“If you intend to betray me—”
“O, no, but I don’t, or I should not be here—alone with you. I am, as you may allow, not quite a fool.”
“Indeed, sir, you are as subtle as—”
“Yes, I wouldn’t mention him.”
“Who?”
“The devil.”
Kenneth mused.
“May I ask, Mr. Lynde, what you intend to do?”
“Certainly—remain here.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Kenneth with an air of perplexity.
“If you will listen patiently, you shall learn why I have acknowledged this deed, why I would bear the penalty. I believe there are vast, intense sensations from which we are excluded, by the conventional fear of a certain kind of death. Now, this pleasure, this ecstasy, this something, I don’t know what, which I have striven for all my days, is known only to a privileged few—innocent men, who, through some oversight of the law, are hanged by the neck! How rich is Nature in compensations! Some men are born to be hung, some have hanging thrust upon them, and some (as I hope to do) achieve hanging. It appears ages since I commenced watching for an opportunity like this. Worlds could not tempt me to divulge your guilt, nor could worlds have tempted me to commit your crime, for a man’s conscience should be at ease to enjoy, to the utmost, this delicious death! Our interview is at an end, Mr. Kenneth. I held it my duty to say this much to you.”
And I turned my back on him.
“One word, Mr. Lynde.”
Kenneth came to my side, and laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, that red right hand, which all the tears of the angels cannot make white again.
“Did you send this to me last month?” asked Kenneth, holding up a slip of paper on which was scrawled, Watch them—in my handwriting.
“Yes,” I answered.
Then it struck me that these few thoughtless words, which some sinister spirit had impelled me to write, were the indirect cause of the whole catastrophe.
“Thank you,” he said hurriedly. “I watched them!” Then, after a pause, “I shall go far from here. I cannot, I will not die yet. Mary was to have been my wife, so she would have hidden her shame—O cruel! She, my own cousin, and we the last two of our race! Life is not sweet to me, it is bitter, bitter; but I shall live until I stand front to front with him. And you? They will not harm you—you are a madman?”
Julius Kenneth was gone before I could reply.
The cell door shut him out forever—shut him out in the flesh. His spirit was not so easily exorcised.
After all, it was a wretched fiasco. Two officious friends of mine, who had played chess with me, at my lodgings, on the night of the 3rd, proved an alibi; and I was literally turned out of the Tombs; for I insisted on being executed.
Then it was maddening to have the newspapers call me a monomaniac.
I, a monomaniac?
What was Pythagoras, Newton, Pulton? Have not the great original lights of every age, been regarded as madmen? Science, like religion, has its martyrs.
Recent surgical discoveries have, I believe, sustained me in my theory: or, if not, they ought to have done so. There is said to be a pleasure in drowning. Why not in strangulation?
In another field of science, I shall probably have full justice awarded me—I now allude to the Moon-Apparatus, which is still in an unfinished state, but progressing.
Murder by Proxy by M. McDonnell Bodkin (1850-1933)
The popularity of Sherlock Holmes’s adventures in The Strand magazine, beginning in 1891, opened the great age of the detective short story. Readers demanded tales featuring detectives who used tiny clues to deduce the solutions of bloodthirsty crimes, and thus were born such sleuths as Arthur Morrison’s Martin Hewitt, Baroness Orczy’s Old Man in the Corner, and McDonnell Bodkin’s Paul Beck. Bodkin, an Irish lawyer and Member of Parliament, created perhaps the earliest family of detectives. He began with Paul Beck, The Rule of Thumb Detective (1898), followed by Dora Myrl, The Lady Detective (1900). Beck married Myrl in The Capture of Paul Beck (1909). Their son was clearly quite precocious, for only two years later the lad had begun his own detective career in Young Beck, a Chip off of the Old Block.
Paul Beck is a contrast to the flamboyant Holmes and other eccentric detectives of the era. His success is based in part on the fact that he never appears to be intelligent: “I just go by the rule of thumb,” he explains, “and muddle and puzzle out my cases as best I can.” But the problems that he investigates, including the following story from the first volume of his adventures, are among the cleverest of the turn of the century.
