The Coward Behind the Curtain

"I could not have done that, ever."

"No; I suppose you couldn't." But he meant one thing; and, in her heart, she meant another. He went on: "So soon as I did know your address I tore off by the very next boat and train to see you. I can give you no idea of what were my feelings of amazement when the good ladies at the convent told me that you had gone."

"But didn't you know that I had gone?"

"Didn't I know that you had gone! Did I know that the heavens had fallen! I have had some curious moments in my life; but I verily believe that the one in which I learnt that you had left the convent with Mr George Emmett was the most singular of them all."

"But had he no right to take me away?"

"Right! That-that-we must not speak ill of the dead, so I will say-that gentleman!"

"But he said he was my guardian."

"So those ladies told me. If the dead have any knowledge of what takes place in this world, I wonder what your father's feelings were when he became informed of his assumption of that-delicate office; I should think he nearly jumped out of his grave. Especially as he must have been conscious that the fault was again his own. Emmett was within easy distance of the place at which your father died. He got there before I did; and he gained access to your father's papers. Fortunately he was interrupted before, as was supposed, he had an opportunity to work any material mischief; but not, apparently, before he had obtained at least two pieces of information. I have no doubt that he found out how much money your father had left; obviously, also, your address; and on that information he promptly acted. He never lacked audacity; but when he carried you off in that fashion his courage must surely have been at its highest." For the first time the speaker showed signs of restlessness; beginning to move about the cabin as if constrained to find relief for his feelings in motion of some sort. "The most astounding part of it was, that he had duped those innocent females with a completeness which was bewildering; no one had the dimmest notion where he had gone, with you; he had left no tracks behind him. A man with an unknown motor car, who knows the highways and byways of Europe better than some people know their back gardens, is not always an easy object to trace. I got wind of him again and again; but I believe some occult sense warned him of my pursuit; more than once it was as if he had slipped through my fingers; till at last I could get no news of him at all. It was as if he had vanished into space. So far I had chased him singlehanded; feeling that this was an account which I should like to settle with him singlehanded; but, in the end, I retired, beaten; resolved to employ those resources of civilisation which, hitherto, I had slighted; and, on the very day on which I had finally so resolved, I found him." The man was working himself into a state of excitement which was communicating itself to his listener; as was plain from the strained eagerness with which she was hanging on his every word. "You remember Billson?"

"Oh yes, I remember Billson; I shall not easily forget him."

"I also remembered Billson-luckily. I had been visiting a friend when I saw, outside a tavern door, a motor car, with a chauffeur standing by it whom I seemed to recognise. For a second I hesitated; then I had it; it was Billson, Emmett's chauffeur. At the same instant he recognised me and, scrambling into the car, would have been off if I hadn't stopped him. The fellow had been drinking."

"It seemed to me that he always had."

"Like his master."

"The master used to get more horribly drunk than the man."

"Pleasant society for you to be alone in."

"It wasn't-nice."

The word came from her with a little gasp; which, as he noticed it, seemed to increase Arnecliffe's restlessness.

