“Well, you see, it was not the coroner’s business nor the jury’s business, to know better than the medical officer for the district, on whose evidence they relied. But it is my business; for the said officer is my partner, and, but for me, our business would be worth very little. He is about as ignorant and easy-going an excellent old fellow as ever let a life slip out of his hands.”
“Then, if you knew so much, why didn’t you keep him straight?”
“Well, as it happened, I was down in Surrey with my people, at a wedding, when the death occurred, and they made a rather superficial examination of the deceased.”
“Still, I see less than ever how you got a chance to form such an extraordinary and horrible opinion if you were not there, and had only this printed evidence,” said Maitland, waving a sheet of the Times, “to go by; and this is dead against you. You’re too clever.”
“But I made a proper and most careful examination myself, on my return to town, the day after the inquest,” said Barton, “and I found evidence enough for me– never mind where – to put the matter beyond the reach of doubt. The man was murdered, and murdered, as I said, very deliberately, by some one who was not an ordinary ignorant scoundrel.”
“Still, I don’t see how you got a chance to make your examination,” said Maitland; “the man would be buried as usual – ”
“Excuse me. The unclaimed bodies of paupers – and there was no one to claim his– are reserved, if needed – ”
“I see – don’t go on,” said Maitland, turning rather pale, and falling back on his sofa, where he lay for a little with his eyes shut “It is all the fault of this most unlucky illness of mine,” he said, presently. “In my absence, and as nobody knew where I was, there was naturally no one to claim the body. The kind of people who knew about him will take no trouble or risk in a case like that.” He was silent again for a few moments; then, “What do you make out to have been tbe cause of death?” he asked.
“Well,” said Barton slowly, “I don’t much care to go into details which you may say I can hardly prove, and I don’t want to distress you in your present state of health.”
“Why don’t you speak out! Was he poisoned? Did you detect arsenic or anything? He had been drinking with some one!”
“No; if, in a sense, he had been poisoned, there was literally nothing that could be detected by the most skilled analysis. But, my dear fellow, there are venoms that leave no internal trace. If I am right – and I think I am – he was destroyed by one of these. He had been a great traveller, had he not?”
“Yes,” answered Maitland.
“Well, it is strange; the murderer must have been a great traveller also. He must have been among the Macoushi Indians of Guiana, and well acquainted with their arts. I know them too. I went there botanizing.”
“You won’t be more explicit?”
“No,” he said; “you must take it on my word, after all.”
Maitland, if not convinced, was silent He had knowledge enough of Barton, and of his healthy and joyous nature, to be certain that his theory was no morbid delusion; that he had good grounds for an opinion which, as he said, he could no longer, prove – which was, indeed, now incapable of any proof. No one had seen the commission of tbe crime, and the crime was of such a nature, and so cunningly planned, that it could not possibly be otherwise brought home to the murderer.
Now Maitland, knowing the Hit or Miss, and the private room up-stairs with the dormer windows, where the deed must have been done, if done at all, was certain that there could not possibly have been any eye-witness of the crime.
“What shall you do?” he asked, “or have you done anything in consequence of your discovery? Have you been to the police?”
“No,” said Barton; “where was the use? How can I prove anything now? It is not as if poison had been used, that could be detected by analysis. Besides, I reflected that if I was right, the less fuss made, the more likely was the murderer to show his hand. Supposing he had a secret motive – and he must have had – he will act on that motive sooner or later. The quieter everything is kept, the more he feels certain he is safe, the sooner he will move in some way or other. Then, perhaps, there may be a chance of detecting him; but it’s an outside chance. Do you know anything of the dead man’s past history?”
“Nothing, except that he was from the North, and had lived a wandering life.”
“Well, we must wait and see. But there is his daughter, left under your care. What do you mean to do about her?”
The question brought Maitland back to his old perplexities, which were now so terribly increased and confused by what he had just been told.
“I was going to tell you, when you broke in with this dreadful business. Things were bad before; now they are awful,” said Maitland. “His daughter has disappeared! That was what I was coming to: that was the rest of my story. It was difficult and distressing enough before I knew what you tell me; now – great Heavens! what am I to do?”
He turned on the sofa, quite overcome. Barton put his hand encouragingly on his shoulder, and sat so for some minutes.
“Tell me all about it, old boy?” asked Barton, at length.
