CHAPTER XIV.

TURNS ON THE LETTER “K”

We must now, however, return to Paul and his search in the mysterious garden.

At first there seemed nothing out of the common to attract his attention. From right to left his quick glance wandered, noting a thousand things that would escape the ordinary policeman, and yet might yield an expert some clue to the identity of the wild frantic creature who tore amongst those trees at midnight with hands crimson with the blood of a fellow creature but newly slain.

Eventually he reached the green-house where, it was supposed, the criminal had washed himself clear of the stains of his guilt, and, thrusting open the door, he marched inside and narrowly examined the interior. Of course, the detectives had been there before him, but Paul knew enough of their methods to believe that it was just possible some fine object had escaped them that might turn completely the burden of proof from the shoulders of his wretched and unfortunate friend.

For a few minutes, however, he could discover nothing, but just as he was about to step into the open air again, his eyes caught the glint of gold on the floor.

“Ah!” said he with a chuckle, “this is a find I am certain--” but just as he was about to bend down and seize it, a long hairy hand was thrust out from behind the hot-water pipes; the object was seized; and a familiar voice cried out tauntingly: “Mine, Mr. Renishaw, I think!”

Luckily, Paul did not lose his presence of mind.

Quick as lightning he realised that a false move at this point might do the poor prisoner at Scarborough Police Station almost irreparable damage--so, drawing back a step, he glanced hurriedly round to see whether he could not at a touch checkmate his unseen foe.

As he did so, one fact made itself clear to him--that the man was not concealed in the greenhouse at all, or of course, he would have discovered him as soon as he had started to make his examination. As a matter of fact, the fellow had only just put in an appearance at all, and, oddly enough, he had arrived through an opening few would have utilised or expected--the long but square flue that communicated with a furnace-like grate built out some few feet from the outside wall of the greenhouse.

To slip round and close the door that led to this was the work of an instant. Then Paul bolted back to the interior again, and was just about to drop the iron slide that shut off the flue from the inside of the greenhouse and to catch the knave in his own trap as it were, when again that mysterious hand was thrust forward, only this time it exhibited the object which had been the cause of all the mischief.

“Here take it,” said the same familiar voice he had heard first. “I admit that I have been fairly ‘euchred’! Only let me get out of this poisonous hole. Phew! I feel as though I should never be able to breathe anything but carbonic acid again.” And, as Paul fell backward, to take the precaution to snap the key in the door lock, no less a personage than Josiah Sawdry--variously, the “far-famed Silas Q. Pinkerton, the great New York detective,” or “old Sawdust,” just as one happened to frequent the public-houses of Scarborough or Fleet Street--emerged, covered from head to foot in soot.

So distressful indeed were his fits of coughing and his general aspect of grime and dirt, that even Paul could not avoid breaking into a hearty laugh. “Good heavens, man,” he said, “you’re no good as a detective. Only an idiot would get himself in a mess so frightful that the first person he spoke to would run away from him for fear of catching the Black Plague!”

“I know,” said Sawdry, with a pathetic effort to shake off some of the soot and ashes. “I feel myself that I have been a bit of an ass--only I was anxious that you should not get any particular ‘bulge’ on me before you and I came to terms. None the less, I ain’t the man to run off my word. Here take the thing that caused me to shew up before I wanted.” And he passed over to Paul the object that had been discovered on the floor of the greenhouse, and overlooked by the market gardener to whom the place belonged and the police--the broken half of a gold link.

With fingers he could scarcely control, Paul took the glittering fragment of jewellery and inspected it with great care. It had evidently been newly broken off its stem. No doubt when the criminal had frantically torn off his incriminating garments, he had caught his sleeve in one of the iron supports of the greenhouse shelves and fractured the connecting gold band in pieces, with the result that this portion had dropped away unseen. Probably it would never have been discovered at all had not Paul kicked away a piece of matting by accident, for it had been entangled in the folds of this, and had only just dropped out with its freshness quite untarnished.

What, however, excited the journalist more than anything was the design on the face of the link itself. It was a very simple one, it was true--it was just one ordinary letter of the alphabet, neatly engraved, but free from an extravagant flourish, but it was the letter itself that spoke volumes.

That was the letter “K.”

