CHAPTER XVIII.

ALL ABOUT THOSE GLASS EYES

Rebecca Charlton finished her strange story with a sigh; and for a few moments that oddly-assorted trio sat in the cellar of that deserted house at Scalby without exchanging a word.

On both Paul Renishaw and Josiah Sawdry indeed the effect of her recital had been little short of marvellous. At first they had listened to her laborious explanations as to Kilroy and his twin brother with something like looks of indulgent good nature. Then, as the dramatic character of the plot began to unfold itself, and they saw how clearly she had pieced in all those different and opposing elements in the lives and fortunes of the persons involved in this exceedingly modern tragedy of love and hate and passion until at last the whole hideous mystery stood out boldly and distinctly as it had been conceived in the minds of the monster who had originated it, their faces changed like magic. Open scepticism gave way to doubt--for several minutes their convictions hung nicely poised in the balance, midway between absolute rejection and acceptance--until finally she reached the most baffling point of all. “Why did some absolute stranger personate Arthur Hudson in that sham marriage at Peterborough?”

That was the real crux--and when that was solved in the perfect complete way it was, they looked at each other, both convinced that this woman spoke the truth, and nodded. For the rest of her story they were plain level-headed yet sympathetic and unbiassed auditors. No longer did they seek to persuade themselves that she was not a most daring and cunning adventuress. They were her keen and eager partisans and they simply tested each statement as she put it forth to assure themselves that when it came before a judge and assize, and was torn to pieces by the most acute legal minds they could find a way to prop it up and make it emerge unshaken from the ordeal.

“We won’t trouble to discuss all the remarkable but convincing facts you have put before us,” said Paul, rising at length and taking up one of the lighted candles preparatory to making an ascent into the daylight. “If we did we should sit here all night, and one of the greatest scoundrels existing--Duncan Kilroy I mean--might escape from justice. There is, however, one matter I don’t understand quite as plainly as I ought to do. It is this. In what state of mind did you leave Kilroy after the murder?”

“Distracted,” said the woman quietly. “Up to a point, of course, everything went splendidly with him. His disguise was perfect. He shewed himself about so that everybody might give such a description of the murderer as would tally with the exact personal appearance of Arthur Hudson, but when he went into the greenhouse whilst I waited for him he got an ugly shock that quite turned his brain. A boy’s face suddenly appeared at the glass! True, he threw something at it and dashed out into the open, but, when he reached my side, his mind seemed to have gone quite. At that time a bit of wind was playing through the telegraph wires; and the doleful dirge-like sound racked his nerves to such a degree that he could think of nothing else. ‘Listen to the law’s sleuth hounds’ he kept saying, stopping suddenly and pointing to the lines over our heads. ‘How they whisper! How they hate me! What dark evil things they will do to me when they get the chance.’”

“No wonder he conceived that mad idea of tapping them,” rejoined Sawdry, who had been quietly turning over the woman’s story to see if he could find any weak point in it too, but could discover none. “Mrs. Charlton has certainly disposed of the only difficulty which I could see in the way of an arrest of the unworthy clergyman of St. Sepulchre’s--that was the explanation of his gift of £500 to the telegraph clerk Drummond. I have also just been glancing over the bundle of bank notes she gave me, and which were handed to her by Kilroy as a price of his silence. What do you think I have found stamped on them? Why the same mark as I saw on the pile that were given to Drummond--the mark of the Piccadilly branch of the London and Westminster Bank, where doubtless we shall learn the Rev. Duncan Kilroy, M.A., D.D., as he delights to call himself, has his private account.”

“If that be so, the police will have got on his track before this for, as you must remember, I sent what I will call the Drummond package of Bank of England notes down to the Scarborough police station by a local constable before we started to go to Scalby at all. Doubtless the local detectives would at once wire that branch of the London and Westminster Bank, and are now puzzling their brains to know why the manager has wired back they were issued to a respectable West End clergyman, and not, as they were certain, to my poor friend Arthur Hudson.”

“Still,” remarked the Jew diplomatically, “we shan’t do much good in confronting these Yorkshire Sherlock Holmeses unless we have something pretty substantial to back up our opinions. What do you say, Mrs. Charlton? You see, everything turns on you. Are you prepared to go down with us to the Scarborough police station, and to make a clean breast of all you have heard and known and suffered? If so, you needn’t employ a firm of private detectives and spend a thousand pounds on proving poor Hudson’s innocence. The police will do that for you free?”

