“But where does the coincidence come in?” asked Langholm, as the young fellow returned to the piano with a rather sad shake of the head.
“What!” cried Venn, below his breath; “do you mean to say you are a friend of Mrs. Minchin’s, or whatever her name is now, and that you never heard of Severino?”
“No,” replied Langholm, his heart in an instantaneous flutter. “Who is he?”
“The man she wanted to nurse the night her husband was murdered — the cause of the final row between them! His name was kept out of the papers, but that’s the man.”
Langholm sat back in his chair. To have spent a summer’s day in stolid search for traces of this man, only to be introduced to the man himself by purest chance in the evening! It was, indeed, difficult to believe; nor was persuasion on the point followed by the proper degree of gratitude in Langholm for a transcendent stroke of fortune. In fact, he almost resented his luck; he would so much rather have stood indebted to his skill. And there were other causes for disappointment, as in an instant there were things more incredible to Langholm than the everyday coincidence of a chance meeting with the one person whom one desires to meet.
“So that’s the man!” he echoed, in a tone that might have told his companion something, only the fingers which Langholm had feared to crush had already fallen upon the keys, with the strong, tender, unerring touch of a master, and the impressionable player was swaying with enthusiasm on his stool.
“And can’t he play?” whispered Valentine Venn, as though it were the man’s playing alone that they were discussing.
Yet even the preoccupied novelist had to listen and nod, and then listen again, before replying.
“He can,” said Langholm at length. “But why was it that they took such pains to keep his name out of the case?”
“They didn’t. It would have done no good to drag him in. The poor devil was at death’s door at the time of the murder.”
“But is that a fact?”
Venn opened his eyes.
“Supposing,” continued Langholm, speaking the thing that was not in his mind with the deplorable facility of the professional story-teller— “supposing that illness had been a sham, and they had really meant to elope under cover of it!”
“Well, it wasn’t.”
“I dare say not. But how do you know? They ought to have put him in the box and had his evidence.”
“He was still too ill to be called,” rejoined Venn. “But I’ll take you at your word, dear boy, and tell you exactly how I do know all about his illness. You see that dark chap with the cigar, who’s just come in to listen? That’s Severino’s doctor; it was he who put him up here; and I’ll introduce you to him, if you like, after dinner.”
“Thank you,” said Langholm, after some little hesitation; “as a matter of fact, I should like it very much. Venn,” he added, leaning right across the little table, “I know the woman well! I believe in her absolutely, on every point, and I mean to make her neighbors and mine do the same. That is my object — don’t give it away!”
“Dear boy, these lips are sealed,” said Valentine Venn.
But a very little conversation with the doctor sufficed to satisfy Langholm’s curiosity, and to remove from his mind the wild prepossession which he had allowed to grow upon it with every hour of that wasted day. The doctor was also one of the Bohemian colony in Chelsea, and by no means loath to talk about a tragedy of which he had exceptional knowledge, since he himself had been one of the medical witnesses at each successive stage of the investigations. He had also heard on the other side of the screen, that Langholm was the novelist referred to in a paragraph which had of course had a special interest for him; and, as was only fair, Langholm was interrogated in his turn. What was less fair, and indeed ungrateful in a marked degree, was the way in which the original questioner parried all questions put to himself; and he very soon left the club. On his way out, he went into the writing-room, and, tearing into little pieces a letter which he had written that afternoon, left the fragments behind him in the waste-paper basket.
His exit from the room was meanwhile producing its sequel in a little incident which would have astonished Langholm considerably. Severino had been playing for nearly an hour on end, had seemed thoroughly engrossed in his own fascinating performance, and quite oblivious of the dining and smoking going on around him according to the accepted ease and freedom of the club. Yet no sooner was Langholm gone than the pianist broke off abruptly and joined the group which the other had deserted.
“Who is that fellow?” said Severino, in English so perfect that the slight Italian accent only added a charm to his gentle voice. “I did not catch the name.”
It was repeated, with such additions as may be fairly made behind a man’s back.
“A dashed good fellow, who writes dashed bad novels,” was one of these.
“You forget!” said another. “He is the ‘well-known novelist’ who is going the rounds as a neighbor and friend of Mrs.—”
Looks from Venn and the doctor cut short the speech, but not before its import had come home to the young Italian, whose hollow cheeks flushed a dusky brown, while his sunken eyes caught fire. In an instant he was on his feet, with no attempt to hide his excitement, and still less to mask the emotion that was its real name.
“He knows her, do you tell me? He knows Mrs. Minchin—”
“Or whatever her name is now; yes; so he says.”
“And what is her name?”
“He won’t say.”
“Nor where she lives?”
“No.”
“Then where does he live?”
“None of us know that either; he’s the darkest horse in the club.”
Venn agreed with this speaker, some little bitterness in his tone. Another stood up for Langholm.
“We should be as dark,” said he, “if we had married Gayety choristers, and they had left us, and we went in dread of their return!”
