Part 6

“Sir Henry was astonished. He sat down and looked across the table at the man. He wasn't able to speak for a moment, then he got it out: 'Why exactly do you say that?'

“Mr. Meadows put his elbows on the table. He twiddled the big reading glass in his fingers. His face got firm and decided.

“'To begin with,' he said, 'the door to this house was never broken by a professional cracksman. It's the work of a bungling amateur. A professional never undertakes to break a door at the lock. Naturally that's the firmest place about a door. The implement he intends to use as a lever on the door he puts in at the top or bottom. By that means he has half of the door as a lever against the resistance of the lock. Besides, a professional of any criminal group is a skilled workman. He doesn't waste effort. He doesn't fracture a door around the lock. This door's all mangled, splintered and broken around the lock.'”

“He stopped and looked about the room, and out through the window at the Scotland Yard patrol. The features of his face were contracted with the problem. One could imagine one saw the man's mind laboring at the mystery. 'And that's not all,' he said. 'Your man Millson is not telling the truth. He didn't see a dead body lying on the steps of this house; and he didn't see a man running away.'

“Sir Henry broke in at that. 'Impossible,' he said; 'Millson's a first-class inspector, absolutely reliable. Why do you say that he didn't see the dead man on the steps or the assassin running away?'

“Mr. Meadows answered in the same even voice. 'Because there was never any dead man here,' he said, 'for anybody to see. And because Millson's 'description of the man he saw is scientifically an impossible feat of vision.'

“Impossible?' cried Sir Henry.

“'Quite impossible,' Mr. Meadows insisted. 'Millson tells us that the man he saw running away in the night wore a blue coat and reddish-brown trousers. He says he was barely able to distinguish the blue coat, but that he could see the reddish-brown trousers very clearly. Now, as a matter of fact, it has been very accurately determined that red is the hardest color to distinguish at night, and blue the very easiest. A blue coat would be clearly visible long after reddish-brown trousers had become indistinguishable in the darkness.'

“Sir Henry's under jaw sagged a little. 'Why, yes,' he said, 'that's true; that's precisely true. Gross, at the University of Gratz, determined that by experiment in 1912. I never thought about it!'

“'There are some other things here that you have not, perhaps, precisely thought about,' Mr. Meadows went on.

“'For example, the things that happened in this room did not happen in the night. They happened in the day.'

“He pointed to the half-burned wax candle on the table. 'There's a headless joiner's nail driven into the table,' he said, 'and this candle is set down over the nail. That means that the person who placed it there wished it to remain there--to remain there firmly. He didn't put it down there for the brief requirements of a passing tragedy, he put it there to remain; that's one thing.

“'Another thing is that this candle thus firmly fastened on the table was never alight there. If it had ever been burning in its position on the table, some of the drops of melted wax would have fallen about it.

“'You will observe that, while the candle is firmly fixed, it does not set straight; it is inclined at least ten degrees out of perpendicular. In that position it couldn't have burned for a moment without dripping melted wax on the table. And there's none on the table; there has never been any on it. Your glass shows not the slightest evidence of a wax stain.' He added: 'Therefore the candle is a blind; false evidence to give us the impression of a night affair.'

“Sir Henry's jaw sagged; now his mouth gaped. 'True,' he said. 'True, true.' He seemed to get some relief to his damaged deductions out of the repeated word.

“The irony in Mr. Meadows' voice increased a little. 'Nor is that all,' he said. 'The smear on the floor, and the stains in which the naked foot tracked, are not human blood. They're not any sort of blood. It was clearly evident when you had your lens over them. They show no coagulated fiber. They show only the evidences of dye--weak dye--watered red ink, I'd say.'

“I thought Sir Henry was going to crumple up in his chair. He seemed to get loose and baggy in some extraordinary fashion, and his gaping jaw worked. 'But the footprints,' he said, 'the naked footprints?' His voice was a sort of stutter-the sort of shaken stutter of a man who has come a' tumbling cropper.

“The American actually laughed: he laughed as we sometimes laugh at a mental defective.

“'They're not footprints!' he said. 'Nobody ever had a foot cambered like that, or with a heel like it, or with toes like it. Somebody made those prints with his hand--the edge of his palm for the heel and the balls of his fingers for the toes. The wide, unstained distances between these heelprints and the prints of the ball of the toes show the impossible arch.'

“Sir Henry was like a man gone to pieces. 'But who--who made them?' he faltered.

“The American leaned forward and put the big glass over the prints that Sir Henry had made with his fingers in the white dust on the mahogany table. 'I think you know the answer to your question,' he said. 'The whorls of these prints are identical with those of the toe tracks.'