“But,” said the woman craftily, “suppose they insist on my giving up the other thousand, what then? Poor Charlton will be as poor as ever and maybe neither of us will get a cent.”

“I will promise in Mr. Hudson’s name to make good any loss like that,” interposed Paul promptly. “Just leave it to me. You shall only gain in pocket by speaking the truth.”

“And what’s going to happen to me,” queried the Jew with a comical little grin. “I was promised a berth at Palamountain’s, worth £5 a week for life, if a little theory of mine came off. It didn’t--but still if it hadn’t been for it you might never have discovered Mrs. Charlton and this little retreat of hers at Scalby and got, at a bound as it were, right on top of the track.”

“My promise holds good still whoever is convicted,” said Paul, holding out his hand which was shaken warmly by both his companions in turn. “I only ask Mrs. Charlton to give me her word in one other little matter. It is this--that until Mr. Hudson is liberated she will not go on a drunken burst like this again;” and he pointed very gravely to the hundreds of beer bottles that littered the floor of the cellar.

The woman flushed and hung down her head. “I promise,” she said. “You can trust me. Had I not been mad indeed I would never have done it. As it happened though it proved my salvation. It enabled me to forget--everything--even my insensate rage against Aimée Blake. When next I came to my senses I was a changed woman. I saw things in a totally different light--in a word, I became quite sane again. And so I shall remain. I shall touch no more drink.”

“Good,” said Paul gaily, secretly overjoyed. “Now we all understand each other perfectly, we had better get off.” And waving the light he carried, he advanced towards the cellar steps, and a few moments later all three were soon stepping briskly along the road towards the village.

Luckily just then an empty cab rumbled up to them. The driver had been taking a well-known Scarborough tradesman to his home in this suburb, to dine and was only too glad to get a fare on the return journey which, spurred by the promise of double payment, he performed in an incredibly short time.

Inside and outside the police station things had assumed their normal appearance. The crowd that had listened to the proceedings with breathless interest and attention when Arthur had been brought before the local magistrates, had vanished now, and the street on the north side were as quiet and deserted as though “The Romantic Affair at Scarborough” was a story nine days old. Darkness, too, had set in that January night. A cold wind swept past the Castle and went whistling hungrily in and out of the doors and windows of the police station, making the fat old sergeant who was dozing over the fire draw his stool a little nearer and grunt a little more than was even his custom when duty interfered with comfort.

“May I see the Chief Constable?” said Paul suddenly, looming up against the counter flanked by his two companions.

The old fellow started up. “Certainly,” he replied, and before he quite realised what he was doing he shewed the three of them into the private office of the Chief Constable, who happened to be talking very excitedly to two keen-looking men in plain clothes, detectives.

Naturally all three recognised Paul, and, gathering from his manner that he had something important to communicate, they dropped the bundle of bank notes and series of telegrams that had caused them all this commotion, and let him take a chair and tell his story through from beginning to end without any interruption.

Even the journalist felt that there was something strangely uncanny, unnatural, in the way they took his disclosures. All their faces might have been made of wax, so little emotion did they exhibit. Even when he pushed forward Rebecca Charlton, and she filled in a complete account of how she had talked and reasoned with Kilroy just after the commission of the crime, and then advanced Josiah Sawdry and produced the other bundle of notes, similar to those they had on the table in front of them, the officers expressed neither surprise, dissent, nor pleasure. They just let all three run themselves down before they shewed a sign of the tremendous surprise they had in store for these self-invited investigators who were actually prepared with evidence to knock all their card castles to pieces. Then the Chief Constable rose, and standing with his back to the fire, spoke:

“I am sure we are very much obliged to you for all the trouble you have taken, Mr. Renishaw, and for this most valuable evidence which you have put into our possession; also, I want to thank you for that bundle of notes you sent down to me by one of our officers on the South Cliff. They enabled me to wire to Scotland Yard, who sent one of their best inspectors to the bank they came from. He quickly heard that they had been given to Mr. Duncan Kilroy, but when he went to St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage he found himself just five minutes too late.”

“Too late,” cried Paul. “Too late. What do you mean?”

“That this wretched man five minutes earlier had stabbed Ventris Blake to the heart and then blown out his own brains.”