He was very much interested, and most anxious to aid his unfortunate friend. His presence, somehow, was full of help and comfort. Maitland no longer felt alone and friendless, as he had done after his consultation of Bielby. Thus encouraged, he told, as clearly and fully as possible, the tale of the disappearance of Margaret, and of his entire failure even to come upon her traces or those of her companion.
“And you have heard nothing since your illness?”
“Nothing to any purpose. What do you advise me to do?”
“There is only one thing certain, to my mind,” said Barton. “The seafaring man with whom Shields was drinking on the last night of his life, and the gentleman in the fur travelling-coat who sent the telegram in your name and took away Margaret from Miss Marlett’s, are in the same employment, or, by George, are probably the same person. Now, have you any kind of suspicion who they or he may be? or can you suggest any way of tracking him or them?”
“No,” said Maitland; “my mind is a perfect blank on the subject. I never heard of the sailor till the woman at the Hit or Miss mentioned him, the night the body was found. And I never heard of a friend of Shields’, a friend who was a gentleman, till I went down to the school.”
“Then all we can do at present is, not to set the police at work – they would only prevent the man from showing – but to find out whether anyone answering to the description is ‘wanted’ or is on their books, at Scotland Yard. Why are we not in Paris, where a man, whatever his social position might be, who was capable of that unusual form of crime, would certainly have his dossier? They order these things better in France.”
“There is just one thing about him, at least about the man who was drinking with poor Shields on the night of his death. He was almost certainly tattooed with some marks or other. Indeed, I remember Mrs. Gullick – that’s the landlady of the Hit or Miss– saying that Shields had been occupied in tattooing him. He did a good deal in that way for sailors.”
“By Jove,” said Barton, “if any fellow understands tattooing, and the class of jail-birds who practise it, I do. It is a clew after a fashion; but, after all, many of them that go down to the sea in ships are tattooed, even when they are decent fellows; and besides, we seldom, in our stage of society, get a view of a fellow-creature with nothing on but these early decorative designs.”
This was only too obvious, and rather damping to Maitland, who for a moment had been inclined to congratulate himself on his flair as a detective.
CHAPTER VIII. – The Jaffa Oranges
“Letting I dare not wait upon I would.”
Of all fairy gifts, surely the most desirable in prospect, and the most embarrassing in practice, would be the magical telescope of Prince Ali, in the “Arabian Nights.” With his glass, it will be remembered, he could see whatever was happening on whatever part of the earth he chose, and, though absent, was always able to behold the face of his beloved. How often would one give Aladdin’s Lamp, and Fortunatus’ Purse, and the invisible Cap which was made of “a darkness that might be felt” to possess for one hour the Telescope of Fairyland!
Could Maitland and Barton have taken a peep through the tube, while they were pondering over the means of finding Margaret, their quest would have been aided, indeed, but they would scarcely have been reassured. Yet there was nothing very awful, nor squalid, nor alarming, as they might have expected, anticipated, and dreaded, in what the vision would have shown. Margaret was not in some foreign den of iniquity, nor, indeed, in a den at all.
The tube enchanted would have revealed to them Margaret, not very far off, not in Siberia nor Teheran, but simply in Victoria Square, Pimlico, S.W. There, in a bedroom, not more than commonly dingy, on the drawing-room floor, with the rattling old green Venetian blinds drawn down, Margaret would have been displayed. The testimony of a cloud of witnesses, in the form of phials and medical vessels, proved that she had for some time been an invalid. The pretty dusky red of health would have been seen to have faded from her cheeks, and the fun and daring had died out of her eyes. The cheeks were white and thin, the eyes were half-closed from sickness and fatigue, and Margaret, a while ago so ready of speech, did not even bestir herself to answer the question which a gentleman, who stood almost like a doctor, in an attitude of respectful inquiry, was putting as to her health.
He was a tall gentleman, dark, with a ripe kind of face, and full, red, sensitive, sensual lips, not without a trace of humor. Near the door, in a protesting kind of attitude, as if there against her will, was a remarkably handsome young person, attired plainly as a housekeeper, or upper-servant, The faces of some women appear to have been furnished by Nature, or informed by habit, with an aspect that seems to say (in fair members of the less educated classes), “I won’t put up with none of them goings on.” Such an expression this woman wears.