“Then he laid the glass carefully down, sat back in his chair, folded his arms and looked at Sir Henry.

“'Now,' he said, 'will you kindly tell me why you have gone to the trouble of manufacturing all these false evidences of a crime?”'

The girl paused. There was intense silence in the drawing-room. The aged man at the window had turned and was looking at her. The face of the old woman seemed vague and uncertain.

The girl smiled.

“Then,” she said, “the real, amazing miracle happened. Sir Henry got on his feet, his big body tense, his face like iron, his voice ringing.

“'I went to that trouble,' he said, 'because I wished to demonstrate--I wished to demonstrate beyond the possibility of any error--that Mr. Arthur Meadows, the pretended American from St. Paul, was in fact the celebrated criminologist, Karl Holweg Leibnich, of Bonn, giving us the favor of his learned presence while he signaled the German submarines off the east coast roads with his high-powered motor lights.'”

Now there was utter silence in the drawing-room but for the low of the Highland cattle and the singing of the birds outside.

For the first time there came a little tremor in the girl's voice.

“When Sir Henry doubted this American and asked me to go down and make sure before he set a trap for him, I thought--I thought, if Tony could risk his life for England, I could do that much.”

At this moment a maid appeared in the doorway, the trim, immaculate, typical English maid. “Tea is served, my lady,” she said.

The tall, fine old man crossed the room and offered his arm to the girl with the exquisite, gracious manner with which once upon a time he had offered it to a girlish queen at Windsor.

The ancient woman rose as if she would go out before them. Then suddenly, at the door, she stepped aside for the girl to pass, making the long, stooping, backward curtsy of the passed Victorian era.

“After you, my dear,” she said, “always!”

V. The Man in the Green Hat

“Alas, monsieur, in spite of our fine courtesies, the conception of justice by one race must always seem outlandish to another!”

It was on the terrace of Sir Henry Marquis' villa at Cannes. The members of the little party were in conversation over their tobacco--the Englishman, with his brier-root pipe; the American Justice, with a Havana cigar; and the aged Italian, with his cigarette. The last was speaking.

He was a very old man, but he gave one the impression of incredible, preposterous age. He was bald; he had neither eyebrows nor eyelashes. A wiry mustache, yellow with nicotine, alone remained. Great wrinkles lay below the eyes and along the jaw, under a skin stretched like parchment over the bony protuberances of the face.

These things established the aspect of old age; but it was the man's expression and manner that gave one the sense of incalculable antiquity. The eyes seemed to look out from a window, where the man behind them had sat watching the human race from the beginning. And his manners had the completion of one whose experience of life is comprehensive and finished.

“It seems strange to you, monsieur”--he was addressing, in French, the American Justice--“that we should put our prisoners into an iron cage, as beasts are exhibited in a circus. You are shocked at that. It strikes you as the crudity of a race not quite civilized.

“You inquire about it with perfect courtesy; but, monsieur, you inquire as one inquires about a custom that his sense of justice rejects.”

He paused.

“Your pardon, monsieur; but there are some conceptions of justice in the law of your admirable country that seem equally strange to me.”

The men about the Count on the exquisite terrace, looking down over Cannes into the arc of the sea, felt that the great age of this man gave him a right of frankness, a privilege of direct expression, they could not resent. Somehow, at the extremity of life, he seemed beyond pretenses; and he had the right to omit the digressions by which younger men are accustomed to approach the truth.

“What is this strange thing in our law, Count?” said the American.

The old man made a vague gesture, as one who puts away an inquiry until the answer appears.

“Many years ago,” he continued, “I read a story about the red Indians by your author, Cooper. It was named 'The Oak Openings,' and was included, I think, in a volume entitled Stories of the Prairie. I believe I have the names quite right, since the author impressed me as an inferior comer with an abundance of gold about him. In the story Corporal Flint was captured by the Indians under the leadership of Bough of Oak, a cruel and bloodthirsty savage.

“This hideous beast determined to put his prisoner to the torture of the saplings, a barbarity rivaling the crucifixion of the Romans. Two small trees standing near each other were selected, the tops lopped off and the branches removed; they were bent and the tops were lashed together. One of the victim's wrists was bound to the top of each of the young trees; then the saplings were released and the victim, his arms wrenched and dislocated, hung suspended in excruciating agony, like a man nailed to a cross.

“It was fearful torture. The strain on the limbs was hideous, yet the victim might live for days. Nothing short of crucifixion--that beauty of the Roman law--ever equaled it.”

He paused and flicked the ashes from his cigarette.

“Corporal Flint, who seemed to have a knowledge of the Indian character, had endeavored so to anger the Indians by taunt and invective that some brave would put an arrow into his heart, or dash his brains out with a stone ax.