"I couldn't get anything out of him at first. It was only when I made it quite clear that if he didn't tell me what I wanted to know I should hand him over to the nearest policeman that he began to tell me things, for some of which I could have twisted his neck off his shoulders, then and there, only I refrained. Finally, he informed me that his master's address, for at least that night, was 'The Bolton Arms Hotel,' Newcaster. As to whether or not you were in his company he professed ignorance, and, possibly, he did not know. Within half-an-hour I was being borne as fast as an express could carry me to Newcaster. It was latish in the evening when I got there. When I reached 'The Bolton Arms' they told me Mr Emmett was dining. I said to the waiter that my name was Gilbert. I hardly know why; I had a sort of hazy idea that he would come rushing down to see what Gilbert it could possibly be. Then I called the waiter back, and, scribbling 'A messenger from Harry Gilbert' on a scrap of paper, sent him up with that instead. When Emmett came down he was inclined to bluster, but the house was crowded. Many of those who were there I fancy knew him, either by sight or reputation. He was quick enough at appreciating the odds on any given event; he saw that here was a case in which bluster wouldn't pay. He took me upstairs to his private sitting-room; we found it empty. I had a notion that finding it empty was a surprise to him. The dinner-table was laid for two; I had a strong feeling that he had expected to find whoever it was he had been dining with still at table; that the discovery of his, or her, absence came upon him with something of a shock. I asked him with whom he had been dining. He said with his wife. 'Your wife!' I cried. He laughed, and said that he was perhaps a little in front of events in speaking of her as his wife; but that she ought to be his wife; and that, if she behaved herself, before long she should be. She came of a bad stock, he added, and his treatment of her entirely depended on her own behaviour. Knowing that he had been tearing about Europe with you; thinking of what Billson had told me; his suggestiveness, his words, his tone, his manner, these things were pretty hard to bear. Oh, I'll go into a court of justice, and admit that I'd have liked to have taken him by the throat and have choked the life out of him then and there. I asked him where you were. He looked me up and down, evidently inquiring of himself how much I knew, and then said that you were in safe-keeping hundreds of miles from Newcaster."

"But I was there, in the room!"

Mr Arnecliffe stared.

"There, in the room? But how could that have been possible?"

She explained. He stared still more.

"Did he know?"

"I couldn't say; it was not easy to tell what he knew. I wondered then, and I've wondered since."

"Then you heard all that was said?"

"I heard, without understanding. You've no idea what a state of mind I was in; I was more than half out of my wits. I don't remember a single word either of you said; you might have been talking in a foreign tongue. I didn't seem to hear your words then. You see, I didn't know who you were; I didn't even know who he was, except that he said he was my guardian; that I seemed wholly at his mercy; and that I was in mortal terror of him. All that you have said about my father, and mother, and everything is strange to me. In that room at 'The Bolton Arms' I was the most ignorant, helpless, friendless, miserable creature in the world!"

"What had taken place between you?"

"He wanted me to marry him; he had wanted to before. He said I should have to marry him, and it seemed to me I should, and I would rather have died."

"You saw what took place, if you didn't hear?"

"Oh yes, I saw; and-and-"

"That was the worst?"

"No, no; that is not what I was going to say; nor was that what I felt. I didn't know who you were; I didn't know what your quarrelling with him was about; yet, I felt that you were my friend."

"By what instinct?"

"I can hardly tell you; I suppose it was an instinct of self-preservation. You see, I was half paralysed with fear; all my remaining senses were bound up in the desire to escape from him-that was the only thing for which I cared-to escape."

"Then you did not hear what was the actual provocation?"

"No; I think I heard you say he was a thief; but I am not sure; even that may have been only in imagination."

"I did say he was a thief. He was trying to steal your money; he had stolen you; he had stolen many things in his time; he was a thief many times over. But I said more than that." He paused; again his mouth was twisted by that whimsical smile. "All these things which I am saying to you I should not say-at least, in such a shape-were it not that, placed as I am, I must take the fullest advantage of the only opportunity which is ever likely to offer. You and I are meeting for the first time and the last; we shall never see each other again."

"Why?"

Again the pause, and the smile.

"In courts of justice, out of England, sentimental reasons sometimes prevail; but, in England, no. The stronger the motive, the greater the crime. As when you and I bid each other, presently, good-bye I shall entrust myself to the safe-keeping of our excellent police, it is not unlikely that, in the book which contains my story, the last page is practically finished, and that the colophon is all that remains to be added." She was still; but not with the stillness which signifies acquiescence. He went on: "I say this in order that you may understand why it is that I think it desirable that you should be placed in possession of certain facts which you ought to know; even though I may have to do it with what seems brutal brusqueness. That, also, is why I'm anxious to take advantage of the only chance which I am ever likely to have to assure you that I did not do what I did without what seemed to me then, and seems to me still, to be sufficient provocation. He made a certain definite, hideous statement regarding your mother, and regarding you; and when I warned him to be careful, and withdraw it, he said that, so far from withdrawing it, he would proclaim it publicly wherever he went; and because, knowing the man, I believed that he would do so I killed him."

