CHAPTER VI.
CONCERNS THE HOLE IN THE WALL
Not until the two friends were rumbling along in a first-class carriage on the underground railway, bound for South Kensington station, did Paul Renishaw say a word about his experiences at Peterboro’ in search of the truth about the certificate of that sham marriage, which was destined to prove that five years ago, Arthur Hudson had been something worse than a bigamist. Then his accents were so low, so grave, so full of sympathetic affection, that poor Arthur realised instinctively, that little good had resulted from the day’s efforts. And so indeed, it proved.
“I turned up at the Registry Office all right,” said Paul, pretending to busy himself with the shape and colour of the cigarette he was smoking, the more readily to hide his mortification. “But I confess I was very quickly nonplussed. You see, the Registrar, who it was alleged to have performed the ceremony, died about a year after. The marriage is entered in the proper books safe enough, and no doubt, some ceremony of the kind indicated, did actually take place. Unfortunately, the only person I could strike, who pretended at all to have any knowledge of the actual marriage, was an old woman who used to clean the office of the Registrar of Marriages, and who declares that she was present at the time your so-called wedding was solemnized. Naturally, I did not want to give her any clue as to what I was after, and so I merely contented myself by asking her to describe the kind of man the so-called ‘Arthur Hudson’ was. Confound it, the crazy old soul gave me a magnificent description of your personal appearance five years ago. Why, she even described that old-pepper-and-salt suit you were so fond of wearing about that period--and, when I produced the actual photograph, she took a solemn oath to me that you were the man who married Aimée Lucille Fausta Burgoyne on the date given.”
“But surely,” gasped Arthur, “that was enough to shake your faith in me!”
“No! it was not enough, nothing could do that, old chap,” responded Paul, very gently, although the lines on his features betrayed the deep anxiety he had passed through. “As a matter of fact, I had a small satisfaction of my own, at the Registry Office, before I saw this old beldame. You must know that during the discussion, the present Registrar produced the actual certificate of your marriage for my inspection, and I had a good look at the signature that purported to be written by yourself. Now, of course, old man, I know your writing quite as well as I know my own, and although this particular signature was amazingly like the one you are accustomed to use, I know enough of your characteristics to know that the thing was a clever but not a convincing forgery.”
“Thank heaven for that,” muttered Arthur fervently. “In truth, I had just begun to wonder, if, after all, I am not the villain these people have made out--whether after all, I had not fallen into some extraordinary trance five years ago, like those people you read of in the newspaper, and had completely lost all knowledge of my own identity for a few weeks during which, of course, I might have met this poor, ill-fated Aimée Burgoyne, and married her quite unknown to myself and my own companions; and then after a spell of married happiness, suddenly recovered my sanity and returned to my own self and my old way of life,” and checking the depression that was stealing over him, he broke into a low and mirthless laugh.
“Not a bit of it,” responded Paul cheerily. “The whole circumstances of the marriage are too shady, too suggestive to admit of any remote contingency like that. I soon found out when I came to enquire for Meissonier Studios, which I found to be a kind of greenhouse fixed at the end of an old garden, and formerly used by travelling photographers, what a base use had been made of a high sounding address, so as to gull the authorities! Indeed, the landlady of the place told me, that within the last six years, no fewer than thirty different people had tried to make a living in that shanty, and had failed, but as she kept no books, and only charged half-a-crown a week rent, ‘payment in advance, and leave at the end of seven days if you are not satisfied,’ I quickly saw that it was useless for me to attempt to pursue any enquiries in that direction.”
“But the witnesses,” queried Arthur, anxiously, “how about those?” And he suddenly recollected the facts of his encounter with the drunken caretaker, Charlton.
“Oh,” said Paul lightly, “I could make nothing out of those. I consulted a lot of old local directories--I stood a lot of free drinks to a lot of intelligent loafers--and, finally, I went to the police station, where I happened to meet a friend in the Chief Constable; and he worked like a nigger to help me. Nothing was known about ‘Israel Sawdry’ or ‘Rebecca Charlton’--not a word, so I concluded that they, like the bride and bridegroom, were all imported for the occasion, for the particular purpose of the fraud.”
“Well, luckily, old chap, I do know something about one of them.” And in a few quick and concise sentences, Arthur told Paul not only how, in this beer-sodden care-taker, George Charlton, he had discovered the husband of the very woman they were after, Rebecca Charlton, and had put detectives on the track of them both, but also how he had gone himself to that extraordinary garret Ventris Blake had taken at 375 Queen Victoria Street, and what he had seen there, including the strange device of The Three Glass Eyes.
