The Shadow of the Rope

by E. W. Hornung

  CHAPTER XXVI

  A CARDINAL POINT

  The irresistible discomfiture of this ruffian did not affect the valueof the evidence which he had volunteered. Langholm was glad to rememberthat he had volunteered it; the creature was well served for his spiteand his cupidity; and the man of peace and letters, whose temperamentshrank from contention of any kind, could not but congratulate himselfupon an incidental triumph for which it was impossible to feel thesmallest compunction. Moreover, he had gained his point. It was enoughfor him to know that there was a certain secret in Steel's life, uponwhich the wretch Abel had admittedly traded, even as his superiorMinchin had apparently intended to do before him. Only those two seemedto have been in this secret, and one of them still lived to reveal itwhen called upon with authority. The nature of the secret matterednothing in the meanwhile. Here was the motive, without which the caseagainst John Buchanan Steel must have remained incomplete. Langholmadded it to his notes--and trembled!

  He had compunction enough about the major triumph which now seemed incertain store for him; the larger it loomed, the less triumphant and themore tragic was its promise. And, with all human perversity, anunforeseen and quite involuntary sympathy with Steel was the lastcomplication in Langholm's mind.

  He had to think of Rachel in order to harden his heart against herhusband; and that ground was the most dangerous of all. It was strangeto Langholm to battle against _that_ by the bedside of a weaker brotherfallen in the same fight. Yet it was there he spent the night. He hadscarcely slept all the week. It was a comfort to think that this vigilwas a useful one.

  Severino slept fitfully, and Langholm had never a long stretch ofuninterrupted thought.

  But before morning he had decided to give Steel a chance. It was a vaguedecision, dependent on the chance that Steel gave him when they met, asmeet they must. Meanwhile Langholm had some cause for satisfaction withthe mere resolve; it defined the line that he took with a somewhatabsurd but equally startling visitor, who waited upon him early in theforenoon, in the person of the Chief Constable of Northborough.

  This worthy had heard of Langholm's quest, and desired to be informed ofwhat success, if any, he had met with up to the present. Langholm openedhis eyes.

  "It's my own show," he protested.

  "Would you say that if you had got the man? I doubt it would be our showthen!" wheezed the Chief Constable, who was enormously fat.

  "It would be Scotland Yard's," admitted Langholm, "perhaps."

  "Unless you got him up here," suggested the fat official. "In that caseyou would naturally come to me."

  Langholm met his eyes. They were very small and bright, as the eyes ofthe obese often are, or as they seem by contrast with a large crassface. Langholm fancied he perceived a glimmer of his own enlightenment,and instinctively he lied.

  "We are not likely to get him up here," he said. "This is about the lastplace where I should look!"

  The Chief Constable took his departure with a curious smile. Langholmbegan to feel uneasy; his unforeseen sympathy with Steel assumed theform of an actual fear on his behalf. Severino was another thorn in hisside. He knew that Rachel had been written to, and fell into a fever ofimpatience and despair because the morning did not bring her to hisbedside. She was not coming at all. She had refused to come--or herhusband would not allow it. So he must die without seeing her again! Theman was as unreasonable as sick men will be; nothing would console himbut Langholm's undertaking to go to Normanthorpe himself after lunch andplead in person with the stony-hearted lady or her tyrannical lord. Thisplan suited Langholm well enough. It would pave the way to the "chance"which he had resolved to give to Rachel's husband.

  That resolve was not weakened by successive encounters, first with apoliceman near the entrance gates, next with a trespasser whom Langholmrightly took for another policeman in plain clothes, and finally withthe Woodgates on their way from the house. The good couple welcomed himwith a warmth beyond his merits.

  "Oh, what a blessing you have come!" cried Morna, whose kind eyesdiscovered a tell-tale moisture. "Do please go up and convince Mrs.Steel that you can't be rearrested on a charge on which you have alreadybeen tried and acquitted!"

  "But of course you can't," said Langholm. "Who has put that into herhead, Mrs. Woodgate?"

  "The place is hemmed in by police."

  "Since when?" asked Langholm, quickly.

  "Only this morning."

  Langholm held his tongue. So the extortioner Abel, outwitted by theamateur policeman, had gone straight to the professional force! Theamateur had not suspected him of such resource.

  "I don't think this has anything to do with Mrs. Steel," he said atlast; "in fact, I think I know what it means, and I shall be only tooglad to reassure her, if I can."

  But his own face was not reassuring, as Hugh Woodgate plainly told himin the first words which the vicar contributed to the discussion.