“I hope you feel better, my dear?” the dark gentleman asks again.
“She’s going on well enough,” interrupted the woman with the beautiful dissatisfied face. “What with peaches and grapes from Covent Garden, and tonics as you might bathe in – ”
“Heaven forbid!”
“She ought to get well,” the dissatisfied woman continued, as if the invalid were obstinately bent on remaining ill.
“I was not speaking, at the moment, to you, Mrs. Darling,” said the dark gentleman, with mockery in his politeness, “but to the young lady whom I have entrusted to your charge.”
“A pretty trust!” the woman replied, with a sniff
“Yes, as you kindly say, an extremely pretty trust. And now, Margaret, my dear – ’ – ”
The fair woman walked to the window, and stared out of it with a trembling lip, and eyes that saw nothing.
“Now, Margaret, my dear, tell me for yourself, how do you feel?”
“You are very kind,” answered the girl at last. “I am sure I am better. I am not very strong yet. I hope I shall get up soon.”
“Is there anything you would like? Perhaps you are tired of peaches and grapes; may I send you some oranges?”
“Oh, thank you; you are very good. I am often thirsty when I waken, or rather when I leave off dreaming. I seem to dream, rather than sleep, just now.”
“Poor girl!” said the dark gentleman, in a pitying voice. “And what do you dream?”
“There seems to be a dreadful quiet, smooth, white place,” said the girl, slowly, “where I am; and something I feel – something, I don’t know what – drives me out of it. I cannot rest in it; and then I find myself on a dark plain, and a great black horror, a kind of blackness falling in drifts, like black snow in a wind, sweeps softly over me, till I feel mixed in the blackness; and there is always some one watching me, and chasing me in the dark – some one I can’t see. Then I slide into the smooth, white, horrible place again, and feel I must get away from it. Oh, I don’t know which is worst! And they go and come all the while I’m asleep, I suppose.”
“I am waiting for the doctor to look in again; but all I can do is to get you some Jaffa oranges, nice large ones, myself. You will oblige me, Mrs. Darling” (he turned to the housekeeper), “by placing them in Miss Burnside’s room, and then, perhaps, she will find them refreshing when she wakes. Good-by for the moment, Margaret.”
The fair woman said nothing, and the dark gentleman walked into the street, where a hansom cab waited for him. “Covent Garden,” he cried to the cabman.
We have not for some time seen, or rather we have for some time made believe not to recognize, the Hon. Thomas Cranley, whose acquaintance (a very compromising one) we achieved early in this narrative.
Mr. Cranley, “with his own substantial private purpose sun-clear before him” (as Mr. Carlyle would have said, in apologizing for some more celebrated villain), had enticed Margaret from school. Nor had this been, to a person of his experience and resources, a feat of very great difficulty. When he had once learned, by the simplest and readiest means, the nature of Maitland’s telegram to Miss Marlett, his course had been dear. The telegram which followed Maitland’s, and in which Cranley used Maitland’s name, had entirely deceived Miss Marlett, as we have seen. By the most obvious ruses he had prevented Maitland from following his track to London. His housekeeper had entered the “engaged” carriage at Westbourne Park, and shared, as far as the terminus, the compartment previously occupied by himself and Margaret alone. Between Westbourne Park and Paddington he had packed the notable bearskin coat in his portmanteau. The consequence was, that at Paddington no one noticed a gentleman in a bearskin coat, travelling alone with a young lady. A gentleman in a light ulster, travelling with two ladies, by no means answered to the description Maitland gave in his examination of the porters. They, moreover, had paid but a divided attention to Maitland’s inquiries.
The success of Cranley’s device was secured by its elementary simplicity. A gentleman who, for any reason, wishes to obliterate his trail, does wisely to wear some very notable, conspicuous, unmistakable garb at one point of his progress. He then becomes, in the minds of most who see him, “the man in the bearskin coat,” or “the man in the jack-boots,” or “the man with the white hat.” His identity is practically merged in that of the coat, or the boots, or the hat; and when he slips out of them, he seems to leave his personality behind, or to pack it up in his portmanteau, or with his rugs. By acting on this principle (which only requires to be stated to win the assent of pure reason), Mr. Cranley had successfully lost himself and Margaret in London.