Paul listened very quietly while all these facts were recounted to him, his brow growing every moment more and more cloudy. For fully ten minutes he sat back in the carriage, as they clattered through station after station on the Inner Circle, and he spoke not a word.
Indeed, it was only when they sat in Arthur’s own sitting-room in Kensington Gore, that he made any attempt to gauge the value of Arthur’s new and suggestive experiences. Then he tossed the end of his cigarette viciously into the fire, and throwing himself into an armchair, told Arthur to listen very carefully to him.
“It is like this, old man,” he declared. “You did exactly the right thing in putting the detectives on the track of those two wretches, the Charltons. You mark my words, we shall get some most valuable discovery from that source.
“In my opinion, however, you did quite wrong in walking out of that room Ventris Blake has taken so easily, when you had once obtained admission to it. If that huge black shield, bearing The Three Glass Eyes, gave you such an ugly turn as you tell me it did, why on earth didn’t you go up to it, and find out what it was made of!
“Personally, I am a peaceable man, with a great respect for the laws of property, but I could tell you, that if I had seen that beastly-looking object, I should have seized the first chair that came to my hand, and smashed the whole contrivance to atoms. If you had, I am sure you would have learned a great deal more than you did.
“As it is, however,” he went on very firmly, “there is only one thing for us both to do. We must both go at once to Queen Victoria Street ourselves, and, taking yet another advantage of that dear sainted Ventris Blake’s absence, we must go over his garret in a more systematic fashion than you ever attempted to do.”
“But how the dickens are we to get in? I didn’t wait to get the keys from the caretaker. All the doors on that top floor are sure to be locked as tight as a drum.”
“Oh, fiddle-de-dee,” muttered Paul, irritably. “Have you so soon forgotten the lessons that old burglar gave me in Seven Dials, by which he swore there wasn’t a common door lock in Christendom that could defy the tricks in picking he had put me up to? Why, those must be only common or garden locks you’ve got on those doors, mustn’t they? Well, well, don’t say another word about them. Come along with me now--and I’ll take my chance.”
Overborne by his friend’s persuasion, Arthur quickly yielded to this new suggestion, and, snatching a hurried dinner, they again went to an underground station--to Mansion House Station--and before eight o’clock had struck, they found themselves walking down Queen Victoria Street, stealing like burglars up the staircase of No. 375. Luckily, somebody had left a light burning on the topmost floor, and, taking a hint from Arthur, who never to this day can tell why he gave it, although it proved singularly providential, Paul undertook his first essay in house-breaking on the door of the caretaker’s room.
Well indeed it was that he did so, for no sooner had they got this lock properly picked and the door pushed wide open, than they were startled by the sound of voices--the voices, too, of Ventris Blake and of Russell Langford.
“What the deuce are those two men doing, coming here at this unearthly hour?” whispered Arthur excitedly to Paul; but the next moment he found himself gripped tightly by the arm by his companion, who dragged him inside the care-taker’s apartments, and noiselessly closed the door upon them both.
“Hush! If you value your life,” he muttered thickly. “Quick! Take my hand and lead me in the direction in which you fancy Blake’s room to be. We have only a second to spare. Act at once, for they are coming up the stairs now, yet, if we can only get a few slits made in the wall, we may very possibly discover more than we shall ever find out again, about a pair of men who I regard as equal in rascality and wickedness.”
Stirred to the uttermost, Arthur dragged Paul through the empty rooms, now lit only by feeble reflections from the huge electric lights in the silent street beneath. Fortunately, he had a good brain for locality, and almost in a flash, he was able to indicate the partition that divided Blake’s garret from the care-taker’s.
“Now for it,” gasped Paul, hoarse with excitement, and tapping the wall gently, he was overjoyed to find, as he had expected, that it was made of the flimsiest lath and plaster.
With the cunning of the skilled burglar he attacked this partition, and almost in a second, he had managed to dissect two or three inches towards two or three places which commanded a complete view of the interior of the apartment.
As it happened, no time was wasted by the millionaire or by the lawyer when they had once got the door of the apartment open. In response to a rather florid bow from Blake, Russell Langford was the first to enter, and this was a set contrivance, for no sooner had the barrister put his foot across the threshold than the financier stepped quickly after him, and turned and locked the door upon them both. The next instant he struck a light, and before Langford had time to recover the use of his eyes, he had lit three or four of the burners in the gas-chandelier that depended from the centre of the ceiling. Then, as the light streamed over the apartment, a curious thing happened.
All at once, Russell Langford seemed to take in the entire sense of that quaintly arranged apartment--to realise that this was no ordinary office or warehouse to which he had been invited by this friend, for which he entertained such peculiar dread--but was, on the contrary, a diabolically arranged trap to frighten and to conquer him.