Of course, with the childish, almost pathetic confidence of youth, Paul had expected it would bear a pattern totally different. Had he indeed been asked to guess first what monogram ought by common right and justice to have been written in indelible characters on this damning piece of gold, he would have unhesitatingly answered, “V.B.”

Of course, too, if the object had been handed first to the police, they would have guessed something totally different to either of these two things. They, with the childish, almost pathetic confidence of men who had made up their minds to believe one person guilty, and one person alone, (though the heavens might open and reveal something exactly different), would have sworn that the monogram must have been “A.H.” when the link was first lost.

As it was, however, it was simply the letter “K.”

Poor Paul’s face dropped as he turned the thing over between his fingers. He was so sure that the millionaire had done away with Aimée Blake, to leave himself free to win Winifred Pontifex, that the discovery of this link afflicted him with a sense of keen personal disappointment. In a flash, as it were, it had upset all his plans--all his theories, for how could he connect an object like this with Ventris Blake?

“You are disappointed, I see,” put in Sawdry who had been narrowly watching the expression on Paul’s face. “You had got your brain fixed on the idea that you would discover somebody else to be the real criminal.”

“I admit it,” said the journalist brokenly, and he began to move about with quick nervous gestures, peering here and there in the hope that he might still discover something else that the authorities had overlooked.

Sawdry paused and watched him for a few moments, for he saw Paul was too mortified then to engage either in pleasantries, recriminations, or business. Finally, however, he said: “When you’ve quite finished, Renishaw, come and have a chat with me. I know a tap where I can rid myself of some of this grime. First then I’ll do it--but afterwards, I will go and smoke a pipe in that little arbour between the laurel trees near the gate. Find me there, entirely at your own convenience.”

Paul did not vouchsafe any answer, but as soon as the man had taken himself off he redoubled his exertions, shifting and scrutinising narrowly pots, boxes of earth, tins of seeds, twine and dressings, until he could safely say there was not an inch of the entire greenhouse that had escaped his examination. Only one other find rewarded his patience and his persistence. That was a piece of linen which had been thrust between the sash and the frame of one of the lights in the top of the structure. Seen first, it merely appeared a piece of dirty rag half covered with earth and cob-webs, but taken down and examined it turned out, first that it had not been in use in that direction many days, and second, that it was no ordinary piece of rag, but was actually a dainty cambric handkerchief, small enough for use by a woman of ease and refinement.

And in the corner was the same significant letter that was emblazoned on that link of gold--no other than the letter “K.”

This time, Paul put his pride and his prejudice on one side, and went promptly and consulted Sawdry who was stretched on a rustic seat, a carefully studied image of insouciance and patience.

“Look here,” said the journalist bluntly, “I have found another confounded clue, only it is no more valuable than that piece of gold we picked up. It also bears the letter ‘K.’”

“Quite so,” replied the pseudo-detective. “What else can you expect?” And he pursed up his mouth, looked very mysterious, and nodded his head thrice.

“Well?” said Paul, now coming to the point the man had aimed at. “Can you throw any light on the mystery at all?”

“Yes,” he responded with a sigh by which he would suggest, like Romeo’s apothecary, his poverty and not his will consented. “I can, but on terms.”

“Oh, of course, on terms?” echoed Paul irritably. “But what terms?”

“Well, it’s like this,” said Sawdry, suddenly sitting up and facing his cross-examiner. “I am thoroughly tired of being a rogue. It doesn’t pay either in purse, in physical comfort, or in peace of mind. Honesty, in my opinion, is the best policy, because honesty is the more profitable--and so I have to-day one object in life and really one object alone, to become honest.”

“Well that’s easy enough,” returned Paul with a laugh.

“Is it?” said the man bitterly. “You try it. You try it when all your life, more or less, has been crooked. Why, it’s worse than trying to keep water in a sieve! The Old Book says the road to the other place--hell, isn’t it?--is broad and smooth. So it may be at the start, but it winds and winds till it becomes a veritable morass full of treacherous bogs, dotted by sunken reefs and trees that trip you up when you seek to turn and that stretch out long detaining vice-like branches which suck you down into their foul miasmatic depths till your frame reeks of poison and you haven’t the strength to get on your feet again, much less retrace your steps. Oh! I know it, man. I have tried it till I am sick--I have got too far to free myself of my own strength.