The consternation that followed the Chief Constable’s announcement was simply appalling. The poor woman, Rebecca Charlton, was carried out of the police office in a fit of raving hysteria, while even Paul and Sawdry turned sick and white with the horror of it all, and the suddenness, and then the sense of its awful justice and completeness.

“How can it have happened?” they asked the two detectives who, it appeared, had the case against Arthur Hudson in hand. “So far as we are aware, not one of them had any suspicion that he was in danger. To all intents and purposes, everything was prospering with their crimes. All they had to do was to sit tight, and in the end the man they hated so much would be ruined, if not hanged.”

“That no doubt was so,” said the Chief Constable, “only you forget two circumstances. The first is--that Kilroy despatched a large number of telegraphic messages to Aimée Blake. True, they were in the name of Arthur Hudson, but, as we discovered several days ago, they were not in Hudson’s handwriting, and were presumably in Kilroy’s own. That, I am certain, made him so fearful of the telegraphic communication which he saw everywhere about him and which was in all probability the cause of his crazy bribe to the telegraphic clerk, Drummond. Secondly, you must remember that almost immediately after the crime the man’s brain gave way. In a word, he went mad, and, being mad, he must have thrown all idea of prudence to the wind, and have gone with a knife for the man whom, rightly enough, he may have blamed for the wretched tragic pass to which he had come.”

“Then you have no actual particulars of the crimes through yet?” queried Sawdry, steadying himself with an effort. “You don’t know whether the thing was done in public or in private.”

“Not at all,” said the Chief Constable quickly. “I wired for further information, but none has come through yet, except an intimation that one of the officers from Scotland Yard who was early on the scene of the tragedies is now travelling down to consult with me, and will give me every information and assistance.”

“Then I shall go to the office of the local daily newspaper, the _Daily Post_,” said Paul, suddenly rising and taking up his hat. “That editor will get the news through sooner than anyone, I am certain; and he is just the kind to oblige a brother journalist.”

“And I will go with you,” added Sawdry, stepping closely after his companion. “The atmosphere of the police station never does agree with me. It is too suggestive of what I have missed to make me breathe quite easily, or to cause me to feel a longing to rest there and be thankful that even on a bleak day like this I’ve got a Government roof over my head and a Government fire whereat I may warm myself.”

As it chanced, too, they were lucky enough to find the editorial offices of the paper open, and, at a word, the entire resources of the organisation were placed at their disposal, and telegrams of enquiry for full details were despatched to the three great newsgathering organisations of the country--the Press Association, the Central News, and the Exchange Telegraph Company, while the editor himself pieced together a graphic, yet incisive account of the extraordinary discovery that had been made and hurried out a special edition which took Scarborough by storm from end to end.

The Press Association was the first to wire any fresh facts about the crime at St Sepulchre’s, and it did so in the following terms:--

TERRIBLE TRAGEDY AT A LONDON VICARAGE. A POPULAR PREACHER GOES MAD AND STABS HIS BEST FRIEND.

At a late hour this afternoon the news became known of a shocking occurrence at St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage, Piccadilly, the home of that highly popular and successful preacher and parish worker, the Rev. Duncan Kilroy, M.A., D.D.

The Rev. gentleman, it seems, had recently returned from the briefest of visits to a well-known Yorkshire watering place for the benefit of his health. His wife has noticed that ever since his behaviour was distinctly curious, but, thinking that the recent scene in his church, when a mad woman rushed forward just before he started his sermon and denounced him, had slightly unhinged the balance of a naturally highly strung and imaginative intellect, she contented herself with leaving him free to do as he thought best.

Whether his most intimate friend, Mr. Ventris Blake, the famous Park Lane millionaire, heard of his sad condition and simply called to condole with him, or whether he was drawn thither by some specious but evilly designed letter or message, is not yet known. This much is clear: Mr. Blake called at the Vicarage about four o’clock this afternoon, and, according to the housemaid’s story, went at once to the unfortunate gentleman’s study. A moment later, the servant heard the sound of a violent altercation, combined with maniacal ravings and screams and then gibberish laughter. This she declares must have gone on for fully ten minutes when suddenly the door of the study was flung open and Ventris Blake rushed out with his face stricken with horror, his eyes rolling fearfully and a knife plunged to the hilt in his back.

