The Shadow of the Rope by E. W. Hornung
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E. W. Hornung >> The Shadow of the Rope
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"I came to tell Mr. Steel," said Langholm, a little lamely.
"Excellent!" murmured that gentleman, with his self-complacent smile.
"But am I not to hear also?" demanded Rachel.
"My dear Mrs. Steel, there is very little to tell you as yet. I only
wish there were more. But one or two little points there are--if you
would not mind my first mentioning them to your husband?"
"Oh, of course."
There was no pique in the tone. There was only disappointment--and
despair.
"You manage a woman very prettily," remarked Steel, as they watched the
phaeton diminish down the drive like a narrow Roman road.
"You are the first who ever said so," rejoined the novelist, with a
rather heavy sigh.
"Well, let us have a cigar and your news. I confess I am interested. A
stroll, too, would be pleasanter than sitting indoors, don't you think?
The thickest walls have long ears, Langholm, when every servant in the
place is under notice. The whole lot? Oh, dear, yes--every mother's son
and daughter of them. It is most amusing; every one of them wants to
stay and be forgiven. The neighbors are little better. The excuses they
have stooped to make, some of them! I suppose they thought that we
should either flee the country or give them the sanguinary satisfaction
of a double suicide. Well, we are not going to do either one or the
other; we are agreed about that, if about nothing else. And my wife has
behaved like a trump, though she wouldn't like to hear me say so; it is
her wish that we should sit tighter than if nothing had happened, and
not even go to Switzerland as we intended. So we are advertising for a
fresh domestic crew, and we dine at Ireby the week after next. It is
true that we got the invitation before the fat fell into the fire, but I
fancy we may trust the Invernesses not to do anything startling. I am
interested, however, to see what they will do. It is pretty safe to be
an object-lesson to the countryside, one way or the other."
During this monologue the pair had strolled far afield with their
cigars, and Langholm was beginning to puff his furiously. At first he
had merely marvelled at the other's coolness; now every feeling in his
breast was outraged by the callousness, the flippancy, the cynicism of
his companion. There came a moment when Langholm could endure the
combination no longer. Steel seemed disposed to discuss every aspect of
the subject except that of the investigations upon which his very life
might depend. Langholm glanced at him in horror as they walked. The
broad brim of his Panama hat threw his face in shadow to the neck; but
to Langholm's heated imagination, it was the shadow of the black cap and
of the rope itself that he saw out of the corners of his eyes. It was
the shadow that had lit upon the wife the year before, happily to lift
forever; now it was settling upon the husband; and it rested with
Langholm--if it did rest with him--and how could he be sure? His mind
was off at a tangent. He was not listening to Steel; without ceremony he
interrupted at last.
"I thought you came out to listen to me?"
"My dear fellow," cried Steel, "and so, to be sure, I did! Why on earth
did you let me rattle on? Let me see--the point was--ah, yes! Of course,
my dear Langholm, you haven't really anything of any account to tell? I
considered you a Quixote when you undertook your quest; but I shall
begin to suspect a dash of Munchausen if you tell me you have found out
anything in the inside of a week!"
"Nevertheless," said Langholm, grimly, "I have."
"Anything worth finding out?"
"I think so."
"You don't mean to tell me you have struck a clew?"
"I believe I can lay hands upon the criminal," said Langholm, as quietly
as he could. But he was the more nervous man of the two.
The other simply stood still and stared his incredulity. The stare
melted into a smile. "My dear fellow!" he murmured, in a mild blend of
horror and reproof, as though it were the fourth dimension that Langholm
claimed to have discovered. It cost the discoverer no small effort not
to cry out that he could lay hands on him then and there. The unspoken
words were gulped down, and a simple repetition substituted at the last.
"I could swear to him myself," added Langholm. "It remains to be seen
whether there is evidence enough to convict."
"Have you communicated with the police?"
"Not yet."
"They seem to have some absurd bee in their helmet down here, you know."
"They don't get it from me."
It was impossible any longer to doubt the import of Langholm's earnest
and rather agitated manner. He was doing his best to suppress his
agitation, but that strengthened the impression that he had indeed
discovered something which he himself honestly believed to be the truth.
There was an immediate alteration in the tone and bearing of his host.
"My dear fellow," he said, "forgive my levity. If you have really found
out anything, it is a miracle; but miracles do happen now and then.
