The Crime and the Criminal

This I learned from his own lips when I met him again in London.

It seemed that, when she had left him the girl had gone on to the stage-attaching herself to a variety show. From that she had passed to a burlesque troupe. The burlesque troupe had gone to England-she went with it. The burlesque troupe returned-she had stayed behind. No doubt for reasons of her own. Jack Haines wanted very much to know what those reasons were, because, no sooner had the troupe gone, and left her, than she vanished. No one seemed to have the faintest notion what had become of her. She had simply disappeared-gone clean out of sight.

The old man had come over to see if he could not succeed where others had failed; if he could not light on the clue which others had missed.

The desire to find the girl had become with him a regular mania. It was like a bee in his bonnet. It occupied his thoughts, to the exclusion of all else, both by night and day. As I have said, the man was becoming a nuisance. I did not want to quarrel with him, but I saw that, without a quarrel, I never should be rid of him. He insisted on making me his confidant. And, although I took care never to give him a chance to say a word outright, I knew that, as soon as he had found the girl, he would renew that hint about the desirability of keeping the partnership alive.

On the day after that little trip to Brighton, he turned up in my drawing-room. I had run over to Kensington High Street for something. When I came back, there he was-and I was not by any means best pleased to see him there.

I should have disliked him for one thing if I had disliked him for nothing else-he was so deadly serious. I do not think I ever saw him smile. Indeed, I doubt if he had a smile left in him. He had no sense of humour, and, to him, a joke was as meaningless as double Dutch. He was bald at the top of his head, his face was as long as one's arm, his eyes generally had an expressionless, fishlike sort of stare, and, since he had assumed the garb of respectability, he was always attired in funeral black. He seemed to be under the impression that that was the only hue in which respectability could appear. As for his temper, it varied from doubtful to bad, and from bad to worse, and when he was in a rage, which he quickly was, he was by no means an agreeable person to have to deal with. He and Daniel were always falling out, and, until I came upon the scene, he used to ride over poor dear Daniel roughshod. But, when I did I let him understand that whoever fell out with Daniel fell out with me.

For my part, I did not wonder so much at his daughter's having run away as at her having lived with him as long as she did.

His hat was on one chair, his umbrella on another, he himself sat, with his hands clasped in front of him, on a little centre table, in an attitude which suggested that he was about to offer prayer. He did not rise as I entered-respectability has not yet worked such havoc with him as that. He stared at me as I went in, solemnly speechless, as if he wondered how I could venture to interrupt the meeting.

"Well, Mr. Haines, any news?"

I did not care if there was any news, but I did object to his sitting and staring at me like that.

"She is dead."

"Dead! – You don't mean it! – How do you know?"

"It was told me last night in a dream."

Among the rest of his little peculiarities, he was one of the most superstitious creatures breathing. In religion, I believe, he called himself a spiritualist. Anyhow, he was always seeing things, and hearing things, and having things revealed to him. Talking to him in some of his moods reminded one of that scene in Richard II. where the poor dear king wants to sit upon a gravestone and talk of epitaphs.

"Is that the only reason why you know that she is dead-because it was told you in a dream?"

"Do not mock at me. The voice which speaks to me in visions does not lie. I saw a coffin lying in an open grave, and 'Louise O'Donnel' was on the coffin-lid."

"You did not happen to see in which particular graveyard that grave might be located."

"I did not. But I know that she is dead. My daughter, oh, my daughter!"

I had to turn aside to smile. I grant that it was not a subject for laughter-but he was so funny!

"And as I looked the coffin-lid was lifted. And, on her breast, there was an open wound."

He rose slowly, painfully, inch by inch. He pointed with his right hand towards the floor.

"Woman, my daughter has been slain."

"Really, Mr. Haines, you are always seeing the most dreadful things in dreams. If I were you I should take less supper."

"It's not the supper. It's the spirit."

"Well, in that case, I should take less of that."

He frowned.

"You know very well what I mean. I am not speaking of the spirit of alcohol, but of the spirit of the soul. Now one task is ended. Another is begun. I will be the avenger of blood. Mine will it be to execute judgment on him who has destroyed my daughter's body, having first of all destroyed her soul."

