Somers shook his head.
‘I am confident Mr Raikes was not in the train,’ he said; ‘and I certainly did not see him on the platform.’
The chairman turned next to the secretary.
‘Mr Raikes is in your office, Mr Hunter,’ he said. ‘Can you remember if he was absent on the fourth instant?’
‘I do not think he was,’ replied the secretary; ‘but I am not prepared to speak positively. I have been away most afternoons myself lately, and Mr Raikes might easily have absented himself if he had been disposed.’
At this moment the under-secretary returned with the day-book under his arm.
‘Be pleased to refer, Mr Raikes,’ said the chairman, ‘to the entries of the fourth instant, and saw what Benjamin Somers’s duties were on that day.’
Mr Raikes threw open the cumbrous volume, and ran a practised eye and finger down some three or four successive columns of entries. Stopping suddenly at the foot of a page, he then read aloud that Benjamin Somers had on that day conducted the 4.15 express from London to Crampton.
The chairman leaned forward in his seat, looked the under-secretary full in the face, and said, quite sharply and suddenly:
‘Where were you, Mr Raikes, on the same afternoon?’
‘I, sir?’
‘You, Mr Raikes. Where were you on the afternoon and evening of the fourth of the present month?’
‘Here, sir—in Mr Hunter’s office. Where else should I be?’
There was a dash of trepidation in the under-secretary’s voice as he said this; but his look of surprise was natural enough.
‘We have some reason for believing, Mr Raikes, that you were absent that afternoon without leave. Was this the case?’
‘Certainly not, sir. I have not had a day’s holiday since September. Mr Hunter will bear me out in this.’
Mr Hunter repeated what he had previously said on the subject, but added that the clerks in the adjoining office would be certain to know. Whereupon the senior clerk, a grave, middle-aged person, in green glasses, was summoned and interrogated.
His testimony cleared the under-secretary at once. He declared that Mr Raikes had in no instance, to his knowledge, been absent during office hours since his return from his annual holiday in September.
I was confounded.
The chairman turned to me with a smile, in which a shade of covert annoyance was scarcely apparent.
‘You hear, Mr Langford?’ he said.
‘I hear, sir; but my conviction remains unshaken.’
‘I fear, Mr Langford, that your convictions are very insufficiently based,’ replied the chairman, with a doubtful cough. ‘I fear that you “dream dreams”, and mistake them for actual occurrences. It is a dangerous habit of mind, and might lead to dangerous results. Mr Raikes here would have found himself in an unpleasant position, had he not proved so satisfactory an alibi.’
I was about to reply, but he gave me no time.
‘I think, gentlemen,’ he went on to say, addressing the board, ‘that we should be wasting time by pushing this inquiry further. Mr Langford’s evidence would seem to be of an equal value throughout. The testimony of Benjamin Somers disproves his first statement, and the testimony of the last witness disproves his second. I think we may conclude that Mr Langford fell asleep in the train on the occasion of his journey to Clayborough, and dreamt an unusually vivid and circumstantial dream—of which, however, we have now heard quite enough.’
There are few things more annoying than to find one’s positive convictions met with incredulity. I could not help feeling impatience at the turn that affairs had taken. I was not proof against the civil sarcasm of the chairman’s manner. Most intolerable of all, however, was the quiet smile lurking about the corners of Benjamin Somers’s mouth, and the half-triumphant, half-malicious gleam in the eyes of the under-secretary. The man was evidently puzzled, and somewhat alarmed. His looks seemed furtively to interrogate me. Who was I? What did I want? Why had I come there to do him an ill turn with his employers? What was it to me whether or not he was absent without leave?
Seeing all this, and perhaps more irritated by it than the thing deserved, I begged leave to detain the attention of the board for a moment longer. Jelf plucked me impatiently by the sleeve.
‘Better let the thing drop,’ he whispered. ‘The chairman’s right enough. You dreamt it; and the less said now, the better.’
I was not to be silenced, however, in this fashion. I had yet something to say, and I would say it. It was to this effect: That dreams were not usually productive of tangible results, and that I requested to know in what way the chairman conceived I had evolved from my dream so substantial and well-made a delusion as the cigar-case which I had the honour to place before him at the commencement of our interview.