AT two o’clock precisely on that sweltering 12th of August, Eric Neville, young, handsome, debonair, sauntered through the glass door down the wrought-iron staircase into the beautiful, old-fashioned garden of Berkly Manor, radiant in white flannel, with a broad-brimmed Panama hat perched lightly on his glossy black curls, for he had just come from lazing in his canoe along the shadiest stretches of the river, with a book for company.
The back of the Manor House was the south wall of the garden, which stretched away for nearly a mile, gay with blooming flowers and ripening fruit. The air, heavy with perfume, stole softly through all the windows, now standing wide open in the sunshine, as though the great house gasped for breath.
When Eric’s trim, tan boot left the last step of the iron staircase it reached the broad graveled walk of the garden. Fifty yards off the head gardener was tending his peaches, the smoke from his pipe hanging like a faint blue haze in the still air that seemed to quiver with the heat. Eric, as he reached him, held out a petitionary hand, too lazy to speak.
Without a word the gardener stretched for a huge peach that was striving to hide its red face from the sun under narrow ribbed leaves, plucked it as though he loved it, and put it softly in the young man’s hand.
Eric stripped off the velvet coat, rose-colored, green, and amber, till it hung round the fruit in tatters, and made his sharp, white teeth meet in the juicy flesh of the ripe peach.
BANG!
The sudden shock of sound close to their ears wrenched the nerves of the two men; one dropped his peach, and the other his pipe. Both stared about them in utter amazement.
“Look there, sir,” whispered the gardener, pointing to a little cloud of smoke oozing lazily through a window almost directly over their head, while the pungent spice of gunpowder made itself felt in the hot air.
“My uncle’s room,” gasped Eric. “I left him only a moment ago fast asleep on the sofa.”
He turned as he spoke, and ran like a deer along the garden walk, up the iron steps, and back through the glass door into the house, the old gardener following as swiftly as his rheumatism would allow.
Eric crossed the sitting-room on which the glass door opened, went up the broad, carpeted staircase four steps at a time, turned sharply to the right down a broad corridor, and burst straight through the open door of his uncle’s study.
Fast as he had come, there was another before him. A tall, strong figure, dressed in light tweed, was bending over the sofa where, a few minutes before, Eric had seen his uncle asleep.
Eric recognized the broad back and brown hair at once. ‘‘John,’’ he cried—’’John, what is it?”
His cousin turned to him a handsome, manly face, ghastly pale now even to the lips.
“Eric, my boy,” he answered falteringly, “this is too awful. Uncle has been murdered—shot stone dead.”
“No, no; it cannot be. It’s not five minutes since I saw him quietly sleeping,” Eric began. Then his eyes fell on the still figure on the sofa, and he broke off abruptly.
Squire Neville lay with his face to the wall, only the outline of his strong, hard features visible. The charge of shot had entered at the base of the skull, the grey hair was all dabbled with blood, and the heavy, warm drops still fell slowly on to the carpet.
“But who can have—” Eric gasped out, almost speechless with horror.
“It must have been his own gu
n,” his cousin answered. “It was lying there on the table, to the right, barrel still smoking, when I came in.”
“It wasn’t suicide—was it?” asked Eric, in a frightened whisper.
“Quite impossible, I should say. You see where he is hit.”
“But it was so sudden. I ran the moment I heard the shot, and you were before me. Did you see any one?”
“Not a soul. The room was empty.”
“But how could the murderer escape?”
“Perhaps he leapt through the window. It was open when I came in.”
“He couldn’t do that, Master John.” It was the voice of the gardener at the door. “Me and Master Eric was right under the window when the shot came.”
“Then how in the devil’s name did he disappear, Simpson?”
“It’s not for me to say, sir.”