"I should not have blamed you if you had done so; I think I would have done it myself if I had dared; but-you didn't kill him."

CHAPTER XXII

THE TELEGRAM

Mr Arnecliffe regarded the girl, in silence, for a second or two, as if puzzled; when he did speak it seemed, from the question he put, that he had not grasped her meaning.

"Then, from your post of vantage, you did not see all that occurred?"

"I saw you hit him."

"And with that blow I killed him. If, by your words, you mean that this was a case in which killing was no murder-that's another story. Should I be asked, in the dock, if my intent were homicidal, I doubt if, even with the rope dangling in front of me, I should be able to say that it was not. With a clear conscience I could not confidently assert that the design to kill him did not come into my heart the moment Billson told me that he was at 'The Bolton Arms Hotel.'"

"All the same, you did not kill him."

"You say that, having seen me? I am not afraid to bear the consequences of what I did; I am even not ashamed of what I did. I will certainly not seek salvation by attempting to conceal plain facts."

"But you have your facts all wrong. You know only half the story; I know it all. I doubt if I'm not as much responsible for his death as you are."

"Child, you're dreaming. How can that be, since, when I found him he was alive, and when I left him he was dead?"

"In the first place, I believe I knew, all along, that you were going to kill him; I had, in a way I can't describe, a premonition of what was going to happen."

"So, even from behind your curtain, you perceived, from the first, my homicidal intention-which makes it bad for me."

"But still worse for me; because I might have saved him had I chose; but I didn't choose. My one feeling was that you were going to help me to escape; and-I was glad."

"Is that what you meant when you said that part of the responsibility was yours, you fantastic child?"

"No; I will tell you what I meant, if you will listen-and you will see that I'm not fantastic."

She told him what had happened after he left the sitting-room, having propped George Emmett up in his chair. Of how the supposed dead man had been laid on the table; of how, when she was left alone with him in the darkness, she had heard sounds which unmistakably showed that he was coming back to life; and of how, in his struggles, he had fallen from the table on to the floor. He heard her with growing amazement; interrupting her now and then with exclamations. When she had finished he was silent; as if he were turning over what she had said in his mind; then, looking her very straight in the face, he asked her, with that queer smile of his:

"Are you quite sure that imagination played no part in this strange story; and that you've not told it me in the hope that it might do me a service?"

As she answered him her manner was disdainful.

"In other words, you are asking if I have not deliberately told you what I know to be false. It is no use your pretending that is not what you asked; because, as you're very well aware, that's what your question comes to. It so happens that there's a sequel to what you call my strange story which may perhaps convince even you. That person in the boat who just now advised us to take refuge here was the one who took me from Newcaster to Mrs Vernon's house. It was he who gave me shelter when at last I escaped from 'The Bolton Arms.'"

"Then in that case he's a man I should very much like to know. What is his name?"

"He told me, Eric Frazer; but it seems that, really and truly, he's the Earl of Strathmoira."

She spoke as if she felt that such a style and title only ought to be uttered in tones of reverential awe-but it was not with any show of reverence that he heard it.

"Strathmoira? I know something of the man. He's an eccentric."

"Pray what do you mean by that?"

This sterner manner suggested something very like indignation; as if she resented what she suspected might be an imputation. He laughed at her.

"I assure you that I mean nothing to his disadvantage; only that he's a person who has ideas of his own, and who puts them into practice."

"Well, and why shouldn't he? If the ideas are not bad ones?"

"Why shouldn't he-indeed! If more of us followed his example we might be both happier and wiser. But-what's that sequel you were speaking of?"

She eyed him as if she were still in doubt as to whether or not he hinted depreciation of the absent Mr Frazer.

"I'm coming to it, if you'll have a second's patience. Yesterday morning, early, he went into Newcaster, and there he learnt not only that Mr Emmett had fallen from the table to the floor-in fact, and not in my imagination only-but also that it was the fall which had actually killed him, and not your blow at all."

"How came Strathmoira to discuss the subject with you?"

"He knew all; and I told him everything."