"Jack Haines, what nonsense you do talk."

"What do you mean, woman?"

"My good man, do you think that you awe me by your persistence in calling me woman? I am a woman; but let me tell you in confidence that you strike me as only being part of a man!"

"You jeer at me. You are always jeering. You know not what you say."

"That is good-from you. Your style of conversation may have been suited to Strikehigh City, where they all were lunatics. But in London it is out of place."

"London! – bah!"

He threw out his arms, as if to put the idea of London clean behind him.

"Precisely. Then if it's London! – bah! Why don't you return to Strikehigh City?"

"I will finish the work which I came to do. Then I will return."

I had sat down on an easy-chair. I had crossed my legs, and was swinging my foot in the air. Old Haines stood glowering down at me, clenching his fists to hold his temper in. I looked him up and down. After all he was, every inch of him, a narrow-minded, cross-grained, hidebound New Englander.

"You are more likely to see the inside of a prison if you don't take care. You know, they manage things differently upon this side. Jack Haines, let me speak to you a word in season-a candid word. It may do you good. You killed your wife; I do not mean legally, but you killed her all the same. A prolonged course of you would be sufficient to kill any wife."

"Woman!"

"You drove your daughter from you. So unwilling was she to have it known that she was connected with you, that she took her mother's name. She called herself Louise O'Donnel. Under that name she came to England. Conscious that, even underneath her mother's name, you might trace her out in England, she has changed her name again. Under that new name she is deliberately hiding herself away from you."

"It is false."

"It may be. It is but a surmise. But, as such, it is at least as much likely to be correct as yours."

"She is dead."

"You have not one jot or tittle of proof that she is anything of the kind."

"I will have proof." He brought down his fist upon my pretty, fragile table with a crash. "I will have proof."

"Don't destroy the furniture."

"Furniture!" He glared at the inoffensive table as if he would have liked to have chopped it into firewood. "You should not anger me. I say that I will have proof. And I will have proof of who it is has murdered her. And I will find him, though he hides himself in the uttermost corners of the earth. And when I have found him I will have a quittance."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Do you not know what I mean? Have you known me so short a time that you should need to ask?"

"Do you mean that, if there is anything in these wild dreams of yours, you will kill the man who has killed your girl?"

He raised his hands above his head in a sort of paroxysm.

"Like a dog."

"Then let me tell you that you are treading the road which leads to the gallows. They manage things in their own way upon this side. Killing's murder here. And the more excuse you think you have the tighter you're likely to fit the rope about your neck."

"The hemp has not been sown which shall hang me on an English gallows. Do you think I am afraid?"

He gave me the creeps. Although it surpassed my powers to adequately explain the thing, I knew that he had a trick of seeing things which had taken place before they became known to other people. I had had unpleasant experience of it more than once. One might begin by laughing at what he called his dreams and his visions, but, in the end, the laugh was apt to be upon the other side.

It was quite possible that his girl was dead. Young, pretty, simple, innocent, alone in a foreign land-what more possible? It was even possible that she had been done to death. Some one might think that no one would miss her. In that case, that some one might as well at once place himself in the hangman's hands as wait to interview Jack Haines.

I was glad to be rid of him. He was not a cheerful companion at the best of times. But since he had got this bee in his bonnet he was more than I could stand.

In the afternoon I went to see Kate Levett. Kate and I had been together in Pfeinmann's "King of the Castle Operatic Combination." We were friends all through. I fancy it was a case of "a fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind" – after a fashion we were girls of a feather. When the Combination came to eternal grief at Strikehigh City, we went different ways. I stayed where I was, Kate went East. It was at Boston she married Ferdinand Levett. He was touring at that time through the States as acting manager for a famous English comedy company. It was a case of marriage at first sight as it were. It proved to be the best thing Kate had ever done in her life. Levett turned out a regular trump, and they hit it off together to a T. Now they were settled in England, and, although Kate had kept off the boards, they were doing uncommonly well in a modest sort of a way.