John Neville searched the room with eager eyes. There was no cover in it for a cat. A bare, plain room, paneled with brown oak, on which hung some guns and fishing rods—old-fashioned for the most part, but of the finest workmanship and material. A small bookcase in the corner was the room’s sole claim to be called “a study.” The huge leather-covered sofa on which the corpse laid, a massive round table in the center of the room, and a few heavy chairs completed the furniture. The dust lay thick on everything, the fierce sunshine streamed in a broad band across the room. The air was stifling with heat and the acrid smoke of gunpowder.
John Neville noticed how pale his young cousin was. He lay has hand on his shoulder with the protecting kindness of an elder brother.
“Come, Eric,” he said softly, “we can do no good here.”
“We had best look round first, hadn’t we, for some clue?” asked Eric, and he stretched his hand towards the gun; but John stopped him.
“No, no,” he cried hastily, “we must leave things just as we find them. I’ll send a man to the village for Wardle and telegraph to London for a detective.”
He drew his young cousin gently from the room, locked the door on the outside, and put the key in his pocket.
“Who shall I wire to?” John Neville called from his desk with pencil poised over the paper, to his cousin, who sat at the library table with his head buried in his hands. “It will need a sharp man—one who can give his whole time to it.”
“I don’t know anyone. Yes, I do. That fellow with the queer name that found the Duke of Southern’s opal—Beck. That’s it. Thornton Crescent, W.C., will find him.”
John Neville filled in the name and address to the telegram he had already written—
“Come at once. Case of murder. Expense no object. John Neville, Berkly Manor, Dorset.”
Little did Eric guess that the filling in of that name was to him a matter of life or death.
John Neville had picked up a timetable and rustled through the leaves. “Hard lines, Eric,” he said; “do his best, he cannot get here before midnight. But here’s Wardle already, anyhow; that’s quick work.”
A shrewd, silent man was Wardle, the local constable, who now came briskly up the broad avenue; strong and active too, though well over fifty years of age.
John Neville met him at the door with the news. But the groom had already told of the murder.
“You did the right thing to lock the door, sir,” said Wardle, as they passed into the library where Eric still sat apparently unconscious of their presence, “and you wired for a right good man. I’ve worked with this here Mr. Beck before now. A pleasant spoken man and a lucky one. ‘No hurry, Mr. Wardle,’ he says to me, ‘and no fuss. Stir nothing. The things about the corpse have always a story of their own if they are let tell it, and I always like to have the first quiet little chat with them myself.’”
So the constable held his tongue and kept his hands quiet and used his eyes and ears, while the great house buzzed with gossip. There was a whisper here and a whisper there, and the whispers patched themselves into a story. By slow degrees dark suspicion settled down and closed like a cloud round John Neville.
Its influence seemed to pass in some strange fashion through the closed doors of the library. John began pacing the room restlessly from end to end.
After a little while the big room was not big enough to hold his impatience. He wandered out aimlessly, as it seemed, from one room to another; now down the iron steps to gaze vacantly at the window of his uncle’s room, now past the locked door in the broad corridor.
With an elaborate presence of carelessness Wardle kept him in sight through all his wanderings, but John Neville seemed too self-absorbed to notice it.
Presently he returned to the library. Eric was there, still sitting with his back to the door, only the top of his head showing over the high chair. He seemed absorbed in thought or sleep, he sat so still.
But he started up with a quick cry, showing a white, frightened face, when John touched him lightly on the arm.
“Come for a walk in the grounds, Eric?” he said. “This waiting and watching and doing nothing is killing work; I cannot stand it much longer.”
“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,” Eric answered wearily; “I feel completely knocked over.”
“A mouthful of fresh air would do you good, my poor boy; you do look done up.”
Eric shook his head.
“Well, I’m off,” John said.
“If you leave me the key, I will give it to the detective, if he comes.”
“Oh, he cannot be here before midnight, and I’ll be back in an hour.”
As John Neville walked rapidly down the avenue without looking back, Wardle stepped quietly after, keeping him well in view.
Presently Neville turned abruptly in amongst the woods, the constable still following cautiously. The trees stood tall and well apart, and the slanting sunshine made lanes of vivid green through the shade. As Wardle crossed between Neville and the sun his shadow fell long and black on the bright green.
