A Case in Camera

by Oliver Onions

  "You won't be able to do that," said Philip with decision. "Quite apartfrom his being fit to travel, we've only gone a certain way in all this,you know. He'll still have matters to explain. And till he does, I'mafraid Audrey Cunningham will have to make the best of things too, likeJoan. It wouldn't do her any good to know that Monty was liable toarrest at any moment."

  "But is he?" said Mollie, startled.

  "Of course he is. So am I. So are you. So would she be."

  "But why?"

  In spite of his explanation, I don't think she understood. I don't thinkshe understands to this day. I don't think that at the bottom of heranti-social heart any woman does. A delayed wedding or a post without alover's letter is a far greater thing than a capital charge in which allwho conspire are principals.

  Then, in spite of her fatigue, her skeptical common sense came to heraid. Philip might involve himself in a web of unelucidated stuff ofwhich one-tenth perhaps was fact of sorts and the rest pure speculation;but she knew Chummy. The thought of Chummy as a murderer was absurdbeyond words. Whatever the explanation might be it certainly was notthat. And, yawning as she rose, she told Philip so.

  "And that's that," she concluded. "Now do let's go to bed. Of course, ifyou think Chummy's a murderer I quite see why you didn't write and whyyou don't want to tell Audrey and all the rest of it, but you'll findit's all a mistake. There's something you don't know, or else there'sbeen an accident of some kind. If you seriously want me to believe thatChummy Smith.... What's the matter, darling?"

  The last words were a quick, startled cry. She did not know what it wasthat lurked at the bottom of the eyes that were looking so deeply andsomberly into her own, but she feared already. His head was slowlyshaking from side to side.

  "Philip! What do you mean?" she cried in agitation.

  Still the head shook. It was impossible for her mind not to fly back tothat moment, now nearly five days ago, when he had stood blinking inthe doorway with a candle in one hand and a jar of liqueur in the other.

  "Tell me quickly what you mean, Philip!" she cried again.

  "I saw it."

  She fell back. "You----?"

  "It wasn't an accident, and there isn't anything I don't know."

  "You----?"

  The slow sideways shake changed to one single nod. The next moment hisarms were about her and he was leading her to the sofa again. He sighed.There was no help for it now. If she would have it she must have it all.

  "It's the only thing I haven't told you. We may as well get it over," hesaid.

  Nor did he whisper this time. He spoke in his usual voice, using theplainest English he could.

  But what it was that Philip Esdaile told his wife you must guess for alittle while longer. She was the first living soul to know. And it was avery different thing from that which she had left Santon to hear.

  For it was this overwhelmingly extraordinary yet stupendously ordinarything that sent her round to Audrey Cunningham the next morning, butwithout comfort for her, with no plans for settling the wedding out ofhand.

  It was this same thing that took her back to Santon on the Wednesday,without Chummy, without help for Joan.

  It was this same thing that puzzled Monty Rooke's brain as he took hismidnight walk that night down Roehampton Lane, driven from AudreyCunningham's company and sick of the sight of Philip and all his works.

  And it was this and nothing else that Cecil Hubbard so much wanted toknow when he knitted his honest brows over hydrophones, sound-ranging,or whatever other mysterious apparatus it was that Philip Esdaile mighthave hidden away in his cellar.

  PART IV

  THE MAN IN THE PUBLIC-HOUSE

  I

  As an eager and passionate student of the Life of my day there are,within limits, few places that I don't visit and few people I don't onoccasion talk to. I say "within limits," since I admit that there may begrades at one end of the scale at which I draw the line, while at theother end there may conceivably be those who draw the line at me. Butwithin these extremes, if not always familiarly, yet on the wholewithout constraint, I sup at coffee-stalls or dine in quite good companymore or less indifferently.