"Wasn't that rather a risky thing to do?"

"I didn't tell him anything till he had found out for himself all that I had to tell. Besides, are you hinting that he might have betrayed me? You say you know something of him; you can't know much! So far from betraying me he nearly got himself into the most frightful trouble through trying to keep me what he thought safe. I don't know what he wouldn't have done rather than let any what he would have called harm come to me. It frightens me when I think of it now."

"Lucky man!"

"I don't know why you say that. It seems to me that he was very unlucky ever to have come across me-I bring ill-luck to everyone! It is I who am lucky altogether beyond anything I deserve. However, I didn't mean to discuss Mr Frazer-I mean the Earl of Strathmoira-it seems such an extraordinary thing that an actual earl should have done all that he did for me."

"It does!"

"Yes, it does! I don't know what you mean, but it is an extraordinary thing! You can laugh at me."

"But I wasn't!"

"You were very nearly-however, I don't care. I was about to say that the point is that you can see for yourself that, since it was the fall from the table which was the cause of Mr Emmett's death, it's quite plain that, as I said, you didn't kill him."

"Miss Gilbert, you would make an excellent lawyer."

"You are laughing at me again. Pray why now?"

"I assure you that I am not doing so in any opprobrious sense. Only, while I quite see your point, it seems to me that it's one rather for lawyers than for a plain man."

"Why? It is a plain statement of a plain fact!"

"Still, the fact remains-doesn't it? – that if it had not been for the blow I struck him he would not have died?"

"It doesn't follow; if they hadn't put him on the table he might have been alive now."

"Who might have been alive now? Excuse me if I startle you; but you were so interested in each other's conversation that, in the din of this orchestral display with which the elements are favouring us, my modest knocking went unnoticed. I knocked even twice; then, as I was a little damp, I thought it possible that you might forgive me if I came in out of the wet."

The speaker was the soi-disant Eric Frazer, whose tapping, in the heat of their discussion, had gone unnoticed. Not alone was he, as he put it, a little damp; he was obviously soaking wet. His clothes stuck to him as if they were glued to his skin; looking the more remarkable because, originally, they had been very nice clothes indeed-the cherished productions of a fashionable tailor. His hair and moustache were plastered to his head and face. Water trickled from him in rivulets on to the pretty carpet which covered the cabin floor. At sight of the spectacle which he presented Dorothy gave a cry of dismay.

"Oh, what has happened?"

The new-comer looked at her with that twinkle in his eyes which she had already found it so difficult to meet. In spite of the singularity of his appearance, his manner was as imperturbable as ever.

"My dear Miss Gilbert, the greatest joke. I have always wondered what it would feel like to swim in your best Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, and now I've had such a chance of finding out. Only you can take it from me that, in the water, patent-leather buttoned boots are a mistake. I had to take mine off. And as I'm not quite sure where I left them, I must beg you to forgive me if, for the moment, my feet are only concealed from your sight by socks. May I ask you to do me the honour of making me known to this gentleman, and this gentleman to me."

Dorothy looked as if she did not know what to make of him; one had a notion that she had not once known what to make of him, since the moment of their first meeting.

"But you-you look as if you had been nearly drowned."

"Not at all; merely moistened. Between ourselves, I am not sure whether, on a night like this, it is drier in the river, or out of it. What did you say was this gentleman's name?"

"This is Mr Arnecliffe."

"And I am the Earl of Strathmoira. May I take it, Mr Arnecliffe, that you are an old friend of Miss Gilbert's?"

"I am an old friend of her father's; and I should have hoped, if time had permitted, to have become also a friend of his daughter's; but-time doesn't permit."

"Doesn't it? Is that so? Why doesn't time permit?"

Dorothy burst out, with sudden warmth: "I wish you wouldn't talk like that! I wish you wouldn't!"

Strathmoira glanced from one to the other. "If Miss Gilbert wishes you wouldn't talk like that, why do you, Mr Arnecliffe? And what might be the meaning of your cryptic observation, anyhow?"