With what exceeding bitterness did he remember every aspect, every turn, every corner of that room, in the counterfeit presentiment of which, he now found himself! With what marvellous cunning that fiend, Ventris Blake, had managed to reproduce every detail of the original place that was fraught with a thousand heartbreaking recollections for him! Why, there, even at his feet, the carpet had been tampered with--and yes, just where the light fell from the chandelier in a vivid circle in front of him, just like it had happened to do in the old days, was that dark vengeful-looking stain of blood.
“My God! this is awful!” he gasped; and more like a man in a trance than a creature possessed of all his senses, he felt his way towards the mantelpiece, from the huge black shield above which there glowered down upon him the Three Glass Eyes!!
Oddly enough though, this symbol did not excite half the terror within him that his unseen watchers, Paul Renishaw and Arthur Hudson, had expected. Long he gazed at it as though he would drink to the full the cup of bitterness that had been prepared for him with such fiendish ingenuity and precision--but only by the ghastly pallor of his cheeks, by the twitching of his nerves about the temples, and by that drawn grey look we see sometimes in the faces of people doomed to early death, did he show any signs of the awful anguish that had now taken possession of his soul and heart.
All the time Ventris Blake’s eyes were fixed upon him, with that hungry, strained, compelling look, that seemed to read right through the lawyer’s pale, thin, envelope of flesh to the black shrivelled up heart he so successfully concealed from the world.
At last, even he, the arch-fiend that had so cunningly devised this staggering lesson for his companion, could bear the tense, drawn silence no longer.
“Well,” said he eagerly, “are you satisfied?” and with a swift gesture he pointed to those three brilliant but immoveable eyes above him. And there was a moment’s pause, and then across the room came ringing the answer: “I am satisfied.”
With a long sighing sound, Russell Langford turned away at length from the hideous object that confronted him, but like a man who has suddenly grown old, in an hour of the most frightful anguish, he threw out his hands helplessly, and tottered rather than walked towards the door.
“Your price, man,” he quavered irritably, seizing Blake by the lappet of his coat. “You fiend in human shape, you have done this with some object--now then, tell me your price.”
Ventris Blake broke into a laugh that was hard as the mask he always wore over his features. “You’re a funny chap, Langford,” said he, “and I don’t half like being dragged about as though I were a marionette, but you shall have your answer all the same. ‘My price,’ as you call it, won’t hurt you a scrap; it doesn’t even affect you, for all I ask is that you should just link up your forces with mine and help me to compel your niece, Winifred Pontifex, to be mine.”
“And if I refuse,” snarled the old man, swaying around fiercely, and glaring balefully at his tormentor. “What then? Have you not done enough injury to me and mine without putting this extra load of iniquity upon my shoulders? What, Ventris Blake, are you--man, fiend or devil--that you should so torture me and rend me, that I have felt for years past, were I not such a pitiably poor kind of coward I would take the only refuge that is left for me, and blow out my brains.”
“Oh, but you mustn’t talk like that,” said Ventris Blake soothingly, realising that he had pressed this feeble will as far as it was politic, and that it might be better to go easy for a time if he wished to gain his ultimate purpose. “After all, it is not a very difficult task I put before you. Really, as a price of my silence, it is ridiculously small. Why, even your daughter Vera has promised to aid me--”
“Vera!” exclaimed the old man passionately, “I have no daughter Vera, for I have discovered she has played me false, and that in a few days she proposes to marry that wretched creature of an actor, Jules Prendergast.”
“Never mind about that,” persisted Blake, “I can soon stop any folly of that description. I have got that precious mummer under my thumb, and if I tell him to give Vera up, he will be precious glad to do so, careless whether he breaks her heart or not, for all he cares for is that he should get her cash. But who told you about Prendergast at all?” he added with a sudden access of suspicion, fearful lest some servant of his own had tried to blackmail the barrister.
“Oh, a scoundrel named Judson, a footman of mine, that I intended to discharge, but who seems to have got to know a great deal too much of what is bad for me, to enable me to part with him, and I have had to pension him off with an annuity of fifty pounds a year, just to keep his mouth shut.”
“Well, you have got out of it cheaply,” retorted his cynical companion, beginning to turn out the lights in the chandelier. “Still, whilst you are here, you had better give me an answer to my question--Do you intend to go in with me, heart and soul, and to help me to win Winifred Pontifex for myself?”
Russell Langford affected to think for a moment, but the two watchers in the next room could see that he was already beaten. Now that the first shock of the mystery of the Three Glass Eyes had passed over his head, it was easy to see that his old craven fear for his own safety and well-being had re-asserted itself; and almost before Blake could turn and give him one of those searching, compelling glances of his, he had mumbled forth the required promise.