With Margaret his task had been less difficult than it looked. She recognized him as an acquaintance of her father’s, and he represented to her that he had been an officer of the man-of-war in which her father had served; that he had lately encountered her father, and pitied his poverty – in poor Shields, an irremediable condition. The father, so he declared, had spoken to him often and anxiously about Margaret, and with dislike and distrust about Maitland. According to Mr. Cranley, Shield’s chief desire in life had been to see Margaret entirely free from Maitland’s guardianship. But he had been conscious that to take the girl away from school would be harmful to her prospects. Finally, with his latest breath, so Mr. Cranley declared, he had commended Margaret to his old officer, and had implored him to abstract her from the charge of the Fellow of St Gatien’s.
Margaret, as we know, did not entertain a very lively kindness for Maitland, nor had she ever heard her father speak of that unlucky young man with the respect which his kindness, his academic rank, and his position in society deserved. It must be remembered that, concerning the manner of her father’s death, she had shrunk from asking questions. She knew it had been sudden; she inferred that it had not been reputable. Often had she dreaded for him one of the accidents against which Providence does not invariably protect the drunkard. Now the accident had arrived, she was fain to be ignorant of the manner of it. Her new guardian, again, was obviously a gentleman; he treated her with perfect politeness and respect, and, from the evening of the day when she left school, she had been in the charge of that apparently correct chaperon, the handsome housekeeper with the disapproving countenance. Mr. Cranley had even given up to her his own rooms in Victoria Square, and had lodged elsewhere; his exact address Margaret did not know. The only really delicate point – Cranley’s assumption of the name of “Mr. Lithgow” – he frankly confessed to her as soon as they were well out of the Dovecot. He represented that, for the fulfilment of her father’s last wish, the ruse of the telegram and the assumed name had been necessary, though highly repugnant to the feelings of an officer and a gentleman. Poor Margaret had seen nothing of gentlemen, except as philanthropists, and (as we know) philanthropists permit themselves a license and discretion not customary in common society.
Finally, even had the girl’s suspicions been awakened, her illness prevented her from too closely reviewing the situation. She was with her father’s friend, an older man by far, and therefore a more acceptable guardian than Maitland. She was fulfilling her father’s wish, and hoped soon to be put in the way of independence, and of earning her own livelihood; and independence was Margaret’s ideal.
Her father’s friend, her own protector – in that light she regarded Cranley, when she was well enough to think consecutively. There could be no more complete hallucination. Cranley was one of those egotists who do undoubtedly exist, but whose existence, when they are discovered, is a perpetual surprise even to the selfish race of men. In him the instinct of self-preservation (without which the race could not have endured for a week) had remained absolutely unmodified, as it is modified in the rest of us, by thousands of years of inherited social experience. Cran-ley’s temper, in every juncture, was precisely that of the first human being who ever found himself and other human beings struggling in a flood for a floating log that will only support one of them. Everything must give way to his desire; he had literally never denied himself anything that he dared taka As certainly as the stone, once tossed up, obeys the only law it knows, and falls back to earth, so surely Cranley would obtain what he desired (if it seemed safe), though a human life, or a human soul, stood between him and his purpose.
Now, Margaret stood, at this moment, between him and the aims on which his greed was desperately bent. It was, therefore, necessary that she should vanish; and to that end he had got her into his power. Cranley’s original idea had been the obvious one of transporting the girl to the Continent, where, under the pretence that a suitable situation of some kind had been found for her, he would so arrange that England should never see her more, and that her place among honest women should be lost forever. But there were difficulties in the way of this tempting plan. For instance, the girl knew some French, and was no tame, unresisting fool; and then Margaret’s illness had occurred, and had caused delay, and given time for reflection.
“After all,” he thought, as he lit his cigar and examined his mustache in the mirror (kindly provided for that purpose in well-appointed hansoms) – “after all it is only, the dead who tell no tales, and make no inconvenient claims.”
For after turning over in his brain the various safe and easy ways of “removing” an inconvenient person, one devilish scheme had flashed across a not uninstructed intellect – a scheme which appeared open to the smallest number of objections.
“She shall take a turn for the worse,” he thought; “and the doctor will be an uncommonly clever man, and particularly well read in criminal jurisprudence, if he sees anything suspicious in it.”