"Referring to what I see the papers speak of as 'the Newcaster tragedy'; Miss Gilbert informs me that you are already acquainted with part of the story; her part. If I supplement it with my part, you will find that my observation at once ceases to by cryptic."

Strathmoira regarded the speaker as if he were endeavouring to find out what kind of man he was; then he shook his head.

"A cryptogram is so often spoilt by the solution; it ceases to be mysterious directly you know what it means; and it generally means so little. With your sanction, Miss Gilbert, I think I will hang my coat over the back of a chair; I fancy it may dry more quickly off me than on. I imagine, Mr Arnecliffe, that your supplement merely amounts to the fact that you're the bottle man."

"Practically; so you will perceive for yourself in what sense time, for me, is limited."

"I'm dull, Mr Arnecliffe, dull. I don't see."

"Then I will try to make myself more explicit. As I propose, presently, to hand myself over to the custody of the police, I am not likely to be able to do much more in the way of making friends."

Dorothy made as if to speak; but the earl stopped her.

"Pardon me, Miss Gilbert, but-may I conduct what promises to be this pleasant little discussion with Mr Arnecliffe? Why, sir, do you show this predilection for the society of the police? And as I am rather disposed to put myself, at the earliest possible moment, into some of the garments which I am hopeful Mr Vernon, or his son, keeps somewhere on the premises, will you be so good as to make your answer brief, and to the point?"

"You know what is the charge against me; why should I run away? – why shouldn't I face it?"

"You take something for granted; because, it so happens, that I don't know there is a charge against you. I know that there is a charge against Miss Gilbert; and also another, rather a droll one, against me."

"Against you!" cried the girl. "What is the charge against you?"

His lordship waved his hand airily.

"My dear Miss Gilbert, the police, on occasion, are such humorists, it is not a matter of the slightest consequence. Rest easy in your mind; I am in danger neither of penal servitude nor of execution. What I wish to explain is, I am not aware that Mr Arnecliffe has been explicitly mentioned in the matter at all; therefore, as I have already remarked, it appears to me that he takes a good deal for granted."

"Doesn't what you have yourself said more than justify the course I propose to pursue?"

"How? Pray how? Do, sir, explain!"

"You admit that a charge of complicity is being made against Miss Gilbert, of which she is entirely innocent."

"I am not entirely innocent! I am not!"

"'Ssh, Miss Gilbert, 'ssh! please permit the gentleman to continue; and we'll take the lady's innocence for granted, sir."

"But that's just what you sha'n't do-that's just what I won't have-I know that I'm not innocent!"

"Very good; since the young lady apparently prefers it, we will take her guilt for granted, Mr Arnecliffe. I don't suppose that a little trifle of that sort will seriously affect the line of reasoning you were about to follow. Pray, Miss Gilbert, suffer the gentleman to make his meaning clear-I do so want to get into a suit of somebody else's clothes. Now, Mr Arnecliffe, you were saying?"

"If I go to the nearest policeman, and say, as I intend to do, I am the man who murdered George Emmett, so far as Miss Gilbert is concerned, the matter will be at an end."

"Your reason is based upon more than one fallacy, really. Consider-a warrant has been issued for Miss Gilbert's arrest-good! or, if you prefer it, bad. Do you suppose the police won't execute that warrant, if they get a chance, merely because you say she's innocent? They'll keep her under lock and key until there is some more substantial proof of her innocence than your bare word; if it can be avoided you surely don't wish to subject her to the inconvenience of spending even a few hours in jail. There is another point. From what I can gather she is the only material witness of your guilt; yet she assured me that, though they put her in the witness-box, she wouldn't give evidence against you."

"I wouldn't-I'd die first!"

"You hear? There's a refractory position to take up! From what I have seen of the young lady I shouldn't be surprised if she kept her word, to the extent of defying judge and jury-conceive the pains and penalties which your inconsiderate action would bring down on her devoted head."

"What do you suggest? You know that she has already been arrested once, and that she only escaped-"

"Through your dropping the unfortunate policeman into the river-I know."

"He is hardly likely to let the matter rest where it is in consequence."