“Of course,” he went on in a different key. “I stole your watch. It is not the only thing I have stolen in my life by many a score. But I am sick of it, dead. The devil is the worst paymaster the scheme of creation ever invented. Help me to get out of his clutches--to free myself from the bond of servitude into which I have fallen with Ventris Blake; and I’ll serve you true and faithfully and honourably as long as God gives me breath.”

“But what can I do?” queried Paul helplessly, borne down by the man’s fierceness. “I am not an employer myself. I am only a sub-editor, a servant on a great newspaper. I have no situations in my gift.”

“Mr. Hudson has,” said Sawdry quickly. “Promise me, in his name, a berth worth £250 a year just as long as I run straight, and I’ll tell you all I know about this awful business of the murder of Aimée Blake.”

“Very well,” replied Paul, after a second’s thought.

For a moment there was an interval of strained silence between the two men.

Paul seated himself at the end of the bench in the rustic arbour, his attitude one of patient if not indulgent expectation. The Jew, on the other hand, took three or four deep-lunged pulls at his pipe before he moved at all. Then he laid his pipe gently on the ledge near his elbow, and gathering himself up into a kind of heap--in which the most distinct things were two piercing black eyes and two white hands unstained by toil, but now clasped nervously over his knees--he began his strange and dramatic story.

“First of all,” said he, “you must get quite clearly fixed in your mind who I am and with whom I am connected. Thus always remember I am Josiah Sawdry, a Hebrew who once stood high in his own faith, and who has had access to all the magic Freemasonry that binds Jews in prominent positions in all great cities together, first for mutual helpfulness in times of difficulty and danger, and second for purposes of aggression against the Gentiles. This fact alone has put me in a more favourable position for many things than most Scotland Yard detectives, and had I only gone straight in the early days and won the good opinion of our rabbis, there is no doubt I should have been one of the rich and honoured citizens of London.

“As it was, however, I preferred devious courses--but ‘blood is thicker than water,’ and so when my brother Israel got the position of private secretary to Ventris Blake, the millionaire, I determined to worm myself into their plans and their confidences, and, if necessary, become rich at one stroke by means of blackmail. Mind, I am not now defending this course, I couldn’t even if I tried. Crime is crime, and yet, believe me, if you knew your city as well as I do you’d be astonished at the amount of blackmail that is paid there every year.

“Of course, I don’t mean by this a man goes to a rich operator and says, ‘pay me so-and-so, or I will go and tell all your friends that you put your old landlady’s savings in a rotten Company of yours and lost all her money for her, and then let her die in the gutter starving and penniless.’ That would be obtaining money by threats; there are laws that deal with slander; and such a thing as a fuss is not wanted by any one. No, in London it is quite enough to let a man know that you know something discreditable about him. It may not be true even. It may be the most wicked invention Satan ever put it into the heart of man to conceive--but as long as it has a certain dirty colour about it that will make it stick on the poor wretch against whom it is projected, well, you are all right. All you can consider is:--

“Is it worth it to have a scandal? Ten to one, if I crush it utterly, there are some kind Christians who will believe that I am not as innocent as the Judge made me out to be. And then what will become of the baronetcy I am fighting for--the membership of the yacht club--that appointment as Chairman of the Hospital--or even my seat as a Member of Parliament? Well, it’s gone and all the thousands I have spent on it to gain it?

“What indeed does it benefit anyone to fight with a sweep? One simply gets covered with soot, while though you may roll him in the mud, still he may rise just as clean as when he started. These, in brief, are the conclusions forced on every wealthy man whether he be wise or foolish; and so the aim of thousands of people in London with more brains than cash is to trade on these facts, and to terrorise those who are better off than themselves.

“But to return to myself, I had early discovered this as the secret of many shady unscrupulous people’s fortunes, and no sooner did Israel make headway with Blake, than I made it my business to make headway with Israel and to spy about on Blake’s private life. Then I soon learned that Blake had a skeleton in his cupboard, like most other folks. At that time he was married to a girl named Kaufmann.”

“What,” cried Paul, forgetting himself for a moment. “The sister of Flora Kaufmann the actress, and of Eleanor Kaufmann who died the other day in Gray’s Inn Road!”

“Yes,” returned Sawdry, “and also the sister of Rebecca Kaufmann, the eldest girl, who married that drunken little sweep, Charlton, who finished up as a caretaker in some offices in Queen Victoria Street.”