“I am stabbed, I am stabbed,” he shouted in tones that struck horror to the brains of all that heard them, and in a flash he had flung out his arms wildly to grab furiously at the air, and then he collapsed, and lay on the floor quite dead.

Almost instantly afterwards, Duncan Kilroy appeared attired only in his shirt and trousers. “Where is the biggest scoundrel that ever walked the earth gone to?” he yelled in a voice of thunder. “Take me to him that I may complete the beneficent work I have begun!” And he waved a revolver about wildly and cut some mad capers around the corpse at his feet.

A moment later his mood changed. His looks altered. All at once the expression on his face grew strangely grim and tense. “There is only one thing in the wide world that is absolutely true. It is this,” he screamed. “The wages of sin is death. So perish the last of the Three Glass Eyes,” and he placed the weapon to his head and blew out his brains, his body falling rigidly across the corpse of his friend whom he had just slain.

Paul and Sawdry read this terrifying story through with dry eyes it is true, but with fingers that trembled and hearts torn with emotion. After all, they had not really expected so tragic and awful a finish to their quest for the murder of Aimée Blake as this was--and for some time they did not know what to do or what to say, so full seemed the future of alarming possibilities.

Fortunately a few minutes later there came a second message from the Press Association; and then they realised that Arthur Hudson would indeed be cleared of the terrible odium that had fallen upon him, for the following facts were now telegraphed:--

A MAN WITH A DOUBLE LIFE. APPALLING CONFESSION OF THE PICCADILLY CLERGYMAN. A NEW PERIL TO SOCIETY--“THE THREE GLASS EYES.”

Later inquiries into that dreadful affair at St. Sepulchre’s Vicarage disclose a most appalling state of things. The Vicar who murdered Ventris Blake, the millionaire, and then shot himself, left, it seems, a long written confession which seems almost too horrible to be true.

Briefly the Rev. Duncan Kilroy was a man with a double life. He had, he asserts, most vicious and depraved tastes, which he gratified in secret, and so had Ventris Blake, whom he also accuses of poisoning his first wife, a girl named Kaufmann. The second wife, Aimée Kilroy, he admits he went to Scarborough to kill, and also that he managed to do so. The reason for this crime is not very clear from his statement but this much is evident--Kilroy had years ago at Peterborough personated Mr. Arthur Hudson, who now is under arrest on the capital charge--and he in that character had contracted a bigamous marriage with Aimée Blake, who was then known as Burgoyne. Is it not time that our marriage laws are altered, and that registrars take proofs of the identity of the parties before they permit this sacred and far-reaching ceremony to be solemnised?

The most thrilling of these awful disclosures, however, turn on what the unhappy man calls “The Three Glass Eyes.” This, it appears, was a band of three men who swore to each other they would never respect any human life except each other’s, but would remove anybody they disliked from their path by the use of a secret poison of which Blake alone knew the secret. They had a kind of ritual and a horrible symbol of a huge shield of black with three great staring rolling eyes of glass.

The Mystic Three, as they dubbed themselves were Blake, Kilroy and a twin brother of Kilroy’s (now deceased) and their method of settling their intended victims was to invite them to become the members of a far-reaching and powerful Secret Society which they pretended had relations with financial magnates all over the world. Many as time went on consented--but in each case the procedure was the same.

The condemned wretch was conducted to a quaint looking old fashioned garret in front of some draped curtains and made to sit in a certain easy chair in the arms of which pins innoculated with this deadly poison were hidden. The curtains then were rolled aside by the aid of electricity, which also compelled those Three Terrible Eyes to revolve at a tremendous rate until at last the victim, sick and dizzy, and almost mesmerised, frantically caught hold of the arms of the chair. Then instantly his hand would be pricked and the deadly poison would be received into his system. Probably too he screamed.

At all events, the ceremony of initiation would be stopped, and the poor doomed novice would be hurried off to his home, but he never lived more than thirty to fifty minutes after the moment he actually received the pin-point into his flesh. Usually he tried to walk to recover from an apparent attack of faintness, and, the death register kept by Blake which was found open in the study after the murder, discloses one curious fact, that he nearly always fell under the feet of some approaching horse; and an intelligent coroner’s jury invariably returned a verdict of “Accidental Death,” varied sometimes by a rider to the effect that the driver ought to be cautioned for not having been more careful!!!