  "I have been finding out things--I have not been altogetherunsuccessful--but the things are rather on my mind," the authorexplained. "How does Steel take the development, by the way?"

  "As a joke!" cried Morna, with indignation; her husband was her echoboth as to words and tone; but Langholm could only stare.

  "I must see him," he exclaimed, decisively. "By the way, once more, doyou happen to know whether Mrs. Steel got a letter from me this morning,Mrs. Woodgate?"

  "Yes, she did," answered Morna at once. Her manner declared her to benot unacquainted with the contents of the letter, and Langholm treatedthe declaration as though spoken.

  "And is she not going to see that poor fellow?" he asked.

  "At once," said Morna, "and I am going with her. She is to call for mewith the phaeton at three."

  "Do you know anything about him, Mrs. Woodgate?"

  "All."

  "Then I can only commend him to the sympathy which I know he hasalready. And I will talk to Mr. Steel while you are gone."

  The first sentence was almost mechanical. That matter was off Langholm'smind, and in a flash it was fully occupied with the prospect beforehimself. He lifted the peak of his cap, but, instead of remounting hisbicycle, he wheeled it very slowly up the drive. The phaeton was at thedoor when Langholm also arrived, and Rachel herself ran out to greet himon the steps--tall and lissome, in a light-colored driving cloak down toher heels, and a charming hat--yet under it a face still years olderthan the one he wore in his heart, though no less beautiful in itsdistress.

  "I hardly dare ask you!" she gasped, her hand trembling in his. "Haveyou found out--anything at all?"

  "A little."

  And he opened his hand so that hers must drop.

  "Oh, but anything is better than nothing! Come in and tell me--quick!"

  "Bravo!" added an amused voice from the porch.

  It was Steel, spruce and serene as ever, a pink glow upon his mobileface, a pink flower in his reefer jacket, a jaunty Panama straw coveringhis white hairs, and buckskin shoes of kindred purity upon his small andwell-shaped feet. Langholm greeted him in turn, only trusting that thetremors which had been instantly communicated to his own right handmight not be detected by the one it was now compelled to meet.

  "I came to tell Mr. Steel," said Langholm, a little lamely.

  "Excellent!" murmured that gentleman, with his self-complacent smile.

  "But am I not to hear also?" demanded Rachel.

  "My dear Mrs. Steel, there is very little to tell you as yet. I onlywish there were more. But one or two little points there are--if youwould not mind my first mentioning them to your husband?"

  "Oh, of course."

  There was no pique in the tone. There was only disappointment--anddespair.

  "You manage a woman very prettily," remarked Steel, as they watched thephaeton diminish down the drive like a narrow Roman road.

  "You are the first who ever said so," rejoined the novelist, with arather heavy sigh.

  "Well, let us have a cigar and your news. I confess I am interested. Astroll, too, would be pleasanter
than sitting indoors, don't you think?The thickest walls have long ears, Langholm, when every servant in theplace is under notice. The whole lot? Oh, dear, yes--every mother's sonand daughter of them. It is most amusing; every one of them wants tostay and be forgiven. The neighbors are little better. The excuses theyhave stooped to make, some of them! I suppose they thought that weshould either flee the country or give them the sanguinary satisfactionof a double suicide. Well, we are not going to do either one or theother; we are agreed about that, if about nothing else. And my wife hasbehaved like a trump, though she wouldn't like to hear me say so; it isher wish that we should sit tighter than if nothing had happened, andnot even go to Switzerland as we intended. So we are advertising for afresh domestic crew, and we dine at Ireby the week after next. It istrue that we got the invitation before the fat fell into the fire, but Ifancy we may trust the Invernesses not to do anything startling. I aminterested, however, to see what they will do. It is pretty safe to bean object-lesson to the countryside, one way or the other."

  During this monologue the pair had strolled far afield with theircigars, and Langholm was beginning to puff his furiously. At first hehad merely marvelled at the other's coolness; now every feeling in hisbreast was outraged by the callousness, the flippancy, the cynicism ofhis companion. There came a moment when Langholm could endure thecombination no longer. Steel seemed disposed to discuss every aspect ofthe subject except that of the investigations upon which his very lifemight depend. Langholm glanced at him in horror as they walked. Thebroad brim of his Panama hat threw his face in shadow to the neck; butto Langholm's heated imagination, it was the shadow of the black cap andof the rope itself that he saw out of the corners of his eyes. It wasthe shadow that had lit upon the wife the year before, happily to liftforever; now it was settling upon the husband; and it rested withLangholm--if it did rest with him--and how could he be sure? His mindwas off at a tangent. He was not listening to Steel; without ceremony heinterrupted at last.