“In this he failed. Bough of Oak controlled his braves and Corporal Flint was lashed to the saplings. But, as the trees sprang apart, wrenching the man's arms out of their sockets, a friendly Indian, Pigeonwing, concealed in a neighboring thicket, unable to rescue his friend and wishing to save him from the long hours of awful torture, shot Corporal Flint through the forehead.

“Now,” continued the Count, “if there was no question about these facts, and Bough of Oak stood for trial before any civilized tribunal on this earth, do you think the laws of any country would acquit him of the murder of Corporal Flint?”

The whole company laughed.

“I am entirely serious,” continued the Count. “What do you think? There are three great nations represented here.”

“The exigencies of war,” said Sir Henry Marquis, “might differentiate a barbarity from a crime.”

“But let us assume,” replied the Count, “that no state of war existed; that it was a time of peace; that Corporal Flint was innocent of wrong; and that Bough of Oak was acting entirely from a depraved instinct bent on murder. In other words, suppose this thing had occurred yesterday in one of the Middle States of the American Republic?”

The American felt that this question was directed primarily to himself. He put down his cigar and indicated the Englishman by a gesture.

“Your great jurist, Sir James Stephen,” he began, “constantly reminds us that the criminal law is a machine so rough and dangerous that we can use it only with every safety device attached.

“And so, Count,” he continued, to the Italian, “the administration of the criminal law in our country may seem to you subject to delays and indirections that are not justified. These abuses could be generally corrected by an intelligent presiding judge; but, in part, they are incidental to a fair and full investigation of the charge against the prisoner. I think, however, that our conception of justice does not differ from that of other nations.”

The old Count shrugged his shoulders at the digression.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I do not refer to the mere administration of the criminal law in your country; though, monsieur, we have been interested in observing its peculiarities in such notable examples as the Thaw trials in New York, and the Anarchist cases in Chicago some years ago. I believe the judge in the latter trial gave about one hundred instructions on the subject of reasonable doubt--quite intelligible, I dare say, to an American jury; but, I must confess, somewhat beyond me in their metaphysical refinements.

“I should understand reasonable doubt if I were uninstructed, but I do not think I could explain it. I should be, concerning it, somewhat as Saint Augustine was with a certain doctrine of the Church when he said: 'I do not know if you ask me; but if you do not ask me I know very well.'”

He paused and blew a tiny ring or smoke out over the terrace toward the sea.

“There was a certain poetic justice finally in that case,” he added.

“The prisoners were properly convicted of the Haymarket murders,” said the American Justice.

“Ah, no doubt,” returned the Count; “but I was not thinking of that. Following a custom of your courts, I believe, the judge at the end of the trial put the formal inquiry as to whether the prisoners had anything to say. Whereupon they rose and addressed him for six days!”

He bowed.

“After that, monsieur, I am glad to add, they were all very properly hanged.

“But, monsieur, permit me to return to my question: Do you think any intelligent tribunal on this earth would acquit Bough of Oak of the murder of Corporal Flint under the conditions I have indicated?”

“No,” said the American. “It would be a cold-blooded murder; and in the end the creature would be executed.”

The old Count turned suddenly in his chair.

“Yes,” he said, “in a Continental court, it is certain; but in America, monsieur, under your admirable law, founded on the common law of England?”

“I am sure we should hang him,” replied the American.

“Monsieur,” cried the old Count, “you have me profoundly puzzled.”

It seemed to the little group on the terrace that they, and not the Count, were indicated by that remark. He had stated a case about which there could be no two opinions under any civilized conception of justice. Sir Henry Marquis had pointed out the only element--a state of war--which could distinguish the case from plain premeditated murder in its highest degree. They looked to him for an explanation; but it did not immediately arrive.

The Count noticed it and offered a word of apology.

“Presently--presently,” he said. “We have these two words in Italian--sparate! and aspetate! Monsieur.”

He turned to the American:

“You do not know our language, I believe. Suppose I should suddenly call out one of these words and afterward it should prove that a life hung on your being able to say which word it was I uttered. Do you think, monsieur, you could be certain?

“No, monsieur; and so courts are wise to require a full explanation of every extraordinary fact. George Goykovich, an Austrian, having no knowledge of the Italian language, swore in the court of an American state that he heard a prisoner use the Italian word sparate! and that he could not be mistaken.

“I would not believe him, monsieur, on that statement; but he explained that he was a coal miner, that the mines were worked by Italians, and that this word was called out when the coal was about to be shot down with powder.

“Ah, monsieur, the explanation is complete. George Goykovich must know this word; it was a danger signal. I would believe now his extraordinary statement.”

The Count stopped a moment and lighted another cigarette.