‘The cigar-case, I admit, Mr Langford,’ the chairman replied, ‘is a very strong point in your evidence. It is your only strong point, however, and there is just a possibility that we may all be misled by a mere accidental resemblance. Will you permit me to see the case again?’
‘It is unlikely,’ I said, as I handed it to him, ‘that any other should bear precisely this monogram, and also be in all other particulars exactly similar.’
The chairman examined it for a moment in silence, and then passed it to Mr Hunter. Mr Hunter turned it over and over, and shook his head.
‘This is no mere resemblance,’ he said. ‘It is John Dwerrihouse’s cigar-case to a certainty. I remember it perfectly. I have seen it a hundred times.’
‘I believe I may say the same,’ added the chairman. ‘Yet how shall we account for the way in which Mr Langford asserts that it came into his possession?’
‘I can only repeat,’ I replied, ‘that I found it on the floor of the carriage after Mr Dwerrihouse had alighted. It was in leaning out to look after him that I trod upon it; and it was in running after him for the purpose of restoring it that I saw—or believed I saw—Mr Raikes standing aside with him in earnest conversation.’
Again I felt Jonathan Jelf plucking at my sleeve.
‘Look at Raikes,’ he whispered. ‘Look at Raikes!’
I turned to where the under-secretary had been standing a moment before, and saw him, white as death, with lips trembling and livid, stealing towards the door.
To conceive a sudden, strange, and indefinite suspicion; to fling myself in his way; to take him by the shoulders as if he were a child, and turn his craven face, perforce, towards the board, was with me the work of an instant.
‘Look at him!’ I exclaimed. ‘Look at his face! I ask no better witness to the truth of my words.’
The chairman’s brow darkened.
‘Mr Raikes,’ he said, sternly, ‘if you know anything, you had better speak.’
Vainly trying to wrench himself from my grasp, the under-secretary stammered out an incoherent denial.
‘Let me go!’ he said. ‘I know nothing—you have no right to detain me—let me go!’
‘Did you, or did you not, meet Mr John Dwerrihouse at Blackwater Station? The charge brought against you is either true or false. If true, you will do well to throw yourself upon the mercy of the board, and make full confession of all that you know.’
The under-secretary wrung his hands in an agony of helpless terror.
‘I was away,’ he cried. ‘I was two hundred miles away at the time! I know nothing about it—I have nothing to confess—I am innocent—I call God to witness I am innocent!’
‘Two hundred miles away!’ echoed the chairman. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I was in Devonshire. I had three weeks’ leave of absence—I appeal to Mr Hunter—Mr Hunter knows I had three weeks’ leave of absence! I was in Devonshire all the time—I can prove I was in Devonshire!’
Seeing him so abject, so incoherent, so wild with apprehension, the directors began to whisper gravely among themselves; while one got quietly up, and called the porter to guard the door.
‘What has your being in Devonshire to do
with the matter?’ said the chairman. ‘When were you in Devonshire?’
‘Mr Raikes took his leave in September,’ said the secretary; ‘about the time when Mr Dwerrihouse disappeared.’
‘I never even heard that he had disappeared till I came back!’
‘That must remain to be proved,’ said the chairman. ‘I shall at once put this matter in the hands of the police. In the meanwhile, Mr Raikes, being myself a magistrate, and used to deal with these cases, I advise you to offer no resistance; but to confess while confession may yet do you service. As for your accomplice——’
The frightened wretch fell upon his knees.
‘I had no accomplice!’ he cried. ‘Only have mercy upon me—only spare my life, and I will confess all! I didn’t mean to harm him—I didn’t mean to hurt a hair of his head! Only have mercy upon me, and let me go!’
The chairman rose in his place, pale and agitated.
‘Good heavens!’ he exclaimed, ‘what horrible mystery is this? What does it mean?’
‘As sure as there is a God in heaven,’ said Jonathan Jelf, ‘it means that murder has been done.’