“No!” interjected Paul, still more amazed. “The woman who professed that she witnessed the marriage between Arthur Hudson and the woman who called herself Aimée Lucille Fausta Burgoyne?”

“Certainly,” responded the Jew, slowly rubbing his hands, “Rebecca witnessed that marriage on the strength of a series of falsehoods from Blake. She thought the thing had been arranged to gratify some private spleen of the millionaire’s against the woman, but when she discovered later that it was just part of some diabolical plot the end of which was the infatuation of Blake for the Burgoyne creature, she nearly went mad with rage.”

“Why?” queried Paul helplessly. “What concern was it of hers?”

“This,” returned the Jew with great earnestness, laying a finger in the palm of his hand to punctuate each word. “She had a very genuine love for her sister. She delighted to think of her in a prosperous and luxurious position, even though she herself drudged at the wash tub in a squalid court off the Blackfriars road. Later, however, she found that she had been chiefly instrumental in patching up things between Blake and the Burgoyne, and that on the strength of this wild passion Blake poisoned her sister, and subsequently married Burgoyne. That was the fact that dethroned her reason.

“For some years, indeed, she was confined in a mad house--I believe at Brentwood, the affair preyed so terribly on her mind. Of course the other sisters, Flora and Eleanor, could not prove anything against Blake, although both were morally certain he was the murderer of their sister. Flora, as perhaps you know, went on the stage then, and Blake financed her till she got on her feet and was strong enough to command a decent sum every year. Eleanor hated Blake forthwith, and swore to be avenged on him--but her health was always feeble; and I could never see where she was hitting at him to do him much damage.

“Both, of course, repudiated their sister Rebecca, who became simply a pauper maniac. Some months ago however, she made a sudden and a marvellous recovery, and when her husband got into that caretaker’s place in Queen Victoria Street he took her out of the asylum. None the less, she never lost sight of her original intention--to wreak her vengeance on the Burgoyne woman. Again and again during the last few weeks when I used to drop into her rooms and chat to her about days long since dead and gone, she would talk to me about Blake and his wife, and womanlike, it was never the man she blamed--always the woman. Every time, indeed, she spoke about the affair her eyes would light up with that fire of insanity there is no mistaking, and every day her looks grew wilder and wilder until at length I heard without surprise from her husband one night late when I called that she had suddenly taken all their savings and disappeared.

“My first impression was, that the strain of freedom had been too much for her, and that she had slipped down in the night hours to the Embankment and dropped herself into the Thames. The next day, however, I saw an account of Mrs. Blake’s murder, and I said to myself with a great gasp of horror: ‘That is the work of Rebecca Charlton, I’ll swear.’”

“But,” cried Paul absolutely staggered, “we know for a fact that the crime was done by a man--and a man got up to resemble Arthur Hudson!”

“What of that?” said Sawdry coolly. “Remember Rebecca and her sisters in the early days were well known amateur actresses, and knew how to make up almost as well as Gustave or Clarkson. Besides, she had already had some experience of how people made up to resemble your poor friend. Wasn’t she present at the wedding of the Burgoyne woman and the supposed Arthur Hudson? What more natural, when she pined for a disguise, her poor demented brain turned at once to the very last disguise she had had hand in?”

“But this link--marked ‘K’ what of that?”

“It was hers. I will swear it. I have seen her wear its companion often. It was the one relic of her prosperous days to which she clung.”

“And this handkerchief marked ‘K.’ Can you identify that too?”

“No, I can’t. There is nothing distinctive about it except the initial, and yet it is quite plain enough and old enough in pattern to have belonged once to the Kaufmann girls; whatever, however, convinced me that hers was the hand that committed the crime was this--look how insanely the real criminal went on! Would anybody in possession of their senses behave as this man is supposed to have done? Would any person who had their reason, yet meditated murder, take a bed-room at a refreshment house in a lonely hamlet like this, and shut himself up in it--and not go out of it, and refuse to take any meals? More, would he buy quite openly the weapon with which he intended to strike down his victim so that it was childishly simple for him to be identified later? Then all that mad race to a greenhouse, where any passer-by could see the light and come up and peer through the glass and watch him washing off the blood-stains and changing his clothes for fear of detection! I ask you, would anybody with a grain of sense--aye would anybody except poor, demented, Rebecca Charlton dream of giving themselves away so frantically as that?”