  "I thought you came out to listen to me?"

  "My dear fellow," cried Steel, "and so, to be sure, I did! Why on earthdid you let me rattle on? Let me see--the point was--ah, yes! Of course,my dear Langholm, you haven't really anything of any account to tell? Iconsidered you a Quixote when you undertook your quest; but I shallbegin to suspect a dash of Munchausen if you tell me you have found outanything in the inside of a week!"

  "Nevertheless," said Langholm, grimly, "I have."

  "Anything worth finding out?"

  "I think so."

  "You don't mean to tell me you have struck a clew?"

  "I believe I can lay hands upon the criminal," said Langholm, as quietlyas he could. But he was the more nervous man of the two.

  The other simply stood still and stared his incredulity. The staremelted into a smile. "My dear fellow!" he murmured, in a mild blend ofhorror and reproof, as though it were the fourth dimension that Langholmclaimed to have discovered. It cost the discoverer no small effort notto cry out that he could lay hands on him then and there. The unspokenwords were gulped down, and a simple repetition substituted at the last.

  "I could swear to him myself," added Langholm. "It remains to be seenwhether there is evidence enough to convict."

  "Have you communicated with the police?"

  "Not yet."

  "They seem to have some absurd bee in their helmet down here, you know."

  "They don't get it from me."

  It was impossible any longer to doubt the import of Langholm's earnestand rather agitated manner. He was doing his best to suppress hisagitation, but that strengthened the impression that he had indeeddiscovered something which he himself honestly believed to be the truth.There was an immediate alteration in the tone and bearing of his host.

  "My dear fellow," he said, "forgive my levity. If you have really foundout anything, it is a miracle; but miracles do happen now and then.Here's the pond, and there's the boathouse behind those rhododendrons.Suppose you tell me the rest in the boat? We needn't keep looking overour shoulders in the middle of the pond!"

  For an instant Langholm dreamt of the readiest and the vilest resource;in another he remembered, not only that he could swim, but the insidioussympathy for this man which a darker scoundrel had sown in his heart. Ithad grown there like Jonah's gourd; only his flippancy affected it; andSteel was far from flippant now. Langholm signed to him to lead the way,and in a very few minutes they were scaring the wildfowl in mid-water,Steel sculling from the after thwart, while Langholm faced him from thecrimson cushions.

  "I thought," said the latter, "that I would like to tell you what sortof evidence I could get against him before--before going any further.I--I thought it would be fair."

  Steel raised his bushy eyebrows the fraction of an inch. "It would befairest to yourself, I agree. Two heads are better than one, and--well,I'm open to conviction still, of course."

  But even Langholm was not conscious of the sinister play upon words; hehad taken out his pocket-book, and was nervously turning to the leavesthat he had filled during his most sleepless night in town.

  "Got it all down?" said Steel.

  "Yes," replied Langholm, without raising his eyes; "at least I did makesome notes of a possible--if not a really damning--case against the manI mean."

  "And what may the first point be?" inquired Steel, who was graduallydrifting back into the tone which Langholm had resented on the shore; hetook no notice of it now.

  "The first point," said Langholm, slowly, "is that he was in Chelsea, orat least within a mile of the scene of the murder, on the night that ittook place."

  "So were a good many people," remarked Steel, smiling as he dipped thesculls in and out, and let his supple wrists fall for the feather, asthough he were really rowing.

  "But he left his--he was out at the time!" declared Langholm, making hisamended statement with all the meaning it had for himself.

  "Well, you can't hang him for that."

  "He will have to prove where he was, then."

  "I am afraid it will be for you to prove a little more first."

  Langholm sat very dogged with his notes. There had been a pause onSteel's part; there was a thin new note in his voice. Langholm was toogrimly engrossed to take immediate heed of either detail, or to watchthe swift changes in the face which was watching him. And there he lostmost of all.

  "The next point is that he undoubtedly knew Minchin in Australia--"

  "Aha!"

  "That he was and is a rich man, whereas Minchin was then on the verge ofbankruptcy, and that Minchin only found out that he was in Englandthirty-six hours before his own death, when he wrote to his old friendfor funds."

  "And you have really established all that!"

  Steel had abandoned all pretence of rowing; his tone was one ofadmiration, in both senses of the word, and his dark eyes seemed topenetrate to the back of Langholm's brain.