Here's the pond, and there's the boathouse behind those rhododendrons.
Suppose you tell me the rest in the boat? We needn't keep looking over
our shoulders in the middle of the pond!"
For an instant Langholm dreamt of the readiest and the vilest resource;
in another he remembered, not only that he could swim, but the insidious
sympathy for this man which a darker scoundrel had sown in his heart. It
had grown there like Jonah's gourd; only his flippancy affected it; and
Steel was far from flippant now. Langholm signed to him to lead the way,
and in a very few minutes they were scaring the wildfowl in mid-water,
Steel sculling from the after thwart, while Langholm faced him from the
crimson cushions.
"I thought," said the latter, "that I would like to tell you what sort
of evidence I could get against him before--before going any further.
I--I thought it would be fair."
Steel raised his bushy eyebrows the fraction of an inch. "It would be
fairest to yourself, I agree. Two heads are better than one, and--well,
I'm open to conviction still, of course."
But even Langholm was not conscious of the sinister play upon words; he
had taken out his pocket-book, and was nervously turning to the leaves
that he had filled during his most sleepless night in town.
"Got it all down?" said Steel.
"Yes," replied Langholm, without raising his eyes; "at least I did make
some notes of a possible--if not a really damning--case against the man
I mean."
"And what may the first point be?" inquired Steel, who was gradually
drifting back into the tone which Langholm had resented on the shore; he
took no notice of it now.
"The first point," said Langholm, slowly, "is that he was in Chelsea, or
at least within a mile of the scene of the murder, on the night that it
took place."
"So were a good many people," remarked Steel, smiling as he dipped the
sculls in and out, and let his supple wrists fall for the feather, as
though he were really rowing.
"But he left his--he was out at the time!" declared Langholm, making his
amended statement with all the meaning it had for himself.
"Well, you can't hang him for that."
"He will have to prove where he was, then."
"I am afraid it will be for you to prove a little more first."
Langholm sat very dogged with his notes. There had been a pause on
Steel's part; there was a thin new note in his voice. Langholm was too
grimly engrossed to take immediate heed of either detail, or to watch
the swift changes in the face which was watching him. And there he lost
most of all.
"The next point is that he undoubtedly knew Minchin in Australia--"
"Aha!"
"That he was and is a rich man, whereas Minchin was then on the verge of
bankruptcy, and that Minchin only found out that he was in England
thirty-six hours before his own death, when he wrote to his old friend
for funds."
"And you have really established all that!"
Steel had abandoned all pretence of rowing; his tone was one of
admiration, in both senses of the word, and his dark eyes seemed to
penetrate to the back of Langholm's brain.
"I can establish it," was the reply.
"Well! I think you have done wonders; but you will have to do something
more before they will listen to you at Scotland Yard. What about a
motive?"
"I was coming to that; it is the last point with which I shall trouble
you for the present." Langholm took a final glance at his notes, then
shut the pocket-book and put it away. "The motive," he continued,
meeting Steel's eyes at last, with a new boldness in his own--"the
motive is self-defence! There can be no doubt about it; there cannot be
the slightest doubt that Minchin intended blackmailing this man, at
least to the extent of his own indebtedness in the City of London."
"Blackmailing him?"
There was a further change of voice and manner; and this time nothing
was lost upon Charles Langholm.
"There cannot be the slightest doubt," he reiterated, "that Minchin was
in possession of a secret concerning the man in my mind, which secret he
was determined to use for his own ends."
Steel sat motionless, his eyes upon the bottom of the boat. It was
absolutely impossible to read the lowered face; even when at length he
raised it, and looked Langholm in the eyes once more, the natural
inscrutability of the man was only more complete than ever.
"So that is your case!" said he.
And even his tone might have been inspired either by awe or by contempt,
so truly rang the note between the two.
"I should be sorry to have to meet it," observed Langholm, "if I were
he."
"I should find out a little more," was the retort, "if I were you!"
"And then?"
"Oh, then I should do my duty like a man--and take all the emoluments I
could."
The sneer was intolerable. Langholm turned the color of brick.
"I shall!" said he through his mustache. "I have consulted you; there
will be no need to do so again. I shall make a point of taking you at
your word. And now do you mind putting me ashore?"
A few raindrops were falling when they reached the landing-stage; they
hurried to the house, to find that Langholm's bicycle had been removed
from the place where he had left it by the front entrance.
