CHAPTER XI
THE “EVENING MOON” FOR A TIME TAKES LEAVE OF THE CASE OF ANTONY COWLRICK
WE have but little to add to the graphic statement of our Special Reporter. He paid altogether three visits to the house in which Antony Cowlrick’s female friend, Blanche, rented a room; the last visit was paid at noon of this day. His desire was to obtain some information relating to the young woman’s history; he has been unsuccessful. Nothing is known of her history; she made her first appearance in the neighbourhood about three months ago, took a furnished room, lived a quiet life, and did not mix with the neighbours. She was never seen in public-houses, and had no visitors. All that is known of her relates to the little match girl, Fanny, her kindness to whom is the theme of admiration and praise. Her name was Blanche – simply Blanche; she gave and was asked for no other. The police have nothing to say against her. There are few single young women living alone in the locality in which Blanche resided against whom the tongue of scandal is not busy, generally, it must be admitted, with sufficient reason; but nothing has been elicited to the discredit of Blanche. Thus far, her record is a good one.
Nothing has been seen of Antony Cowlrick; he has vanished utterly from the sight of the police, who, although he was acquitted of the charge they brought against him, had determined to keep their eye on him. He has proved himself more than their match. The description given of him by our Special Reporter is that of a man of medium height, probably five feet eight inches, with spare frame, lithe and sinewy. His hair is auburn, and appeared to grow freely. This free growth, and the circumstance of his having been unshaved for weeks, render it difficult to describe his features; all that can be said on this point is that his face was haggard and distressed, and that there dwelt upon it an expression which denoted deep trouble and perplexity. Every person who has followed this case in our columns, and who has carefully read the accounts we have presented to our readers, must feel a deep interest in the man. The impression he made upon our Special Reporter – the prompt repayment of the sovereign he borrowed – his language and manners – even the collateral evidence supplied by what is known of his friend Blanche – all tell in his favour. And stronger than every circumstance combined are the concluding words of his letter to our Special Reporter. “If you do not know what else to do with the money received by your paper in response to its appeal for subscriptions on my behalf, I can tell you – give it to the poor.” There spoke a man in whose bosom beats the true pulse of a lofty humanity. Antony Cowlrick, who, without doubt, since his release, has read all that has appeared in our columns concerning him, is aware that our last edition of yesterday contained a full list of subscriptions sent to our office for him, the total amount being £68 17s. It is a sum worth having, and might be supposed to be especially acceptable to a man in Antony Cowlrick’s apparently destitute condition – a man upon whose person, when he was arrested, was found some stale bread and cheese, and not a penny of money. In the face of this evidence of poverty, Antony Cowlrick has not called for the handsome sum we hold in trust for him, and has instructed us to give it to the poor. We shall do so in a week from this date, unless Antony Cowlrick presents himself at our office to receive it; or unless those who have subscribed object. We trust they will not withdraw their subscriptions, which we promise shall be faithfully and worthily applied in charity’s cause.
Here, then, for the present, we leave the subject which has occupied so large a portion of our space. The man murdered in the house, No. 119 Great Porter Square, lies in his grave, and his murderer is still at large. Any of our readers may have come in contact with him this very day; we ourselves may have walked elbow to elbow with him in the crowded thoroughfares; and he will, of a certainty, if he be in England, read to-night the words we are now writing. Tremble, thou unspeakable monster! Though thou escape thy doom at the bar of earthly justice, God’s hand lies heavy upon thee, and shall weigh thee down until the Judgment Day, when thou and thy victim shall stand face to face before the eternal throne!
CHAPTER XII
MRS. PREEDY HAS DREADFUL DREAMS
SO profound was the sleep of Mrs. Preedy, lodging-house keeper, whom we left slumbering in the first chapter of our story, that we have been able, without disturbing her, to make the foregoing extracts from the copies of the Evening Moon which lay on the table immediately beneath her nose. Deep as were her slumbers, they were not peaceful. Murder was in her brain, and it presented itself to her in a thousand hideous and grotesque shapes. Overwhelming, indeed, was her trouble. Only that morning had she said to Mrs. Beale, a bosom friend and neighbour on the other side of the Square —
“I shall never rest easy in my mind till the man’s caught and hung!”