Another moment, and all the lights in the grim looking garret were extinguished. Taking Langford firmly by the arm, the millionaire conducted him to the top of the staircase, and after locking the door carefully behind them, led the way for them both down the stairs into the street.
Meanwhile, Paul and Arthur were left to themselves, staring at each other in blank amazement. It was quite true they had witnessed the entire interview between Langford and Blake, and had heard every word that was exchanged between them, but somehow they seemed to be no nearer solving the mystery of the Three Glass Eyes than they had been at the time previous.
Of course, they had discovered that the millionaire had some curious, far-reaching hold over the lawyer,--but that Russell Langford had himself practically admitted when they first mentioned Ventris Blake’s name to him, and now they were no nearer to the discovery of its character than was represented by a knowledge of the two prime factors--a shield, bearing Three Glass Eyes, and an early Victorian carpet, stained with blood.
Could Russell Langford have been guilty of any crime of violence of which Ventris Blake alone knew the secret? Could some tragedy in the early life of the lawyer have been hushed up without exposure, and could disgrace hang upon any disclosures that the millionaire might choose to make at any critical moment?
These, and a hundred such like questions, flashed like lightning through the minds of the two comrades as they felt their way out of the darkened rooms hitherto occupied by the drunken caretaker, Charlton, and made once again for the open street.
Swinging off to the right in the direction of New Bridge Street, they soon found themselves near the Bridewell Police Station, from under the shadow of which two men, who had been standing in eager conversation, suddenly started forward.
By the light of a lamp, Paul and Arthur saw that one man was attired in the uniform of the ordinary police inspector; the other, although he wore plain clothes, was obviously a detective.
“By the way,” said the former, pretending to treat the matter as a light one, “do you mind telling me which of you two gentlemen is Mr. Arthur Hudson?”
“I am,” replied Arthur promptly.
“Then,” broke in the detective, suddenly gripping him by the arm, “it is my duty to arrest you, sir, on a charge of the wilful murder of your wife at Scarborough some two days ago.”
“My wife!” gasped Arthur, dumbfounded. “Why, I have no wife!”
“Oh yes, you have,” repeated the detective confidently. “You can’t fool me, for your wife’s name was Aimée Lucille Fausta Hudson.”
Now almost any other man but Paul Renishaw would have broken into a storm of fury when he saw his friend seized by a police inspector and detective and bundled off to the police station without a word of explanation.
As it turned out, however, Paul Renishaw knew the police-methods almost as well as did the police themselves: and in an instant, he recognised the melancholy truth that any demonstration at that point which might be made against this sudden attack, was bound to tell against Arthur himself, even though he might be, (as indeed he was,) perfectly innocent of the charge preferred against him. Therefore, summoning all his powers of persuasion, he begged Arthur very earnestly to allow himself to be taken quite quietly into custody, and also to say no more than was absolutely necessary about the extravagant charge of wife-murder that had been preferred against him.
“Don’t make a fuss, old chap,” he pleaded, taking up a position alongside the detective. “Remember, it is not these men’s fault that you are seized and arrested. Understand, they are simply doing their duty, even though everybody will admit in time that they are grossly mistaken. Recollect also that if you treat them with consideration, they, when they get their chance, will not only be considerate, but also fair and obliging to yourself.”
For a moment, but only for a moment, Arthur was sorely tempted to resist this advice, There is something peculiarly obnoxious to an Englishman to find that he has been laid violent hands upon: and terrible though the confession may seem, we’re bound to record that Arthur’s first impulse was to knock down the man that had touched him, and to tell the inspector that he must be nothing less than mad to prefer so outrageous a charge against him.
Paul, however, had, when he chose to exert it, a curiously soothing effect upon the mind of his highly-strung friend: and almost before Arthur quite understood what had happened, the entire quartette found themselves in the police-station--in front of a long counter, at which an inspector was seated, busily writing in a huge ledger, every page of which was adorned by the photograph of some more or less illustrious criminal.
For at least a couple of minutes, this official went on steadily writing, while the party awaited in a kind of breathless silence. Then he looked up, and, turning to the inspector, he gruffly enquired what had happened.
“Oh!” replied the chief officer, whose name turned out to be Lawton, “we have just arrested the man for whom the Scarborough police telegraphed that long description--Mr. Arthur Hudson, the house-agent, of Cheapside. He has made no statement to us except one he made immediately we took charge of him: and then he denied that the murdered woman was his wife.”