"Don't let anybody trouble," he said, ungraciously enough, for he was
still smarting from the other's sneer. "I can soon find it for myself."
Steel stood on the steps, his midnight eyes upon Langholm, the glint of
a smile in those eyes, but not the vestige of one upon his lips.
"Oh, very well," said he. "You know the side-door near the
billiard-room? They have probably put it in the first room on the left;
that is where we keep ours--for we have gone in for them at last.
Good-by, Langholm; remember my advice."
And, that no ceremony should be lost between them, the host turned on
his heel and disappeared through his own front door, leaving Langholm
very angry in the rain.
But anger was the last emotion for such an hour; the judge might as well
feel exasperated with the prisoner at the bar, the common hangman with
the felon on the drop. Langholm only wished that, on even one moment's
reflection, he could rest content in so primitive and so single a state
of mind. He knew well that he could not, and that every subtle sort of
contest lay before him, his own soul the arena. In the meantime let him
find his bicycle and get away from this dear and accursed spot; for dear
it had been to him, all that too memorable summer; but now of a surety
the curse of Cain brooded over its cold, white walls and deep-set
windows like sunken eyes in a dead face.
Langholm found the room to which he had been directed; in fact, he knew
it of old. And there were the two new Beeston Humbers; but their
lustrous plating and immaculate enamel did not shame his own old
disreputable roadster, for the missing machine certainly was not there.
Langholm was turning away when the glazed gun-rack caught his eye. Yes,
this was the room in which the guns were kept. He had often seen them
there. They had never interested him before. Langholm was no shot. Yet
now he peered through the glass--gasped--and opened one of the sliding
panels with trembling hand.
There on a nail hung an old revolver, out of place, rusty, most
conspicuous; and at a glance as like the relic in the Black Museum as
one pea to another. But Langholm took it down to make sure. And the
maker's name upon the barrel was the name that he had noted down at the
Black Museum; the point gained, the last of the cardinal points
postulated by the official who had shown him round.
The fortuitous discoverer of them all was leaving like a thief--more and
more did Langholm feel himself the criminal--when the inner door opened
and Steel himself stood beaming sardonically upon him.
"Sorry, Langholm, but I find I misled you about the bicycle. They had
taken it to the stables. I have told them to bring it round to the
front."
"Thank you."
"Sure you won't wait till the rain is over?"
"No, thank you."
"Well, won't you come through this way?"
"No, thank you."
"Oh, all right! Good-by, Langholm; remember my advice."
It was an inglorious exit that Langholm made; but he was thinking to
himself, was there ever so inglorious a triumph? He knew not what he had
said; there was only one thing that he did know. But was the law itself
capable of coping with such a man?
CHAPTER XXVII
THE WHOLE TRUTH
"Have the ladies gone?"
Langholm had ridden a long way round, through the rain, in order to
avoid them; nor was there any sign of the phaeton in the lane; yet these
were his first whispered words across the wicket, and he would not
venture to set foot upon the noisy wet gravel without Mrs. Brunton's
assurance that the ladies had been gone some time.
"And they've left him a different man," she added. "But what have you
been doing to get wet like that? Dear, dear, dear! I do call it foolish
of yer! Well, sir, get out o' them nasty wet things, or I shall have you
to nurse an' all!"
The kind, blunt soul bustled to bring him a large can of scalding water,
and Langholm bathed and changed before going near the invalid. He also
felt another man. The thorough wetting had cooled his spirit and calmed
his nerves. His head still ached for sleep, but now it was clear enough.
If only his duty were half as plain as the mystery that was one no
more! Yet it was something to have solved the prime problem; nay,
everything, since it freed his mind for concentration upon his own
immediate course. But Langholm reckoned without his stricken guest next
door; and went up presently, intending to stay five or ten minutes at
the most.
Severino lay smiling, like a happy and excited child. Langholm was sorry
to detect the excitement, but determined to cut his own visit shorter
than ever. It was more pleasing to him to note how neat and comfortable
the room was now, for that was his own handiwork, and the ladies had
been there to see it. The good Bruntons had moved most of their things
into the room to which they had themselves migrated. In their stead were
other things which Langholm had unearthed from the lumber in his upper
story, dusted, and carried down and up with his own hands. Thus at the
bedside stood a real Chippendale table, with a real Delft vase upon it,
filled with such roses as had survived the rain. A drop of water had
been spilt upon the table from the vase, and there was something almost
fussy in the way that Langholm removed it with his handkerchief.