Thus pondering, this astute miscreant stopped at Covent Garden, dismissed his cab, and purchased a basket of very fine Jaffa oranges. He then hailed another cab, and drove with his parcel to the shop of an eminent firm of chemists, again dismissing his cab. In the shop he asked for a certain substance, which it may be as well not to name, and got what he wanted in a small phial, marked poison. Mr. Cranley then called a third cab, gave the direction of a surgical-instrument maker’s (also eminent), and amused his leisure during the drive in removing the label from the bottle. At the surgical-instrument maker’s he complained of neuralgia, and purchased a hypodermic syringe for injecting morphine or some such anodyne into his arm. À fourth cab took him back to the house in Victoria Square, where he let himself in with a key, entered the dining-room, and locked the door.
Nor was he satisfied with this precaution. After aimlessly moving chairs about for a few minutes, and prowling up and down the room, he paused and listened. What he heard induced him to stuff his pocket-handkerchief into the keyhole, and to lay the hearth-rug across the considerable chink which, as is usual, admitted a healthy draught under the bottom of the door. Then the Honorable Mr. Cranley drew down the blinds, and unpacked his various purchases. He set them out on the table in order – the oranges, the phial, and the hypodermic syringe.
Then he carefully examined the oranges, chose half a dozen of the best, and laid the others on a large dessert plate in the dining-room cupboard. One orange he ate, and left the skin on a plate on the table, in company with a biscuit or two.
When all this had been arranged to his mind, Mr. Cranley chose another orange, filled a wineglass with the liquid in the phial, and then drew off a quantity in the little syringe. Then he very delicately and carefully punctured the skin of one of the oranges, and injected into the fruit the contents of the syringe. This operation he elaborately completed in the case of each of the six chosen oranges, and then tenderly polished their coats with a portion of the skin of the fruit he had eaten. That portion of the skin he consumed to dust in the fire; and, observing that a strong odor remained in the room, he deliberately turned on the unlighted gas for a few minutes. After this he opened the window, sealed his own seal in red wax on paper a great many times, finally burning the collection, and lit a large cigar, which he smoked through with every appearance of enjoyment. While engaged on this portion of his task, he helped himself frequently to sherry from the glass, first carefully rinsed, into which he had poured the liquid from the now unlabelled phial. Lastly he put the phial in his pocket with the little syringe, stored the six oranges, wrapped in delicate paper, within the basket, and closed the window.
Next he unlocked the door, and, without opening it, remarked in a sweet voice:
“Now, Alice, you may come in!”
The handle turned, and the housekeeper entered.
“How is Miss Burnside?” he asked, in the same silvery accents. (He had told Margaret that she had better be known by that name, for the present at least.)
“She is asleep. I hope she may never waken. What do you want with her? Why are you keeping her in this house? What devil’s brew have you been making that smells of gas and sherry and sealing-wax?”
“My dear girl,” replied Mr. Cranley, “you put too many questions at once. As to your first pair of queries, my reasons for taking care of Miss Burnside are my own business, and do not concern you, as my housekeeper. As to the ‘devil’s brew’ which you indicate in a style worthy rather of the ages of Faith and of Alchemy, than of an epoch of positive science, did you never taste sherry and sealing-wax? If you did not, that is one of the very few alcoholic combinations in which you have never, to my knowledge, attempted experiments. Is there any other matter on which I can enlighten an intelligent and respectful curiosity?”
The fair woman’s blue eyes and white face seemed to glitter with anger, like a baleful lightning.
“I don’t understand your chaff,” she said, with a few ornamental epithets, which, in moments when she was deeply stirred, were apt to decorate her conversation.
“I grieve to be obscure,” he answered; “brevis esse laboro, the old story. But, as you say Miss Burnside is sleeping, and as, when she wakens, she may be feverish, will you kindly carry these oranges and leave them on a plate by her bedside? They are Jaffa oranges, and finer fruit, Alice, my dear, I have seldom tasted! After that, go to Cavendish Square, and leave this note at the doctor’s.”
“Oh, nothing’s too good for her!” growled the jealous woman, thinking of the fruit; to which he replied by offering her several of the oranges not used in his experiment.
Bearing these, she withdrew, throwing a spiteful glance and leaving the door unshut, so that her master distinctly heard her open Margaret’s door, come out again, and finally leave the house.