The station inspector smiled cynically, and then turned and looked at the fourth member of the party, Paul Renishaw, whom he recognised. “Hullo, Mr. Renishaw,” he said, in tones that were meant to be very severe, “what are you doing here at a moment like this? You know you have no right to enter the police station when we are charging prisoners, particularly in an important matter like that of wilful murder. Would you please leave, as we don’t wish any particulars of this arrest to leak out at present.”
“I don’t quite see how I can do that,” said Paul slowly, feeling that his position was a difficult and dangerous one. “You see, Mr. Arthur Hudson is my most intimate friend, and he was arrested while we were walking along New Bridge Street together, intent on paying a visit to my chief, the Editor of _The Moon_. Naturally, I could not see him bundled off to the police-station without coming with him, and I am only waiting now to hear the charge, so that I may go about and tell his friends what a terrible blunder you have made.”
The station inspector looked very severe. “Your presence here is quite against the regulations,” he reiterated; and he pointed significantly in the direction of the open door.
“No, it isn’t,” snapped Inspector Lawton, who much appreciated the tact which Paul had shown in the difficult business of the arrest.
“Then you call me a liar!” exclaimed the other officer fiercely; and for a moment the two men glared fiercely at each other, all the hatred of years of bitter and broken rivalry, flaming forth from the eyes of them both.
For once the detective acted as peacemaker. “I don’t think,” he said slowly, “that scenes like this, rebound to the credit of the police force, particularly in the presence of so distinguished a journalist as Mr. Paul Renishaw, who has every opportunity of showing us up in an exceedingly unpleasant light in the columns of _The Moon_. In the circumstances, don’t you think it would be better to waive any difference as to any question of official rule, and to treat the matter as one between gentlemen, and not as between potent police officials and potential criminals. Thus, why should we not tell Mr. Renishaw and Mr. Hudson quite frankly what our instructions are--and leave to the one his honour not to make use of his newspaper for the publication of any facts of this arrest, that might prejudice the police investigations, and to the other his good sense to understand that in arresting him, we have simply obeyed our instructions, and the whole gravity of the situation falls upon the North-East Riding Police.”
By this time both inspectors’ anger had considerably cooled; and, with something approaching a sigh of relief, the station inspector now turned and picked up some telegrams that lay on the desk at the far end of the counter.
“I think that is a very good suggestion,” he said with a certain air of pomposity, “and so, if Inspector Lawton is willing, I will tell Mr. Hudson, or rather the prisoner, as we must now call him, that half-an-hour ago we received a long message from Scarborough, in common with all the other Metropolitan police-stations which said that information had come to hand that the murderer of that poor woman on the Filey Road, answered the description of himself, and that evidence had been forthcoming that he had married her five years ago at Peterborough, and would we please use every diligence in arresting him.
“It is now therefore, my duty,” he went on in a tone of increasing earnestness, “to formally charge you with the wilful murder of your wife, Aimée Lucille Fausta Hudson, and to warn you that any reply you may make to this charge will be taken down in writing against you, and may be used against you at the trial, notwithstanding any pretext that may have been holden out to you to now make any confession or admission of your guilt.”
Paul drew in a deep breath of anxiety, fearful lest his friend should make some remark that might mean mischief to him in the future--but, luckily, Arthur was not the kind of man to lose his self-possession in a critical juncture like that, and he answered quite boldly:--“My reply to this is, the Scarborough police have made some preposterous mistake. I am not guilty. The woman you mentioned was not my wife. I have never been married. I have never been to Scarborough in my life.”
These answers were duly recorded by all the three police officers present; and then came the bitterest blow of all--Arthur was told that he would have to surrender his liberty; that no bail was allowed in the case of a murder charge; and that the best thing that he could do was to go quietly to a cell in the police-station with all the fortitude he could command, and await the morning, when he would no doubt be brought before a magistrate and formally remanded until the police at Scarborough would be in a position to send some officer to take him to that far distant part of Yorkshire.
Very sad, and in a sense, tragic, was the parting between these two old friends. Once or twice indeed, Paul Renishaw was on the point of breaking down altogether, but the sight of Arthur’s brave and honest look steadied him like nothing else; and finally, he prevailed upon the officials to let him see Arthur safely ensconced in his cell, and then, with a heart over-full with anxiety, he set off to Emperor’s Gate to see Russell Langford, in the hope he might discover from the lawyer, who had been present at the inquest, and had no doubt had long consultations with the Scarborough police, why this extraordinary action had been resolved upon.
When, however, he actually arrived at the door of the lawyer’s flat, he was surprised to see that apparently every light was extinguished, and realising that something untoward must have happened he went reluctantly home.