  I have found that the best strategic jumping-off-points for thesatisfying of this curiosity about the preponderating average of Lifeare two. One--the Public-house--I have already mentioned. There only aglass screen may divide you from the hawker who has left his barrow fora few minutes in somebody else's charge, or from the gibused andsilk-mufflered figure who finds a glass of sherry a convenient way ofgetting small change for his taxi. The other point of vantage is theClub, where that same taxi is paid off, but where liveried chauffeursmay stand for hours by the waiting cars.

  I shall come to the Man in the Club by and by. For the present I wish toreturn to the Man in the Public-house.

  I won't say that I always love him, but I always recognize that I havehim very seriously to deal with. I am not thinking of him now either asa reader of my journalism or as a potential buyer of my novels, but as alarger phenomenon. I am thinking of him--loosely I admit--very much assome political cartoonist might think of a generalized and consolidatedfigure that turns a deaf ear to the Bolshevist and his sinisterwhisperings on the one side, while the other ear is no less stopped tothe honeyed blandishments of the statesman who so frequently andextraordinarily seeks to cajole him with flatteries that are bothout-of-touch and out-of-date.

  He is Conservative, if Conservatism means that he cynically holds hishand till he has seen what the next dodge is likely to be; and he isLiberal in the sense of believing that if everybody looks after himselfthen there will not be anybody who is not looked after. You haveoverdone it, my good friends and representatives in Parliament. He nolonger believes a word you say. You offer him good and necessary things,and he glances sideways at you, and his lips shape the words"By-election." You try to keep him from rash and dangerous courses, andhe wants to know what _you_ are getting out of it. You ration him, buthe knows where to get sugar and butter while you make the best ofsaccharine tablets and West African margarine; you de-control, and heknows better than you do why hens cease to lay and rabbits to breed. Itis we of the cheaper Press who really have him in hand, and he cocks hisears back at us occasionally. He did so when the _Daily Circus_ gave himpictures of bathing girls instead of war news; he is doing so to-daywhen--oh, lots of things--are pushed on and off the proscenium likeMonty Rooke's camouflage canvas trees and linoleum sentries. He sniffsat all these things, says nothing, and calls for another glass of hiscountry's seven-times-accursed beer.

  Yet he follows, if not his leader, his neighbor. This he sometimes doesto the most astonishing conclusions, just as he looks up at the sky-linebecause he sees somebody else doing so, or is prepared to swear that hehears a maroon because the man next to him says "Listen!" The vaguer therumor the greater is the scope for his self-and-collective suggestion.He sees Russians, he knows that dead Field-Marshals are still alive. Hecan tell you from private information that such-and-such a battalion hasbeen cut up or such-and-such a battle-fleet sent to the bottom of thesea. And not one of these larger things is half so large to him as thesmaller thing that looms huge because it is in his own immediateneighborhood. We on the _Circus_ provide pictures to give him at leastthe photographic semblance of body for his belief. But what when thevery flesh and blood of the drama passes along his street every day?What when he has spoken with the chief actor himself, knows who hemarried, the number of his children and their names? What when he knowsthe house he lives in, who lived there before, why he left so suddenly,and the very words he is said to have said on leaving?

  Do you see what I am coming to--those first faint whisperings ofsomething wrong--or if not positively wrong so much the better forpublic-house debate on the point--with Philip Esdaile's house in LennoxStreet?

  II

  The first that Esdaile knew of all this was from the
younger of Mollie'stwo maids. Monty and Audrey had arranged to dispense with the servicesof these two domestics, but Philip, still lingering on, had wanted theyounger one at least back. She had promised to come, but had not doneso, and Philip had sought her out. Thereupon she had said that she wouldrather not come.

  "Why?" Philip had asked; but she had given no satisfactory reason.

  He had then turned to the second maid, but with no better result.

  After all, it didn't matter. It was very little trouble for himself andMonty to make their own breakfasts. They could take their other meals atthe Chelsea Arts Club, and there would be no difficulty in getting awoman one or two days a week to clean.

  Then, to his extreme astonishment, on the very day after Mollie'sdeparture for Santon, he left Monty to a sandwich-and-coffee luncheon inthe studio and came out of his house to find Lennox Street almost asfull of people as it had been on the morning when the parachute haddescended on the studio roof.