Dreams, it is said, “go by contrary.” If you dream of a marriage, it means death; if you dream of death, it means marriage. Happy augury, then, that Mrs. Preedy should dream that her dead and buried husband, her “blessed angel,” was alive, that he had committed the murder, and that she was putting on her best black to see him hanged. Curious to say, in her unconscious state, this otherwise distressing dream was rather enjoyable, for through the tangled threads of the crime and its punishment ran the refrain of a reproach she used to hurl at her husband, when fortune went against him, to the effect that she always knew he would come to a bad end. So altogether, it was a comfortable hanging – Mr. Preedy being dead and out of the reach of danger, and Mrs. Preedy being alive to enjoy it.
A more grotesque fancy was it to dream that the wooden old impostor in the weather indicator on her mantelshelf was the murderer. This antiquated farmer, who was about four inches in height, unhooked himself from his catgut suspender, slid down to the ground, and stood upon the floor of the kitchen, with Murder in his Liliputian carcase. With no sense of wonder did the dreamer observe the movements of this incredible dwarf-man. He looked around warily, his wooden finger at his wooden lips. All was quiet. He walked to the wall, covering about a quarter of an inch at every step, and rapped at it. A small hole appeared; he vanished through it. The opening was too small for Mrs. Preedy’s body, and the current of her fancies carried her to a chair, upon which she sat and waited for the murderer’s return. The opening in the wall led to the next house, No. 119, and the sleeper knew that, as she waited, the dreadful deed was being done. The wooden old impostor returned, with satisfaction in his face and blood on his fingers, which he wiped on Mrs. Preedy’s apron. He slid up to his bower in the weather indicator, and re-hooked himself on to his catgut suspender, and stood “trembling in the balance,” but perfectly easy in his mind, predicting foul weather.
“Ah, my man,” said Mrs. Preedy, in her sleep, shaking her fist at him, “it will be foul weather for you to-morrow, when I have you taken up and hanged for it!”
Then came another fancy, that he had murdered the wooden young woman in her bower (so that she should not appear as a witness), and that it would never be fine weather any more.
These and other fancies faded and were blotted out, as though they had never been, and a dread silence fell upon the soul of the slumbering woman.
She was alone in a room, from which there was no outlet but a door which was locked on the outside. No person was within hail. She was cut off from the world, and from all chance of help. She had been asleep, dreaming of an incident in her childhood’s days. A dream within a dream.
From the inner dream she was suddenly awakened. Still asleep, and nodding over the table, upon which lay the copies of the Evening Moon, she believed herself to be awake. What had roused her? A footfall upon the stairs in the upper part of the house.
It was a deserted house, containing no other occupant but herself. The door was locked; it was impossible to get out. The very bed in which she lay was a prison; she could not move from it. Afraid almost to breathe, she listened in fear to the sound which had fallen on her sleeping senses.
She knew exactly how the house was built – was familiar with every room and every stair. Another footfall – another – a long pause between each. The man, who was creeping down to her chamber to murder her, was descending the staircase which led from the third to the second floor. He reached it, and paused again.
There was no doubt about his intention. In her dream, it appeared as if she knew the whole history of this murderer, and that he was the terror of every householder in London. He worked in secret, and always with fatal, deadly effect. He left nothing to chance. And Mrs. Preedy was to be his next victim.
She could not avert her doom; she could only wait for it.
From the second floor to the first, step by step, she followed him in her imagination. Slow and sure was his progress. Frantic were her efforts to escape from the bed, but the sheets held her tight, like sheets of steel.