They sum up the life tragedies pretty pithily, in these clubs.
“He was always a silly ass about women,” rejoined Langholm’s critic, summing up the man. “So it’s Mrs. Minchin now!”
The name acted like magic upon young Severino. His attention had wandered. In an instant it was more eager than before.
“If you don’t know where he lives in the country,” he burst out, “where is he staying in town?”
“We don’t know that either.”
“Then I mean to find out!”
And the pale musician rushed from the room, in pursuit of the man who had been all day pursuing him.
CHAPTER XXII
THE DARKEST HOUR
The amateur detective walked slowly up to Piccadilly, and climbed on top of a Chelsea omnibus, a dejected figure even to the casual eye. He was more than disappointed at the upshot of his wild speculations, and in himself for the false start that he had made. His feeling was one of positive shame. It was so easy now to see the glaring improbability of the conclusion to which he had jumped in his haste, at the first promptings of a too facile fancy. And what an obvious idea it had been at last! As if his were the only brain to which it could have occurred!
Langholm could have laughed at his late theory if it had only entailed the loss of one day, but it had also cost him that self-confidence which was the more valuable in his case through not being a common characteristic of the man. He now realized the difficulties of his quest, and the absolutely wrong way in which he had set about it. His imagination had run away with him. It was no case for the imagination. It was a case for patient investigation, close reasoning, logical deduction, all arts in which the imaginative man is almost inevitably deficient.
Langholm, however, had enough lightness of temperament to abandon an idea as readily as he formed one, and his late suspicion was already driven to the four winds. He only hoped he had not shown what was in his mind at the club. Langholm was a just man, and he honestly regretted the injustice that he had done, even in his own heart, a
nd for ever so few hours, to a thoroughly innocent man.
And all up Piccadilly this man was sitting within a few inches of him, watching his face with a passionate envy, and plucking up courage to speak; he only did so at Hyde Park Corner, where an intervening passenger got down.
Langholm was sufficiently startled at the sound of his own name, breaking in upon the reflections indicated, but to find at his elbow the very face which was in his mind was to lose all power of immediate reply.
“My name is Severino,” explained the other. “I was introduced to you an hour or two ago at the club.”
“Ah, to be sure!” cried Langholm, recovering. “Odd thing, though, for we must have left about the same time, and I never saw you till this moment.”
Severino took the vacant place by Langholm’s side. “Mr. Langholm,” said he, a tremor in his soft voice, “I have a confession to make to you. I followed you from the club!”
“You followed me?”
Langholm could not help the double emphasis; to him it seemed a grotesque turning of the tables, a too poetically just ending to that misspent day. It was all he could do to repress a smile.
“Yes, I followed you,” the young Italian repeated, with his taking accent, in his touching voice; “and I beg your pardon for doing so — though I would do the same again — I will tell you why. I thought that you were talking about me while I was strumming to them at the club. It is possible, of course, that I was quite mistaken; but when you went out I stopped at once and asked questions. And they told me you were a friend of — a great friend of mine — of Mrs. Minchin!”
“It is true enough,” said Langholm, after a pause. “Well?”
“She was a very great friend of mine,” repeated Severino. “That was all.”
And he sighed.
“So I have heard,” said Langholm, with sympathy. “I can well believe it, for I might almost say the same of her myself.”
The ‘bus toiled on beside the park. The two long lines of lights rose gently ahead until they almost met, and the two men watched them as they spoke.
“Until to-day,” continued Severino, “I did not know whether she was dead or alive.”
“She is both alive and well.”
“And married again?”
“And married again.”
There was a long pause. The park ended first.
“I want you to do me a great favor,” said Severino in Knightsbridge. “She was so good to me! I shall never forget it, and yet I have never been able to thank her. I nearly died — it was at that time — and when I remembered, she had disappeared. I beg and beseech you, Mr. Langholm, to tell me her name, and where she is living now!”
Langholm looked at his companion in the confluence of lights at the Sloane Street corner. The pale face was alight with passion, the sunken eyes ablaze. “I cannot tell you,” he answered, shortly.
“Is it your own name?”
“Good God, no!”
And Langholm laughed harshly.
“Will you not even tell me where she lives?”
“I cannot, without her leave; but if you like I will tell her about you.”
There was no answer as they drove on. Then of a sudden Langholm’s arm was seized and crushed by bony fingers.
“I am dying,” the low voice whispered hoarsely in his ear. “Can’t you see it for yourself? I shall never get better; it might be a year or two, it may be weeks. But I want to see her again and make sure. Yes, I love her! There is no sense in denying it. But it is all on my side, and I am dying, and she has married again! What harm can it do anybody if I see her once more?”
The sunken eyes were filled with tears. There were more tears in the hollow voice. Langholm was deeply touched.
“My dear fellow,” he said, “I will let her know. No, no, not that, of course! But I will write to her at once — to-night! Will that not do?”