When I turned up at their flat on the Thames Embankment, at the back of the Strand, Kate wanted me to stay and dine. So I stayed. After dinner we went to a theatre. Levett was at business-managing the Colosseum, so we went there. To finish up, we went back to supper at the flat.

I had gone originally to Kate with the idea of gleaning a little information. Before I left I had got all that I wanted, and, perhaps, a little more. What I wished to find out was whether Kate knew anything about a Mr. Reginald Townsend. She and her husband knew something about all sorts and conditions of men, and it struck me that my friend, the gentleman, was just the sort of man of whom one or the other of them might have heard.

I did not want to seem too anxious. So I just slipped my question in casually, as if I was indifferent whether I received an answer to it or not. I kept it till after supper. Kate was at the piano strumming through all the latest things in comic songs. I was lolling in a rocker, joining in the chorus whenever there was a chorus. Ferdinand was taking his ease upon a couch. We were all as snug as we could be. Kate had been saying she knew somebody or other, I don't know who, when I struck in.

"Between you, you two seem to know pretty nearly every one."

"Those whom we don't know are not worth knowing."

"Quite right, my dear!" – this from Ferdinand, on the couch.

"Have you ever heard of a Mr. Townsend?"

"What! – Reggie Townsend?"

She spun round on the piano-stool like a catherine-wheel.

"Reginald Townsend-that's it."

She and her husband looked at each other-in that meaning sort of way.

"Fred, have we ever heard of Reginald Townsend?"

Ferdinand laughed. She held out her hands in front of her.

"Why, my dear, there have been times and seasons when we've heard of little else but Reginald Townsend."

"Perhaps your man is not my man. My man's tall."

"So's our man!"

"And dark."

"You couldn't paint our man blacker than he is."

"And very-very swagger, don't you know."

"Our man's the swaggerest man in town. It's impossible that there could be two Reginald Townsends. What do you know of him?"

"Oh, I only met him once. But he rather struck me."

"Take care that he doesn't strike you too much. He's not only the swaggerest, he's also the wickedest man in town. I could tell you tales of him which would shock your innocent ears. He's a terror, isn't he, Fred?"

"He has rather liberal ideas on the subject of the whole duty of man."

"I should rather think he has."

And Kate went off at score. I could see from what she said that my friend the gentleman was all my fancy painted him. When she gave me an opening, I slipped another word in edgeways.

"Is he received in respectable society?"

"That depends, my dearest child, upon what you call respectable society. He's the boon companion of dukes, marquises, and earls, and that kind of thing. He visits the best houses and the best people. But I was raised at Salem, Mass., and our ideas of respectable society were perhaps our own. I haven't found that they obtain to any considerable extent round here."

It was scandalously late when I left for home.

The same thing occupied my thoughts in the cab as on the night before-my friend the gentleman. Whatever could have made him do the thing which he had done? That is, if Kate's Reginald Townsend was mine-of which, by the way, I had no doubt. A man may be all that's bad; he may be worse than a murderer, but he takes particularly good care not, if he can help it, to be the thing itself. What could it be which, in the judgment of a man in his position, had compelled him to place himself within the shadow of the gallows?

The problem occupied my mind. The man had been placed by nature in such a fortunate position. It appeared that he had so much to lose-and he had lost it all! What for? I wondered. What was it which had constrained him to choose between the devil and the deep sea-and then to choose the devil?

As I thought of it, and how handsome he was, and how well bred, and how there was everything to please a woman's taste, and to gratify her eye, a wild notion germinated in my brain-which was watered by circumstances, and grew.

I dismissed the cab at the end of my road. The night, though dark, was fine. The horse was tired. I had no objection to saving the creature's legs by walking the rest of the way. I did not suppose that, at that hour of the night, or, rather, of the morning, there would be any one about.

In supposing that, however, I was wrong.

The street was a pretty long one. When I got about half way along it I perceived that a cab was stopping at a house in front of me. As I reached the cab a man got out of it in a fashion which, to say the least of it, was rather sudden. He plunged on to the pavement, rather than stepped on to it. As his feet touched solid ground, he turned towards me.