*****
In reality a man was descending the stairs to the kitchen. There was something stealthy in his movements which curiously contrasted with a certain air of bravado, which, if it were assumed, was entirely thrown away, as no eye was on him as he crept from the top of the house to the bottom.
*****
In her dream, influenced as dreams are in an excited brain by any sound, however light, Mrs. Preedy accompanied this man in his slow progress from his attic to her kitchen. He reached the landing, which led this way to the street door, and that to the room in which Mrs. Preedy lay in her nightmare of terror. Which direction would he take?
Downwards! – to the bed in which she was imprisoned. Her last moments were approaching.
She strove to think of a prayer, but her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth. Closer – closer – he came. He opened the door, and stood upon the threshold. The louder sound than the sound of his steps aroused her to full consciousness, and, opening her eyes, she confronted him with a face white with fear.
CHAPTER XIII
MRS. PREEDY’S YOUNG MAN LODGER
THE door of the kitchen opened outwards into the passage, and the man, turning the handle with his right hand, stood upon the threshold with his left raised and resting, for support, upon the framework. In Mrs. Preedy’s imagination, the concealed hand held the deadly weapon with which she was to be murdered. There was, however, nothing very murderous in the intruder’s face, and when he advanced a step and his arms fell peaceably by his sides, Mrs. Preedy saw, with a sigh of relief, that his hands were empty. This sigh of relief was accompanied by a recognition of the man, in whom she beheld a lodger named Richard Manx, who had been her tenant for exactly three weeks, and was exactly three weeks in arrear of his rent. Mrs Preedy called him her young man lodger.
He was probably younger than he looked, for his complexion was dark and his black hair was thick and long. His eyes were singularly bright, and had a cat-like glare in them – so that one might be forgiven the fancy that, like a cat’s, they would shine in the dark. He spoke with a slightly foreign accent, and his mode of expression may be described as various, affording no clue to his nationality.
Mrs. Preedy was re-assured. The frightful impressions produced by her dream died away, and the instincts of the professional landlady asserted themselves. “My young man lodger has come to pay his rent,” was her first thought, and a gracious and stereotyped smile appeared on her lips. The sweet illusion swiftly vanished, and her second thought was, “He is drunk.” This, also, did not hold its ground, and Mrs. Preedy then practically summed up the case: “He has come to beg – a candle, a piece of bread, a lump of soap – somethink he is in want of, and ain’t got money to pay for. And his excuse is that he is a foringer, or that all the shops are shut. I don’t believe he’s got a penny in his pocket. You don’t deceive me, young man; I wasn’t born yesterday!”
Mrs. Preedy glanced towards the clock, and her glance was arrested on its way by the weather indicator, with the old wooden farmer in full view. Grotesque and improbable as were the fancies in which he had played a tragic part, Mrs. Preedy could not resist the temptation of ascertaining with her own eyes whether the young wooden woman, whom she dreamt he had murdered, was in existence; and she rose and pushed the old farmer into his bower. Out sailed the young woman, with her vacant face and silly leer, as natural as life, and an impetus having been given to the machinery, she and her male companion who had lived under the same roof for years, and yet were absolute strangers to each other (a striking illustration of English manners), swung in and out, in and out, predicting fair weather foul weather, fair weather foul weather, with the most reckless indifference of consequences. In truth, without reference to the mendacious prophets, the weather gave every indication of being presently very foul indeed. Thunder was in the air; the wind was sobbing in the Square, and a few heavy drops of rain had fallen with thuds upon roof and pavement.
The hands of the clock pointed to twelve.
“A nice time,” thought Mrs. Preedy, “to come creeping downstairs into my kitchen! I never did like them foringers! But I’d give anything to get my ’ouse full – whether the lodgers paid or not for a week or two. Did the young man expect to find me out, or asleep? Is there anything goin’ on atween ’im and Becky?”