Severino thanked him, with a heavy sigh. “Oh, don’t get down,” he added, as Langholm rose. “I won’t talk about her any more.”
“I am staying in this street,” explained Langholm, guardedly.
“And these are my lodgings,” rejoined the other, pulling a letter from his pocket, and handing the envelope to Langholm. “Let me hear from you, for pity’s sake, as soon as you hear from her!”
Langholm sauntered on the pavement until the omnibus which he had left was no longer distinguishable from the general traffic of the thoroughfare. The address on the envelope was that of the lodging-house at which he was to have called that night. He was glad now that his luck had not left him to find Severino for himself; the sense of fatuity would have been even keener than it was. In a way he now felt drawn to the poor, frank boy who had so lately been the object of his unjust and unfounded suspicions. There was a new light in which to think of him, a new bond between them, a new spring of sympathy or jealousy, if not of both. But Langholm was not in London to show sympathy or friendship for any man. He was in London simply and solely upon his own great quest, in which no man must interrupt him. That was why he had been so guarded about his whereabouts — though not guarded enough — and why he watched the omnibus out of sight before entering his hotel. The old Londoner had forgotten how few places there are at which one can stay in Sloane Street.
A bad twenty-four hours was in store for him.
They began well enough with the unexpected discovery that an eminent authority on crime and criminals, who had been a good friend to Langholm in his London days, was still in town. The novelist went round to his house that night, chiefly because it was not ten minutes’ walk from the Cadogan Hotel, and with little hope of finding anybody at home. Yet there was his friend, with the midnight lamp just lighted, and so kind a welcome that Langholm confided in him on the spot. And the man who knew all the detectives in London did not laugh at the latest recruit to their ranks; but smile he did.
“I’ll tell you what I might do,” he said at length. “I might give you a card that should get you into the Black Museum at New Scotland Yard, where they would show you any relics they may have kept of the Minchin murder; only don’t say why you want to see them. Every man you see there will be a detective; you may come across the very fellows who got up the case; if so, they may tell you what they think of it, and you should be able to find out whether they’re trying again. Here you are, Langholm, and I wish you luck. Doing anything to-morrow night?”
Langholm could safely say that he was not.
“Then dine with me at the Rag at seven, and tell me how you get on. It must be seven, because I’m off to Scotland by the night mail. And I don’t want to be discouraging, my dear fellow, but it is only honest to say that I think more of your chivalry than of your chances of success!”
At the Black Museum they had all the trophies which had been produced in court; but the officer who acted as showman to Langholm admitted that they had no right to retain any of them. They were Mrs. Minchin’s property, and if they knew where she was they would of course restore everything.
“But the papers say she isn’t Mrs. Minchin any longer,” the officer added. “Well, well! There’s no accounting for taste.”
“But Mrs. Minchin was acquitted,” remarked Langholm, in tone as impersonal as he could make it.
“Ye-es,” drawled his guide, dryly. “Well, it’s not for us to say anything about that.”
“But you think all the more, I suppose?”
“There’s only one opinion about it in the Yard.”
“But surely you haven’t given up trying to find out who really did murder Mr. Minchin?”
“We think we did find out, sir,” was the reply to that.
So they had given it up! For a single second the thought was stimulating; if the humble author could succeed where the police had failed! But the odds against such success were probably a million to one, and Langholm sighed as he handled the weapon with which the crime had been committed, in the opinion of the police.
“What makes you so certain that this was the
revolver?” he inquired, more to satisfy his conscience by leaving no question unasked than to voice any doubt upon the point.
The other smiled as he explained the peculiarity of the pistol; it had been made in Melbourne, and it carried the bullet of peculiar size which had been extracted from Alexander Minchin’s body.
“But London is full of old Australians,” objected Langholm, for objection’s sake.
“Well, sir,” laughed the officer, “you find one who carries a revolver like this, and prove that he was in Chelsea on the night of the murder, with a motive for committing it, and we shall be glad of his name and address. Only don’t forget the motive; it wasn’t robbery, you know, though her ladyship was so sure it was robbers! There’s the maker’s name on the barrel. I should take a note of it, sir, if I was you!”
That name and that note were all that Langholm had to show when he dined with the criminologist at his service club the same evening. The amateur detective looked a beaten man already, but he talked through his teeth of inspecting the revolvers in every pawnbroker’s shop in London.
“It will take you a year,” said the old soldier, cheerfully.
“It seems the only chance,” replied the despondent novelist. “It is a case of doing that or nothing.”
“Then take the advice of an older fogey than yourself, and do nothing! You are quite right to believe in the lady’s innocence; there is no excuse for entertaining any other belief, still less for expressing it. But when you come to putting salt on the real culprit, that’s another matter. My dear fellow, it’s not the sort of thing that you or I could hope to do on our own, even were the case far simpler than it is. It was very sporting of you to offer for a moment to try your hand; but if I were you I should confess without delay that the task is far beyond you, for that’s the honest truth.”
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 256