“Now, I’ll give her a quarter of an hour to waken,” said Mr. Cranley, and he took from his pocket a fresh copy of the Times. He glanced rather anxiously at the second column of the outer sheet “Still advertising for him,” he said to himself; and he then turned to the sporting news. His calmness was extraordinary, but natural in him; for the reaction of terror at the possible detection of his villainy had not yet come on. When he had read all that interested him in the Times, he looked hastily at his watch.
“Just twenty minutes gone,” he said. “Time she wakened – and tried those Jaffa oranges.”
Then he rose, went up stairs stealthily, paused a moment opposite Margaret’s door, and entered the drawing-room. Apparently he did not find any of the chairs in the dining-room comfortable enough; for he chose a large and heavy fauteuil, took it up in his arms, and began to carry it out In the passage, just opposite Margaret’s chamber, he stumbled so heavily that he fell, and the weighty piece of furniture was dashed against the door of the sick-room, making a terrible noise. He picked it up, and retired silently to the dining-room.
“That would have wakened the dead,” he whispered to himself, “and she is not dead – yet. She is certain to see the oranges, and take one of them, and then – ”
The reflection did not seem to relieve him, as he sat, gnawing his mustache, in the chair he had brought down with him. Now the deed was being accomplished, even his craven heart awoke to a kind of criminal remorse. Now anxiety for the issue made him wish the act undone, or frustrated; now he asked himself if there were no more certain and less perilous way. So intent was his eagerness that a strange kind of lucidity possessed him. He felt as if he beheld and heard what was passing in the chamber of sickness, which he had made a chamber of Death.
She has wakened – she has looked round – she has seen the poisoned fruit – she has blessed him for his kindness in bringing it – she has tasted the oranges – she has turned to sleep again – and the unrelenting venom is at its work!
Oh, strange forces that are about us, all inevitably acting, each in his hour and his place, each fulfilling his law without turning aside to the right hand or to the left! The rain-drop running down the pane, the star revolving round the sun of the furthest undiscoverable system, the grains of sand sliding from the grasp, the poison gnawing and burning the tissues – each seems to move in his inevitable path, obedient to an unrelenting will. Innocence, youth, beauty – that will spares them not. The rock falls at its hour, whoever is under it. The deadly drug slays, though it be blended with the holy elements. It is a will that moves all things —mens agitat molem; and yet we can make that will a slave of our own, and turn this way and that the blind steadfast forces, to the accomplishment of our desires.
It was not, naturally, with these transcendental reflections that the intellect of Mr. Cranley was at this moment engaged. If he seemed actually to be present in Margaret’s chamber, watching every movement and hearing every heart-beat of the girl he had doomed, his blue lips and livid face, from which he kept wiping the cold drops, did not therefore speak of late ruth, or the beginning of remorse.
It was entirely on his own security and chances of escaping detection that he was musing.
“Now it’s done, it can’t be undone,” he said. “But is it so very safe, after all? The stuff is not beyond analysis, unluckily; but it’s much more hard to detect this way, mixed with the orange-juice, than any other way. And then there’s all the horrid fuss afterward. Even if there is not an inquest – as, of course, there won’t be – they’ll ask who the girl is, what the devil she was doing here. Perhaps they’ll, some of them, recognize Alice: she has been too much before the public, confound her. It may not be very hard to lie through all these inquiries, perhaps.”
And then he looked mechanically at his cold fingers, and bit his thumb-nail, and yawned.
“By gad! I wish I had not risked it,” he said to himself; and his complexion was now of a curious faint blue, and his heart began to flutter painfully in a manner not strange in his experience. He sunk back in his chair, with his hands all thrilling and pricking to the finger-tips. He took a large silver flask from his pocket, but he could scarcely unscrew the stopper, and had to manage it with his teeth. A long pull at the liquor restored him, and he began his round of reflections again.
“That French fellow who tried it this way in Scotland was found out,” he said; “and – ” He did not like, even in his mind, to add that the “French fellow, consequently, suffered the extreme penalty of the law. But then he was a fool, and boasted beforehand, and bungled it infernally. Still, it’s not absolutely safe: the other plan I thought of first was better. By gad! I wish I could be sure she had not taken the stuff. Perhaps she hasn’t. Anyway, she must be asleep again now; and, besides, there are the other oranges to be substituted for those left in the room, if she has taken it. I must go and see. I don’t like the job.”