It was Tommy Tennant!

For a moment I was frightened half out of my wits. It was such an hour, he was without a hat, he looked wild and dishevelled, his appearance at such a place-within a stone's throw of my own house-at such a moment was so wholly unexpected, that it fairly took my breath away.

But if his appearance startled me, my appearance seemed to have an even more startling effect upon him. He gave one glance at me and tumbled in a heap on to the pavement.

The driver of the hansom leaned down towards me from his perch.

"It's all right, miss; he's only been enjoying of hisself. The cold stones will cool 'is head."

I said nothing; I hurried on.

CHAPTER XXIII

MR. TOWNSEND COMES TO TEA

I have not lived in the world so long as I have done, and seen so much of it, without realising how small a world, after all, it really is, and how full it is of coincidence; but I do think that this beats all the coincidences of which I ever heard.

To think that I should have pitched on the one street in London which Mr. Thomas Tennant has chosen for a residence! It seems that I have. I lay awake for an hour trying to account for his sudden appearance from that cab. At last I hit on something. I sat up in bed with quite a jump.

"Can it be possible that he lives in this street?"

Rest was out of the question till I had made sure. I got out of bed-it was nearer five than four-and I tiptoed my way downstairs. I routed out a directory, and I hunted up the street. Sure enough he did. There was his name, as large as life-"Thomas Tennant." He lived at No. 29. My house was blank-it had been empty at the time the directory had gone to press-but I had taken No. 39.

"Well, this beats everything! To think that I have spent all this money, and come all this way, to plant myself five doors from Mr. Tennant!"

He might be unwilling to have me for a neighbour, but I could assure him that I was equally unwilling to have him. I did not wish the first entry on the fresh leaf which I had turned to be a reminiscence, and especially a reminiscence of that particular friend.

I thought that was strange enough, but stranger things were yet to follow. What a queer little world this is!

Recognising that it was no use addling my brains by puzzling out conundrums at that time of the morning, so soon as, by reading it over and over again in the directory, I had made quite sure that my eyes had not misled me, and that Tommy did reside five doors away, I toddled up to bed again. "There is nothing like leather," says the proverb. I say there is nothing like sleep. Give me plenty of sleep and I am good for anything. As I have always been blessed with a clear conscience-if there is a vacuum where the conscience ought to be it must be clear-and, what is equally to be desired, a good digestion, I have ever found sleep come at my bidding. Once I have my toes well down between the sheets, my head on the pillow, and the blankets well up to my ears, I snooze. I know I did just then. And I never dreamed; none of Jack Haines's lively visions came my way.

I looked at my watch when I awoke. It was past eleven. I just turned over. I had a stretch. I believe that, when you wake in the morning, it does you good to have a stretch; it seems to help you to realise that there is a piece of you between your head and your heels. "What should I do?"

"I'll have some tea."

I had some tea. The girl brought me the letters and the papers. There was nothing in the letters, but in the papers there were ructions!

At first I could not make out what it was all about. Directly I opened the Telegraph these were the words, in big, black letters, staring me in the face: "Murder on the Brighton Line." That was my friend, the gentleman! But at first, as I have said, the more I looked at it the more I couldn't make it out.

A platelayer-whatever that might be in connection with a railway line-going to his work in the morning had seen the body lying among the bushes-in that clump of bushes, I took it, where it had almost fallen on top of me. That was all right. Where I found the puzzle was in what directly followed. The girl had, of course, been murdered in the field, probably within a foot or two of where I had seen Townsend standing. The papers, or the people who inspired the papers, seemed to think that the murder had taken place in a train, and that then the body had been thrown on to the line. What could have made them think such a thing as that?

As I read on the whole thing flashed upon me; it was another coincidence!

It seemed that when the 8.40 train from Brighton had arrived at Victoria-the 8.40? Why, that was the train in which I had travelled with Tommy! My stars and bars! – it was discovered that the window in one of the carriages was shivered to atoms, that the carriage was marked with blood, and that it bore signs of having been the scene of a recent struggle.