  "What's the matter? Anything happened?" he asked the nearest loiterer athis gate; but he did not learn what had really happened till he reachedthe Club.

  Certainly the joke, if it was a joke, appeared to be "on him."Simultaneously two grinning fellow-members thrust into his hand thatmorning's issue of the _Roundabout_. The _Roundabout_, I should say, isthe _Circus's_ (much inferior) rival.

  It contained a photograph of Esdaile's house, with the spot where theparachute had descended marked with a cross.

  It was, of course, a thousand pities. No man likes the house he lives inheld up to the idle public gaze. Had the annoying thing been submittedto my own paper I could have stopped it. Had it been a big thing I mighteven have stopped its appearance in the _Roundabout_, for, while we cutone another's throats in detail, we have our understandings in largermatters. Hurriedly I scanned the rest of the paper to see whether anyletterpress went with the picture. None did. There was simply thephotograph, with a couple of quite innocent descriptive linesunderneath.

  "Seems to me rather a stumer," I said to Willett. "Is Hodgson losing hisgrip a bit?"

  "Haven't noticed it," Willett replied. "Sound man Hodgson. Doesn't oftendo things without a reason. I think we might go a bit slower onactresses and mannequins. This is the crash we were talking about theother morning, isn't it?"

  "Yes. A wash-out I should have said."

  "Perhaps he's playing the local-interest card. He's doing that just now.I don't see why we shouldn't do more of it."

  "I think we'll wait for a better story than that anyway," I replied."Well, let's get to work----"

  But all that afternoon the thing worried me. It was a trifle, perhaps,but it was a trifle on the wrong side. More, unlike some other trifles,I already saw how dangerously capable of further development it was. Ihave told you what the attitude of the Press was to this question ofcivil flying. It was one of simply awaiting events. But all the timeevents were fermenting, so to speak. High over our heads Olympian mindswere shaping and re-shaping policies and plans, and Argus eyes weretirelessly watching for indications of the receptivity of the popularmind. Had Hodgson heard something that we had not? As you sometimes seean insignificant person's affairs, of no interest in themselves,solemnly weighed by the Lords of Appeal because of some novel andfar-reaching point they raise, was something in the nature of a TestCase now being sought? Had we on the _Circus_ been wrong in assumingthat the idea was simply to catch and make an example of the carelessjoy-rider and the idiot who stunted over towns? Was some more importantpoint to be raised, and had Hodgson had wind of it?

  I was inclined to think not, and for the reason I have just given. Makea thing big enough, and we hang fairly well together; but take the whipsoff, so to speak, and we go as we please. If it had been as important asall that we should have heard of it. Willett, who is a youngster ofparts, was in all probability right. Hodgson was merely catering for thelocal interest.

  But still I was uneasy, and my uneasiness had nothing to do with theannoyance the publication of the photograph of the house in LennoxStreet must cause Esdaile. I was thinking of far graver possibleconsequences. Even the lightest measure of Publicity is not a thingto be trifled with. Here I know what I am talking about. The merryfellows of the Chelsea Arts Club might pull Esdaile's leg about hishaunted house, and want to know whether the White Lady dropped anyhairpins as she passed, or if the horrible shrouded figure with thecrimson-dripping hands would make a good film; but we journalists haveto take these things a good deal more seriously than that. Publicity,sometimes of the most incredibly silly kind, is our meat and drink andhourly breath. All day and every day our brains are on the stretch inour endeavors to secure it. We bring our heaviest guns to bear on theelusive thing, are sure we can't possibly miss it this time, let fly,and lo! we have missed after all. Like a pithball on a fountain, it isstill dancing there untouched, and any penny peashooter may bring itdown when all our trained intelligence has failed.

  And what would be the effects on our Case if it came down?