‘No—no—no!’ shrieked Raikes, still upon his knees, and cowering like a beaten hound. ‘Not murder! No jury that ever sat could bring it in murder. I thought I had only stunned him—I never meant to do more than stun him! Manslaughter—manslaughter—not murder!’
Overcome by the horror of this unexpected revelation, the chairman covered his face with his hand, and for a moment or two remained silent.
‘Miserable man,’ he said at length, ‘you have betrayed yourself.’
‘You bade me confess! You urged me to throw myself upon the mercy of the board!’
‘You have confessed to a crime which no one suspected you of having committed,’ replied the chairman, ‘and which this board has no power either to punish or forgive. All that I can do for you is to advise you to submit to the law, to plead guilty, and to conceal nothing. When did you do this deed?’
The guilty man rose to his feet, and leaned heavily against the table. His answer came reluctantly, like the speech of one dreaming.
‘On the twenty-second of September!’
On the twenty-second of September! I looked in Jonathan Jelf’s face, and he in mine. I felt my own paling with a strange sense of wonder and dread. I saw his blench suddenly, even to the lips.
‘Merciful Heaven!’ he whispered, ‘what was it, then, that you saw in the train?’
What was it that I saw in the train? That question remains unanswered to this day. I have never been able to reply to it. I only know that it bore the living likeness of the murdered man, whose body had been lying some ten weeks under a rough pile of branches, and brambles, and rotting leaves, at the bottom of a deserted chalk pit about half way between Blackwater and Mallingford. I know that it spoke, and moved, and looked as that man spoke, and moved, and looked in life; that I heard, or seemed to hear, things related which I could never otherwise have learned; that I was guided, as it were, by that vision on the platform to the identification of the murderer; and that, a passive instrument myself, I was destined, by means of these mysterious teachings, to bring about the ends of justice. For these things I have never been able to account.
As for that matter of the cigar-case, it proved, on inquiry, that the carriage in which I travelled down that afternoon to Clayborough had not been in use for several weeks, and was, in point of fact, the same in which poor John Dwerrihouse had performed his last journey. The case had, doubtless, been dropped by him, and had lain unnoticed till I found it.
Upon the details of the murder I have no need to dwell. Those who desire more ample particulars may find them, and the written confession of Augustus Raikes, in the files of The Times for 1856. Enough that the under-secretary, knowing the history of the new line, and following the negotiation step by step through all its stages, determined to waylay Mr Dwerrihouse, rob him of the seventy-five thousand pounds, and escape to America with his booty.
In order to effect these ends he obtained leave of absence a few days before the time appointed for the payment of the money; secured his passage across the Atlantic in a steamer advertised to start on the twenty-third; provided himself with a heavily-loaded ‘life-preserver’, and went down to Blackwater to await the arrival of his victim. How he met him on the platform with a pretended message from the board; how he offered to conduct him by a short cut across the fields to Mallingford; how, having brought him to a lonely place, he struck him down with the life-preserver, and so killed him; and how, finding what he had done, he dragged the body to the verge of an out-of-the way chalk-pit, and there flung it in, and piled it over with branches and brambles, are facts still fresh in the memories of those who, like the connoisseurs in De Quincey’s famous essay, regard murder as a fine art. Strangely enough, the murderer, having done his work, was afraid to leave the country. He declared that he had not intended to take the director’s life, but only to stun and rob him; and that finding the blow had killed, he dared not fly for fear of drawing down suspicion upon his own head. As a mere robber he would have been safe in the States, but as a murderer he would inevitably have been pursued, and given up to justice. So he forfeited his passage, returned to the office as usual at the end of his leave, and locked up his ill-gotten thousands till a more convenient opportunity. In the meanwhile he had the satisfaction of finding that Mr Dwerrihouse was universally believed to have absconded with the money, no one knew how or whither.
Whether he meant murder or not, however, Mr Augustus Raikes paid the full penalty of his crime, and was hanged at the Old Bailey in the second week in January 1857. Those who desire to make his further acquaintance may see him any day (admirably done in wax) in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s exhibition in Baker Street. He is there to be found in the midst of a select society of ladies and gentlemen of atrocious memory, dressed in the close-cut tweed suit which he wore on the evening of the murder, and holding in his hand the identical life-preserver with which he committed it.