"Oh," said Severino, "she quite fell in love with the table you found
for me, and Mrs. Woodgate wanted the vase. They were wondering if Mrs.
Brunton would accept a price."
"They don't belong to Mrs. Brunton," said Langholm, shortly.
"No? Mrs. Woodgate said she had never noticed them in your room. Where
did you pick them up?"
Langholm looked at the things, lamps of remembrance alight beneath his
lowered eyelids. "The table came from a little shop on Bushey Heath, in
Hertfordshire, you know. We--I was spending the day there once ... you
had to stoop to get in at the door, I remember. The vase is only from
Great Portland Street." The prices were upon his lips; both had been
bargains, a passing happiness and pride.
"I must remember to tell them when they come to-morrow," said Severino.
"They are the sort of thing a woman likes."
"They are," agreed Langholm, his lowered eyes still lingering on the
table and the vase "the sort of thing a woman likes ... So these women
are coming again to-morrow, are they?"
The question was quite brisk, when it came.
"Yes, they promised."
"Both of them, eh?"
"Yes, I hope so!" The sick man broke into eager explanations. "I only
want to see her, Langholm! That's all I want. I don't want her to
myself. What is the good? To see her and be with her is all I
want--ever. It has made me so happy. It is really better than if she
came alone. You see, as it is, I can't say anything--that matters. Do
you see?"
"Perfectly," said Langholm, gently.
The lad lay gazing up at him with great eyes. Langholm fancied their
expression was one of incredulity. Twilight was falling early with the
rain; the casement was small, and further contracted by an overgrowth of
creeper; those two great eyes seemed to shine the brighter through the
dusk. Langholm could not make his visit a very short one, after all. He
felt it would be cruel.
"What did you talk about, then?" he asked.
A small smile came with the answer, "You!"
"Me! What on earth had you to say about me?"
"I heard all you had been doing."
"Oh, that."
"You know you didn't tell me, that evening in town."
"No, I was only beginning, then."
It seemed some months ago--more months since that very afternoon.
"Have you found out anything?"
Langholm hesitated.
"Yes."
Why should he lie?
"Do you mean to say that you have any suspicion who it is?" Severino was
on his elbow.
"More than a suspicion. I am certain. There can be no doubt about it. A
pure fluke gave me the clew, but every mortal thing fits it."
Severino dropped back upon his pillow. Langholm seemed glad to talk to
him, to loosen his tongue, to unburden his heart ever so little. And,
indeed, he was glad.
"And what are you going to do about it?"
"That's my difficulty. She must be cleared before the world. That is the
first duty--if it could be done without--making bad almost worse!"
"Bad--worse? How could it, Langholm?"
No answer.
"Who do you say it is?"
No answer again. Langholm had not bargained to say anything to anybody
just yet.
Severino raised himself once more upon an elbow.
"I must know!" he said.
Langholm rose, laughing.
"I'll tell you who I thought it was at first," said he, heartily. "I
don't mind telling you that, because it was so absurd; and I think
you'll be the first to laugh at it. I was idiot enough to think it might
be you, my poor, dear chap!"
"And you don't think so still?" asked Severino, harshly. He had not been
the first to laugh.
"Of course I don't, my dear fellow."
"I wish you would sit down again. That's better. So you know it is some
one else?"
"So far as one can know anything."
"And you are going to try to bring it home to this man?"
"I don't know. The police may save me the trouble. I believe they are on
the same scent at last. Meanwhile, I have given him as fair a warning as
a man could wish."
Severino lay back yet again in silence and deep twilight. His breath
came quickly. A shiver seemed to pass through the bed.
"You needn't have done that," he whispered at last.
"I thought it was the fair thing to do."
"Yet you needn't have done it--because--your first idea was right!"
[Illustration: "I'll tell you who I thought it was at first," said he,
heartily.]
"Right?" echoed Langholm, densely. "My first idea was--right?"
"You said you first thought it was I who killed--her husband."
"It couldn't have been!"
"But it was."
Langholm got back to his feet. He could conceive but one explanation of
this preposterous statement. Severino's sickness had extended to his
brain. He was delirious. This was the first sign.