This dark suspicion recommended itself to her mind, and she readily gave it admittance. It is to be feared that Mrs. Preedy’s experiences had not led her to a charitable opinion of maids-of-all-work. Becky, as Mrs. Preedy called her servant, was a new girl, and had been in her service for nearly a fortnight. Mrs. Preedy had been agreeably disappointed in the girl, whom she did not expect to stay in the house a week. Since the murder at No. 119, she had had eight different servants, not one of whom stayed for longer than a few days – two had run away on the second day, declaring that the ghost of the murdered man had appeared to them on the first night, and that they wouldn’t sleep another in such a place for “untold gold.” But Becky remained.
“Is there anything goin’ on atween ’im and Becky?” was Mrs. Preedy’s thought, as she looked at the clock.
Richard Manx’s eyes followed hers.
“It is – a – what you call wrong,” he muttered.
“Very wrong,” said Mrs. Preedy, aloud, under the impression that he had unwittingly answered her thought, “and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You may do what you like in your own country, but I don’t allow such goings on in my ’ouse.”
“I was – a – thinking of your watch-clock,” said Richard Manx. “It is not – a – right. Five, ten, fifteen minutes are past, and I counted twelve by the church bells. Midnight, that is it – twelve of the clock.”
“It’s time for all decent people to be abed and asleep,” remarked Mrs. Preedy.
“In bed – ah! – but in sleep – that is not the same thing. You are not so.”
“I’ve got my business to look after,” retorted Mrs. Preedy. “I suppose you ’aven’t come to pay your rent?”
“To pay? Ah, money! It is what you call it, tight. No, I have not come money to pay.”
“And ’ow am I to pay my rent, I should like to know, if you don’t pay yours? Can you tell me that, young man?”
“I cannot – a – tell you. I am not a weezard.”
Although Mrs. Preedy had fully regained her courage she could not think of a fitting rejoinder to this remark; so for a moment she held her tongue.
She had occupied her house for thirty years, living, until a short time since, in tolerable comfort upon the difference between the rent she received from her lodgers and the rent she paid to the agent of the estate upon which Great Porter Square was situated. It was a great and wealthy estate. Mrs. Preedy had never seen her aristocratic landlord, who owned not only Great Porter Square but a hundred squares and streets in the vicinity, in addition to lovely tracts of woodland and grand mansions in the country. The income of this to-be-envied lord was said to be a sovereign a minute. London, in whose cellars and garrets hundreds of poor wretches yearly die of starvation, contains many such princes.
Richard Manx rented a room in the garret of Mrs. Preedy’s house, for which he had to pay three shillings a week. It was furnished, and the rent could not be considered unreasonable. Certainly there was in the room nothing superfluous. There were a truckle bed, with a few worn-out bed clothes, a japanned chest of drawers, so ricketty that it had to be propped up with bits of paper under two of its corners, a wreck of a chair, an irregular piece of looking-glass hooked on to the wall, an old fender before the tiniest fire-place that ever was seen, a bent bit of iron for a poker, an almost bottomless coal scuttle, a very small trunk containing Richard Manx’s personal belongings, a ragged towel, and a lame washstand with toilet service, every piece of which was chipped and broken. In an auction the lot might have brought five shillings; no broker in his senses would have bid higher for the rubbish.
“If you ’aven’t come to pay your rent,” demanded Mrs. Preedy, “what ’ave you come for?”
Richard Manx craned his neck forward till his face was at least six inches in advance of his body, and replied in a hoarse whisper:
“I have – a – heard it once more again!”
The effect of these words upon Mrs. Preedy was extraordinary. No sooner had they escaped her lodger’s lips than she started from her chair, upsetting her glass of gin in her excitement, and, pulling him into the room, shut the door behind him. Then she opened the door of the little cupboard in which the servant slept, and called softly:
“Becky!” and again, “Becky! Becky!”