John Neville saw the shadow move in front of him and turned sharp round and faced his pursuer.
The constable stood stock still and stared.
“Well, Wardle, what is it? Don’t stand there like a fool fingering your baton! Speak out, man—what do you want of me?”
“You see how it is, Master John,” the constable stammered out, “I don’t believe it myself. I’ve known you twenty-one years—since you were born, I may say—and I don’t believe it, not a blessed word of it. But duty is duty, and I must go through with it; and facts is facts, and you and he had words last night, and Master Eric found you first in the room when—”
John Neville listened, bewildered at first. Then suddenly, as it seemed to dawn on him for the first time that he could be suspected of this murder, he kindled a sudden hot blaze of anger.
He turned fiercely on the constable. Broad-chested, strong limbed, he towered over him, terrible in his wrath; his hands clenched, his muscles quivered, his strong white teeth shut tight as a rat-trap, and a reddish light shining at the back of his brown eyes.
“How dare you! How dare you!” he hissed out between his teeth, his passion choking him.
He looked dangerous, that roused young giant, but Wardle met his angry eyes without flinching.
“Where’s the use, Master John?” he said soothingly. “It’s main hard on you, I know. But the fault isn’t mine, and you won’t help yourself by taking it that way.”
The gust of passion appeared to sweep by as suddenly as it arose. The handsome face cleared and there was no trace of anger in the frank voice that answered. “You are right, Wardle, quite right. What is to be done next? Am I to consider myself under arrest?”
“Better not, sir. You’ve got things to do a prisoner couldn’t do handy, and I don’t want to stand in the way of your doing them. If you give me your word it will be enough.”
“My word for what?”
“That you’ll be here when wanted.”
“Why, man, you don’t think I’d be fool enough—innocent or guilty—to run away. My God! Run away from a charge o
f murder!”
“Don’t take on like that, sir. There’s a man coming from London that will set things straight, you’ll see. Have I your word?”
“You have my word.”
“Perhaps you’d better be getting back to the house, sir. There’s a deal of talking going on amongst the servants. I’ll keep out of the way, and no one will be the wiser for anything that has passed between us.”
Halfway up the avenue a fast-driven dog cart overtook John Neville, and pulled up so sharply that the horse’s hoofs sent the coarse gravel flying. A stout, thick-set man, who up to that had been in close chat with the driver, leapt out more lightly than could have been expected from his figure.
“Mr. John Neville, I presume? My name is Beck—Mr. Paul Beck.”
“Mr. Beck! Why, I thought you couldn’t have got here before midnight.”
“Special train,” Mr. Beck answered pleasantly. “Your wire said Expense no object.’ Well, time is an object, and comfort is an object too, more or less, in all these cases; so I took a special train, and here I am. With your permission, we will send the trap on and walk to the house together. This seems a bad business, Mr. Neville. Shot dead, the driver tells me. Anyone suspected?”
“I’m suspected.” The answer broke from John Neville s lips almost fiercely.
Mr. Beck looked at him for a minute with placid curiosity, without a touch of surprise in it.
“How do you know that?”
“Wardle, the local constable, has just told me so to my face. It was only by way of a special favor he refrained from arresting me then and there.”
Mr. Beck walked on beside John Neville ten or fifteen paces before he spoke again.
“Do you mind,” he said, in a very insinuating voice, “telling me exactly why you are suspected?”
“Not in the very least.”
“Mind this,” the detective went on quickly, “I give you no caution and make you no pledge. It’s my business to find out the truth. If you think the truth will help you, then you ought to help me. This is very irregular, of course, but I don’t mind that. When a man is charged with a crime there is, you see, Mr. Neville, always one witness who knows whether he is guilty or not. There is very often only that one. The first thing the British law does by way of discovering the truth is to close the mouth of the only witness that knows it. Well, that’s not my way. I like to give an innocent man a chance to tell his own story, and I’ve no scruple in trapping a guilty man if I can.”
Death Locked In Page 16