The Story of Salome
A FEW YEARS AGO, no matter how many, I, Harcourt Blunt, was travelling with my friend Coventry Turnour, and it was on the steps of our hotel that I received from him the announcement that he was again in love.
‘I tell you, Blunt,’ said my fellow-traveller, ‘she’s the loveliest creature I ever beheld in my life.’
I laughed outright. ‘My dear fellow,’ I replied, ‘you’ve so often seen the loveliest creature you ever beheld in your life.’
‘Ay, but I am in earnest now for the first time.’
‘And you have so often been in earnest for the first time! Remember the innkeeper’s daughter at Cologne.’
‘A pretty housemaid, whom no training could have made presentable.’
‘Then there was the beautiful American at Interlachen.’
‘Yes; but——’
‘And the bella Marchesa at Prince Torlonia’s ball.’
‘Not one of them worthy to be named in the same breath with my imperial Venetian. Come with me to the Merceria and be convinced. By taking a gondola to St Mark’s Place we shall be there in a quarter-of-an-hour.’
I went, and he raved of his new flame all the way. She was a Jewess—he would convert her. Her father kept a shop in the Merceria—what of that? He dealt only in costliest Oriental merchandise, and was as rich as a Rothschild. As for any probable injury to his own prospects, why need he hesitate on that account? What were ‘prospects’ when weighed against the happiness of one’s whole life? Besides, he was not ambitious. He didn’t care to go into Parliament. If his uncle, Sir Geoffrey, cut him off with a shilling, what then? He had a moderate independence of which no one living could deprive him, and what more could any reasonable man desire?
I listened, smiled, and was silent. I knew Coventry Turnour too well to attach the smallest degree of importance to anything that he might say or do in a matter of this kind. To be distractedly in love was his normal condition. We
had been friends from boyhood; and since the time when he used to cherish a hopeless attachment to the young lady behind the counter of the tart shop at Harrow, I had never known him ‘fancy-free’ for more than a few weeks at a time. He had gone through every phase of no less than three grandes passions during the five months that we had now been travelling together; and having left Rome about eleven weeks before with every hope laid waste, and a heart so broken that it could never by any possibility be put together again, he was now, according to the natural course of events, just ready to fall in love again.
We landed at the traghetto San Marco. It was a cloudless morning towards the middle of April, just ten years ago. The Ducal Palace glowed in the hot sunshine: the boatmen were clustered, gossiping, about the quay: the orange-vendors were busy under the arches of the piazzetta; the flâneurs were already eating ices and smoking cigarettes outside the cafés. There was an Austrian military band, strapped, buckled, mustachioed, and white-coated, playing just in front of St Mark’s: and the shadow of the great bell-tower slept all across the square.
Passing under the low round archway leading to the Merceria, we plunged at once into that cool labyrinth of narrow, intricate, and picturesque streets, where the sun never penetrates—where no wheels are heard, and no beast of burden is seen—where every house is a shop, and every shop-front is open to the ground, as in an Oriental bazaar—where the upper balconies seem almost to meet overhead, and are separated by only a strip of burning sky—and where more than three people cannot march abreast in any part. Pushing our way as best we might through the motley crowd that here chatters, cheapens, buys, sells, and perpetually jostles to and fro, we came presently to a shop for the sale of Eastern goods. A few glass jars, filled with spices and some pieces of stuff, untidily strewed the counter next the street; but within, dark and narrow though it seemed, the place was crammed with costliest merchandise. Cases of gorgeous Oriental jewelry; embroideries and fringes of massive gold and silver bullion; precious drugs and spices; exquisite toys in filigree; miracles of carving in ivory, sandal-wood, and amber; jewelled yataghans; scimitars of state, rich with ‘barbaric pearl and gold’; bales of Cashmere shawls, China silks, India muslins, gauzes, and the like, filled every inch of available space from floor to ceiling, leaving only a narrow lane from the door to the counter, and a still narrower passage to the rooms beyond the shop.
THE PHANTOM COACH: Collected Ghost Stories Page 20