"Where are you going?" asked the invalid, querulously, as his companion
moved towards the door.
"When was the doctor here last?" demanded Langholm in return.
There was silence for a few moments, and then a faint laugh, that
threatened to break into a sob, from the bed.
"I see what you think. How can I convince you that I have all my wits
about me? I'd rather not have a light just yet--but in my bag you'll
find a writing-case. It is locked, but the keys are in my trouser's
pocket. In my writing-case you will find a sealed envelope, and in that
a fuller confession than I shall have breath to make to you. Take it
downstairs and glance at it--then come back."
"No, no," said Langholm, hoarsely; "no, I believe you! Yes--it was my
first idea!"
"I hardly knew what I was doing," Severino whispered. "I was delirious
then, if you like! Yet I remember it better than anything else in all my
life. I have never forgotten it for an hour--since it first came back!"
"You really were unconscious for days afterwards?"
"I believe it was weeks. Otherwise, you must know--she will be the first
to believe--I never could have let her--"
"My poor, dear fellow--of course--of course."
Langholm felt for the emaciated hand, and stroked it as though it had
been a child's. Yet that was the hand that had slain Alexander Minchin!
And Langholm thought of it; and still his own was almost womanly in the
tender pity of its touch.
"I want to tell you," the sick lad murmured. "I wanted to tell her--God
knows it--and that alone was why I came to her the moment I could find
out where she was. No--no--not that alone! I am too ill to pretend any
more. It was not all pretence when I let you think it was only passion
that drove me down here. I believe I should have come, even if I had had
nothing at all to tell her--only to be near her--as I was this
afternoon! But the other made it a duty. Yet, when she came this
afternoon, I could not do my duty. I had not the courage. It was too big
a thing just to be with her again! And then the other lady--I thanked
God for her too--for she made it impossible for me to speak. But to you
I must ... especially after what you say."
The man came out in Langholm's ministrations. "One minute," he said; and
returned in two or three with a pint of tolerable champagne. "I keep a
few for angel's visits," he explained; "but I am afraid I must light the
candle. I will put it at the other side of the room. Do you mind the
tumbler? Now drink, and tell me only what you feel inclined, neither
more nor less."
"It is all written down," began Severino, in better voice for the first
few drams: "how I first heard her singing through the open windows in
the summer--only last summer!--how she heard me playing, and how
afterwards we came to meet. She was unhappy; he was a bad husband; but I
only saw it for myself. He was nice enough to me in his way--liked to
send round for me to play when they had anybody there--but there was
only one reason why I went. Oh, yes ... the ground she trod on ... the
air she breathed! I make no secret of it now; if I made any then, it
was because I knew her too well, and feared to lose what I had got. And
yet--that brute, that bully, that coarse--"
He checked himself by an effort that stained his face a sickly brown in
the light of the distant candle. Langholm handed him the tumbler, and a
few more drams went down to do the only good--the temporary good--that
human aid could do for Severino now. His eyes brightened. He lay still
and silent, collecting strength and self-control.
"I was ill; she brought me flowers. I never had any constitution--trust
a Latin race for that--and I became very ill indeed. With a man like
you, a chill at worst; with me, pneumonia in a day. Then she came to see
me herself, saw the doctor, got in all sorts of things, and was coming
to nurse me through the night herself. God bless her for the thought
alone! I was supposed not to know; they thought I was unconscious
already. But I kept conscious on purpose, I could have lived through
anything for that alone. And she never came!
"My landlady sat up instead. She is another of the kindest women on
earth; she thought far more of me than I was ever worth, and it was she
who screened me through thick and thin during the delirium that
followed, and after that. She did not tell the whole truth at the trial;
may there be no mercy for me hereafter if the law is not merciful to
that staunch soul! She has saved my life--for this! But that night--it
was her second in succession--and she had been with me the whole long
day--that night she fell asleep beside me in the chair. I can hear her
breathing now.
"Dear soul, how it angered me at the time! It made me fret all the more
for--her. Why had she broken faith? I knew that she had not. Something
had kept her; had he? I had hoped he was out of the way; he left her so
much. He was really on the watch, as you may know. At last I got up and
went to the window. And all the windows opposite were in darkness except
theirs."
Langholm sprang to his feet, but sat down again as suddenly.
"Go on!"
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