  Well, you can see that for yourself. In obscurity lay our hope that thething might remain what on the face of it it appeared to be. Switch thearc-lamps of the great papers on to it, with the whole power-house ofdynamic government behind them, and all was over. Not an aspect of theCase would go unprobed to the very bottom, and the hungry newspaperswould find themselves, not with a mere aeroplane crash that could bedismissed in a couple of lines, but with a really fine fat, first-classMurder Case that would keep them merrily going for weeks.

  And I can assure you that we all wanted very badly indeed just such aCase. We wanted it for more reasons than one. We wanted it, as we alwaysdo, in the ordinary way of our business, but much more we wanted it totake people's minds off other matters. We wanted it for the same reasonthat made us resolutely print those pictures of girls bathing during theblackest days of the War. We wanted it because the Man in thePublic-house was restless and showed a disposition to pry into affairsin which his interference is only wanted when a General Election drawsnear. Bathing girls were very well in their way; a really high-classline in Divorce Cases would have outstripped them easily, if I may bepermitted the unintentional expression; but the man who could have givenus on the _Circus_ the first Assassination in the Air could have namedhis own price for it.

  III

  The flat in which I live with the old housekeeper who looks after me isnot in Chelsea at all, but a quarter of an hour's walk away, just roundthe corner from Queen's Gate. It is exceedingly comfortable (as indeedit should be considering the rent I am made to pay for it), I have myown furniture, and on the whole I don't ask for a much better place towork in. For, quite apart from my paper, I do work, and I don't want togive you the impression that the whole of my leisure time is given overto the investigation of what happens to my Chelsea friends.

  I was, as a matter of fact, particularly busy just about that time. Dayafter day I was getting up at half-past six in the morning, breakfastingat my table as I worked, and continuing without interruption till it wastime for luncheon and the office. Since you are probably not in thewhite-elephant line of business, I won't tell you which of my novels Iwas at work on. I will only say that I at any rate was interested in it,and, severe as was the strain of writing from seven o'clock in themorning till midday, I sometimes hated to break off. Mrs. Jardine hadorders not to admit anybody whomsoever between those hours, and obeyedthem to the letter.

  You may judge then of my surprise when there walked into my study atnine o'clock in the morning, and not over Mrs. Jardine's dead body,Billy Mackwith.

  "Don't scold the old lady," he began without preface. "I suppose shehadn't any barbed wire except that on her chin--it is rather like one ofthe gooseberries we used to make on the old wiring-course. I had to seeyou."

  "Had breakfast? Have a cup of coffee?" I asked him.

  "Nothing, thanks. Well, I think I saved friend Philip a certain amountof trouble yesterday," he said, putting down his hat, stick and gloves.I don't think Mackwi
th buys a glossy new silk topper every time he goesout, but I do honestly believe he buys a new pair of lemon-coloredgloves.

  "Oh? How was that?"

  "At the inquest on that fellow," he replied. "And by the way, I saw the_Roundabout_ too. I suppose it has its humorous side, but it's veryannoying too. I should go for 'em for libel. A house can be libeled, youknow. Anyway, it's a good job he's out of town."

  I was on the point of saying, "A good job he's what?" when I checkedmyself. If you remember, I had last seen William Mackwith, K.C., when Ihad left him at Sloane Square Station an hour or two after thatconfounded aeroplane accident. He and Hubbard had gone off to keep theirrespective appointments, while I myself had followed our check-coatedfriend Westbury into a public-house. Whether either Esdaile or Hubbardhad seen him since I didn't know. I now gathered that Billy at any ratehadn't seen Esdaile.

  "Yes?" I said. "What trouble have you been saving him?"

  "Well, I told you--I saved him the bother of stopping for the inquest."

  I had of course known that there must be an inquest, but I suppose I hadbeen busy and had forgotten it again. This began to be interesting.

  "Tell me about the inquest," I said.

  He took a cigarette from his case and offered me one. Then he continuedbetween puffs.

  "Well, as a matter of fact there wasn't very much trouble. One manseemed inclined to be cantankerous, but we brought it in Misadventureall right. We----"

  I imagine that at this point he caught sight of the expression on myface, for he stopped suddenly.