  "I can establish it," was the reply.

  "Well! I think you have done wonders; but you will have to do somethingmore before they will listen to you at Scotland Yard. What about amotive?"

  "I was coming to that; it is the last point with which I shall troubleyou for the present." Langholm took a final glance at his notes, thenshut the pocket-book and put it away. "The motive," he continued,meeting Steel's eyes at last, with a new boldness in his own--"themotive is self-defence! There can be no doubt about it; there cannot bethe slightest doubt that Minchin intended blackmailing this man, atleast to the extent of his own indebtedness in the City of London."

  "Blackmailing him?"

  There was a further change of voice and manner; and this time nothingwas lost upon Charles Langholm.

  "There cannot be the slightest doubt," he reiterated, "that Minchin wasin possession of a secret concerning the man in my mind, which secret hewas determined to use for his own ends."

  Steel sat motionless, his eyes upon the bottom of the boat. It wasabsolutely impossible to read the lowered face; even when at length heraised it, and looked Langh
olm in the eyes once more, the naturalinscrutability of the man was only more complete than ever.

  "So that is your case!" said he.

  And even his tone might have been inspired either by awe or by contempt,so truly rang the note between the two.

  "I should be sorry to have to meet it," observed Langholm, "if I werehe."

  "I should find out a little more," was the retort, "if I were you!"

  "And then?"

  "Oh, then I should do my duty like a man--and take all the emoluments Icould."

  The sneer was intolerable. Langholm turned the color of brick.

  "I shall!" said he through his mustache. "I have consulted you; therewill be no need to do so again. I shall make a point of taking you atyour word. And now do you mind putting me ashore?"

  A few raindrops were falling when they reached the landing-stage; theyhurried to the house, to find that Langholm's bicycle had been removedfrom the place where he had left it by the front entrance.

  "Don't let anybody trouble," he said, ungraciously enough, for he wasstill smarting from the other's sneer. "I can soon find it for myself."

  Steel stood on the steps, his midnight eyes upon Langholm, the glint ofa smile in those eyes, but not the vestige of one upon his lips.

  "Oh, very well," said he. "You know the side-door near thebilliard-room? They have probably put it in the first room on the left;that is where we keep ours--for we have gone in for them at last.Good-by, Langholm; remember my advice."

  And, that no ceremony should be lost between them, the host turned onhis heel and disappeared through his own front door, leaving Langholmvery angry in the rain.

  But anger was the last emotion for such an hour; the judge might as wellfeel exasperated with the prisoner at the bar, the common hangman withthe felon on the drop. Langholm only wished that, on even one moment'sreflection, he could rest content in so primitive and so single a stateof mind. He knew well that he could not, and that every subtle sort ofcontest lay before him, his own soul the arena. In the meantime let himfind his bicycle and get away from this dear and accursed spot; for dearit had been to him, all that too memorable summer; but now of a suretythe curse of Cain brooded over its cold, white walls and deep-setwindows like sunken eyes in a dead face.

  Langholm found the room to which he had been directed; in fact, he knewit of old. And there were the two new Beeston Humbers; but theirlustrous plating and immaculate enamel did not shame his own olddisreputable roadster, for the missing machine certainly was not there.Langholm was turning away when the glazed gun-rack caught his eye. Yes,this was the room in which the guns were kept. He had often seen themthere. They had never interested him before. Langholm was no shot. Yetnow he peered through the glass--gasped--and opened one of the slidingpanels with trembling hand.

  There on a nail hung an old revolver, out of place, rusty, mostconspicuous; and at a glance as like the relic in the Black Museum asone pea to another. But Langholm took it down to make sure. And themaker's name upon the barrel was the name that he had noted down at theBlack Museum; the point gained, the last of the cardinal pointspostulated by the official who had shown him round.

  The fortuitous discoverer of them all was leaving like a thief--more andmore did Langholm feel himself the criminal--when the inner door openedand Steel himself stood beaming sardonically upon him.

  "Sorry, Langholm, but I find I misled you about the bicycle. They hadtaken it to the stables. I have told them to bring it round to thefront."

  "Thank you."

  "Sure you won't wait till the rain is over?"

  "No, thank you."

  "Well, won't you come through this way?"

  "No, thank you."

  "Oh, all right! Good-by, Langholm; remember my advice."

  It was an inglorious exit that Langholm made; but he was thinking tohimself, was there ever so inglorious a triumph? He knew not what he hadsaid; there was only one thing that he did know. But was the law itselfcapable of coping with such a man?