Jerusalem! what was coming next? I had to put down the paper and take another drink of tea.

Nothing came next except what they called a "presumption," and if ever there was a piece of real presumption it was that same.

The presumption, according to the papers, was that the railway carriage had been the scene of a hideous tragedy-of a frightful murder, of one of those recurrent crimes, which force us, from time to time, to recognise the dangers which, in England, at any rate, are associated with railway travelling. The identity of one of the dramatis personæ-as poor, dear Daniel used to say, "I'm a-quoting" – was unfortunately, but too evident. There was the woman who had been found lying among the laurels-I wonder if they were laurels? – with her face turned towards the skies. As a matter of fact, she had lain face downwards. It was owing to that I had not seen her face. She was a silent but an eloquent witness-that was touching. The public demanded the prompt production of at least another of the dramatis personæ-"still a-quoting" – of the man-it would not, perhaps, display too much rashness to hazard the prediction that it would prove to be a man-who had hurled her there.

If that did not point to Tommy, I should like to know to whom it pointed.

I began to wonder. What had Tommy done when I had made my exit? Had he done nothing but twiddle his thumbs and stare? It would be characteristic of him if he had. He never did do the right thing at the right time if there was a wrong thing which could be done. The window might have been smashed by the banging of the door. I dare say that there had been signs of a struggle. I could not make out about the blood, but, perhaps, in the midst of his muddle, Tommy's nose had started bleeding. That was just the sort of thing his nose would do. It was quite conceivable, to one who knew him, that Tommy had toddled home without saying a word to any one about the lady who had tumbled out upon the line. If so-

If so, and I kept in the background, it was equally conceivable that, as a glorious climax to the muddle, because of that woman who had been found upon the line, Tommy might find himself in a very awkward fix.

I had to take another drink of tea.

I found what might turn out to be the top brick of the building while I was in the very act of drinking. Tommy himself might think that I was dead. I might have died. From a mere consideration of the odds point of view, I ought to have died. The miracle was that I wasn't dead. Tommy knew nothing about the woman who had been thrown on the top of me. He might think-he was capable of thinking anything, but in the present instance it was natural that he should think-that the body which had been found was mine.

If he did think so?

But he had seen me the night before. The fact rather supported my theories than otherwise. He had glared at me as if I had been a ghost. The sight of me had struck him senseless. According to the cabman, he was drunk. Knowing what he knew, or what he thought he knew, he might very well suppose that I was a creature born of his delirium.

It appeared to me that my cue, for the present, at any rate, was to keep sitting on the fence. I might still be even with Tommy, and that without having to move a finger of either hand. As for my friend, the gentleman-we should see.

Oddly enough, I came across Mr. Reginald Townsend that very afternoon. I had been shopping-shopping was about all there was for me to do; after Strikehigh City I found life pretty dull West Kensington way, but then I had expected it to be dull. As I was strolling homewards, who should I see but Mr. Reginald Townsend. He was a sight for sore eyes-at least, he was a sight for mine. I like to see a man that is a man-handsome, well set up, and dressed as only the thoroughbred man knows how to dress. I am not so particular about a man's morals as about his manners, and his manners were all they ought to be. From his bearing, as he stood there, in front of me, you would have thought I was the very person he had wanted to see and had expected to see. I don't believe that he had supposed that I was within a hundred miles of him. I should not have been surprised to learn that, until my actual presence recalled it to him, he had entirely forgotten my existence.

He was the sort of creature one finds amusing.

After poor, dear Daniel one liked to feel that one was connected with such a picture of a man. One liked to feel that he was doing credit to one's good taste as he was walking by one's side.

I asked him to come and have a cup of tea. He was delighted, or he professed to be. When I remembered the occasion on which I had first encountered him it seemed to me that, in his heart of hearts-or whatever it was that passed for his heart of hearts-he must wish that I was at the bottom of the sea. He could not like being reminded of Three Bridges Junction. But one can never tell. From his manner he might have met me first of all in Queen Victoria's drawing-room, and none but pleasant memories might have been connected with the meeting.