The girl must have been a sound sleeper, for even when her mistress stepped to her bedside, and passed her hand over her face, she did not move or speak. Returning to the kitchen, Mrs. Preedy closed the door of the sleeping closet, and said to Richard Manx:
“Look ’ere, young man, I don’t want none of your nonsense, and, what’s more, I won’t stand none!” And instantly took the heart out of her defiance by crying, in an appealing tone: “Do you want to ruin me?”
“What think you of me?” asked Richard Manx, in return. “No, I wish not to ruin. But attend. You call your mind back to – a – one week from now. It is Wednesday then – it is Wednesday now. I sit up in my garret in the moon. I think – I smoke. Upon my ear strikes a sound. I hear scratching, moving. Where? At my foot? No. In my room? No; I can nothing see. Where, after that? In this house? Who can say? In the next to this? Ah! I think of what is there done, three months that are past. My blood – that is it – turn cold. I cannot, for a some time, move. You tell me, you, that there is no – a – man, or – a – woman, or – a – child in the apartment under-beneath where I sit. I am one myself in that room – no wife, no – a – child. I speak myself to – I answer myself to. No – I am not – a – right. Something there is that to me speaks. The wind, the infernal – like a voice, it screams, and whistles, and what you call, sobs. That is it. Like a child, or a woman, or a man for mercy calling! Ah! it make my hair to rise. Listen you. It speaks once more again!”
It was the wind in the streets that was moaning and sobbing; and during the pause, a flash of lightning darted in, causing Richard Manx to start back with the manner of a man upon whom divine vengeance had suddenly fallen. It was followed, in a little while, by a furious bursting of thunder, which shook the house. They listened until the echoes died away, and even then the spirit of the sound remained in their ears with ominous portent.
“It is an angry night,” said Richard Manx. “I will – a – continue what I was saying. It is Wednesday of a week past. I in my garret sit and I smoke. I hear the sound. It is what you call – a – secret. To myself I think there is in that house next to this the blood of a man murdered. Why shall there not be in this house, to-morrow that rises, the blood of one other man murdered. And that man! Who shall it be? Myself – I. So I rouse my courage up, and descend from my garret in the moon to the door of the street. Creeping – is that so, your word? – creeping after me a spirit comes – not for me to see, not for me to touch – but to hear with my ears. All is dark. In the passage appear you, and ask me what? I tell you, and you laugh – but not laugh well, it is like a cry – and you say, it is – a fancy; it is nothing I hear. And you, with hands so” – (clasping his hands together, somewhat tragically) – “beg of me not to any speak of what I hear. I consent; I say, I will not of it speak.”
“And you ’aven’t?” inquired Mrs. Preedy, anxiously.
Richard Manx laid his hand on his breast. “On my honour, no; I speak not of it. I think myself, ‘The lady of the house is – a – right. I hear only – a – fancy. I will not trouble. I will let to-morrow come.’ It come, and another to-morrow, and another, and still another. Nothing I hear. But to-night – again! I am smoking myself in bed. Be not afraid – I shall not put your house in a fire. It would not be bad. You are what they call insured?” Mrs. Preedy nodded. “Listen you – comes the rain. Ah – and the wind. God in heaven! that fire-flash!”
It blinded them for a moment or two. Then, after the briefest interval, pealed the thunder, with a crash which almost deafened them. Instinctively, Richard Manx drew nearer to Mrs. Preedy, and she also moved closer to him. At such times as this, when nature appears to be warring against mortals, the human craving for companionship and visible, palpable sympathy most strongly asserts itself.
Either the breaking of the storm, or some other cause, had produced a strange effect upon Becky, whom Mrs. Preedy supposed to be sleeping in the little room adjoining the kitchen; for the girl in her night-dress was kneeling on the ground, with her head close to the door, listening, with her heart and soul in her ears, to the conversation between her mistress and the young man lodger. It would have astonished Mrs. Preedy considerably had she detected her maid-of-all-work in such a position.
The thunder and lightning continued for quite five minutes, and then they wandered into the country and awoke the echoes there, leaving the rain behind them, which poured down like a deluge over the greater part of the city.