“Pardon me if I seem to proceed obliquely. The incident is related to the case I approach; and it makes clear, monsieur, why the courts of France, for example, permit every variety of explanation in a criminal trial, while your country and the great English nation limit explanations.

“You do not permit hearsay evidence to save a man's life; with a fine distinction you permit it to save only his character!”

“The rule,” replied the American justice, “everywhere among English-speaking people is that the best evidence of which the subject is capable shall be produced. We permit a witness to testify only to what he actually knows. That is the rule. It is true there are exceptions to it. In some instances he may testify as to what he has heard.”

“Ah, yes,” replied the Count; “you will not permit such evidence to take away a man's horse, but you will permit it to take away a woman's reputation! I shall never be able to understand these delicate refinements of the English law!”

“But, Count,” suggested Sir Henry Marquis, “reputation is precisely that what the neighborhood says about one.”

“Pardon, monsieur,” returned the Count. “I do not criticize your customs. They are doubtless excellent in every variety of way. I deplore only my inability to comprehend them. For example, monsieur, why should you hold a citizen responsible in all other cases only for what he does, but in the case of his own character turn about and try him for what people say he does?

“Thus, monsieur, as I understand it, the men of an English village could not take away my pig by merely proving that everybody said it was stolen; but they could brand me as a liar by merely proving what the villagers said! It seems incredible that men should put such value on a pig.”

Sir Henry Marquis laughed.

“It is not entirely a question of values, Count.”

“I beg you to pardon me, monsieur,” the Italian went on. “Doubtless, on this subject I do nothing more than reveal an intelligence lamentably inefficient; but I had the idea that English people were accustomed to regard property of greater importance than life.”

“I have never heard,” replied the Englishman, smiling, “that our courts gave more attention to pigs than to murder.”

“Why, yes, monsieur,” said the Count--“that is precisely what they have been accustomed to do. It is only, I believe, within recent years that one convicted of murder in England could take an appeal to a higher court; though a controversy over pigs--or, at any rate, the pasture on which they gathered acorns--could always be carried up.”

The great age of the Count--he seemed to be the representative in the world of some vanished empire--gave his irony a certain indirection. Everybody laughed. And he added: “Even your word 'murder,' I believe, was originally the name of a fine imposed by the Danes on a village unless it could be proved that the person found dead was an Englishman!

“I wonder when, precisely, the world began to regard it as a crime to kill an Englishman?”

The parchment on the bones of his face wrinkled into a sort of smile. His greatest friend on the Riviera was this pipe-smoking Briton.

Then suddenly, with a nimble gesture that one would not believe possible in the aged, he stripped back his sleeve and exhibited a long, curiously twisted scar, as though a bullet had plowed along the arm.

“Alas, monsieur,” he said, “I myself live in the most primitive condition of society! I pay a tribute for life.... Ah! no, monsieur; it is not to the Camorra that I pay. It is quite unromantic. I think my secretary carries it in his books as a pension to an indigent relative.”

He turned to the American

“Believe me, monsieur, my estates in Salerno are not what they were; the olive trees are old and all drains on my income are a burden--even this gratuity. I thought I should be rid of it; but, alas, the extraordinary conception of justice in your country!”

He broke the cigarette in his fingers, and flung the pieces over the terrace.

“In the great range of mountains,” he began, “slashing across the American states and beautifully named the Alleghanies, there is a vast measure of coal beds. It is thither that the emigrants from Southern Europe journey. They mine out the coal, sometimes descending into the earth through pits, or what in your language are called shafts, and sometimes following the stratum of the coal bed into the hill.

“This underworld, monsieur--this, sunless world, built underneath the mountains, is a section of Europe slipped under the American Republic. The language spoken there is not English. The men laboring in those buried communities cry out sparate when they are about to shoot down the coal with powder. It is Italy under there. There is a river called the Monongahela in those mountains. It is an Indian name.”

He paused.

“And so, monsieur, what happened along it doubtless reminded me of Cooper's story--Bough of Oak and the case of Corporal Flint.”

He took another cigarette out of a box on the table, but he did not light it.

“In one of the little mining villages along this river with the enchanting name there was a man physically like the people of the Iliad; and with that, monsieur, he had a certain cast of mind not unHellenic. He was tall, weighed two hundred and forty pounds, lean as a gladiator, and in the vigor of golden youth.

“There were no wars to journey after and no adventures; but there was danger and adventure here. This land was full of cockle, winnowed out of Italy, Austria and the whole south of Europe. It took courage and the iron hand of the state to keep the peace. Here was a life of danger; and this Ionian--big, powerful, muscled like the heroes of the Circus Maximus--entered this perilous service.