "Oh, you thought that. Why so?" "His feet seemed to reel from side to side—almost from under him." "His feet—I see. From side to side.... Ever saw him the worse for drink before?" "Never in all my life! I was amazed. Afterwards I had a feeling that it wasn't Mr. Osborne himself, but his spirit that I had seen. And it may have been his spirit! For my Aunt Pruie saw the [pg 104] spirit of her boy one Sunday afternoon when he was alive and well in his ship on the sea." "But a spirit the worse for drink?" murmured Furneaux; "a spirit whose feet seemed to reel?" She dropped her eyes, and presently wept a theory. "A spirit walks lighter-like than a Christian, sir." "Did you, though," asked Furneaux, making shorthand signs in his notebook, "did you have the impression that it might be a spirit at the time, or was it only afterwards?" "It was only afterwards when I thought matters over," said Mrs. Bates. "Even at the time it crossed my mind that there was something in it I didn't rightly understand." "Now, what sort of something?—can't you say?" "No, sir. I don't know." "And when you saw Mr. Jenkins immediately afterwards, did you mention to him that you had seen Mr. Osborne?" "No, I didn't say anything to him, nor him to me." "Pity.... But the hour. You have said, I hear, that it was five minutes to eight. Now, the murder was committed between 7.30 and 7.45; and at five to eight Mr. Osborne is said by more than one person to have been at the Ritz Hotel. If he was there, he couldn't have been here. If he was here, he couldn't have been there. Are you sure of the hour—five to eight?" As to that Mrs. Bates was positive. She had [pg 105] reason to remember, having looked at the clock à propos of the servants' supper. And Furneaux went away from her with eyes in which sparkled a light that some might have called wicked, and all would have called cruel, as when the cat hears a stirring, and crouches at the hole's rim with her soul crowded into an unblinking stare of expectation. He looked at his watch, took a cab to Waterloo, and while in the vehicle again studied that scrawled "Rosalind" on Osborne's letter to Janoc. "A trip to Tormouth should throw some light on it," he thought. "If it can be shown that he is actually in love—again—already——" and as he so thought, the cab ran out of St. James's Street into Pall Mall. "Look! quick! There—in that cab!" hissed a man at that moment to a girl with whom he was lurking in a doorway deep under the shadow of an awning near the corner. "Look!" "That's him!" "Sure? Look well!" "The very man!" "Well, of all the fatalities!" The cab dashed out of sight, and the man—Chief Inspector Winter—clapped his hand to his forehead in a spasm of sheer distraction and dismay. The woman with him was the murdered actress's cook, Bertha Seward, the same whom Inspector Clarke had one morning seen in earnest talk with Janoc under the pawnbroker's sign in St. Martin's Lane. [pg 106] Winter walked away from her, looking on the ground, seeking his lost wits there. Then suddenly he turned and overtook her again. "And you swear to me, Miss Seward," he said gravely, "that that very man was with your mistress in her flat on the evening of the murder?" "I would know him anywhere," answered the slight girl, looking up into his face with her oblique Chinese eyes that were always half shut as if shy of light. "I thought to myself at the time what a queer, perky person he was, and what working eyes the little man had, and I wondered who he could be. That's the very man in that cab, I'm positive." "And when you and Pauline went out to the Exhibition you left him with your mistress, you say?" "Yes, sir. They were in the drawing-room together; and quarreling, too, for her voice was raised, and she laughed twice in an angry way." "Quarreling—in French? You didn't catch—?" "No, it was in French." Inspector Winter leant his shoulder against the house-wall, and his head slowly sank, and then all at once dropped down with an air of utter abandonment, for Furneaux was his friend—he had looked on Furneaux as a brother. Furneaux, meantime, at Waterloo was taking train to Tormouth, and his fixed stare boded no good will to Rupert Osborne. <hr class="hr2" /> [pg 107] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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