CHAPTER XXV
SOUTHBOURNE’S SUSPICIONS
“You! What had you to do with it?” I ejaculated.
“Well, Freeman was hunting on a cold scent; yearning to arrest some one, as they always do in a murder case. He’d thought of you, of course. Considering that you were on the spot at the time, I wonder he didn’t arrest you right off; but he had formed his own theory, as detectives always do, and in nine cases out of ten they’re utterly wrong!”
“Do you know what the theory was?” I asked.
“Yes. He believed that the murder was committed by a woman; simply because a woman must have helped to ransack the rooms during Cassavetti’s absence.”
“How did he know that?”
“How did you know it?” he counter-queried.
“Because he told me at the time that a woman had been in the rooms, but he wouldn’t say any more, except that she was red-haired, or fair-haired, and well dressed. I wondered how he knew that, but he wouldn’t tell me.”
“He has never told me,” Southbourne said complacently. “Though I guessed it, all the same, and he couldn’t deny it, when I asked him. She dropped hairpins about, or a hairpin rather, – women always do when they’re agitated, – an expensive gilt hairpin. That’s how he knew she was certainly fair-haired, and probably well dressed.”
I remembered how, more than once, I had picked up and restored to Anne a hairpin that had fallen from her glorious hair. Jim and Mary Cayley had often chaffed her about the way she shed her hairpins around.
“What sort of hairpins?” I asked.
“A curved thing. He showed it me when I bowled him out about them. I know the sort. My wife wears them, – patent things, warranted not to fall out, so they always do. They cost half a crown a packet in that quality.”
I knew the sort, too, and knew also that my former suspicion was now a certainty. Anne had been to Cassavetti’s rooms that night; though nothing would ever induce me to believe she was his murderess.
“Well, I fail to see how that clue could have led him to me,” I said, forcing a laugh. I didn’t mean to let Southbourne, or any one else, guess that I knew who that hairpin had belonged to.
“It didn’t; it led him nowhere; though I believe he spent several days going round the West End hairdressers’ shops. There’s only one of them, a shop in the Haymarket, keeps that particular kind of hairpin, and they snubbed him; they weren’t going to give away their clients’ names. And there was nothing in the rooms to give him a clue. All Cassavetti’s private papers had been carried off, as you know. Then there was the old Russian you told about at the inquest. He seems to have vanished off the face of the earth; for nothing has been seen or heard of him. So, as I said, Freeman was on a cold scent, and thought of you again. He came to me, ostensibly on other business. I’d just got the wire from Petersburg – Nolan of The Thunderer sent it – saying you’d walked out of your hotel three nights before, and hadn’t been seen or heard of since. It struck me that the quickest way to trace you, if you were still above ground, was to set Freeman on your track straight away. So I told him at once of your disappearance; and he started cross-questioning me, with the result, – well – he went off eventually with the fixed idea that you were more implicated in the murder than had appeared possible at the time, and that your disappearance was in some way connected with it. Wait a bit, – let me finish! The next I heard was that he was off to St. Petersburg with an extradition warrant; and, from what he told me just now, he was just in time. Yes, it was the quickest way; they’d never have released you on any other consideration!”
“No, I guess they wouldn’t,” I responded. “You’ve certainly done me a good turn, Lord Southbourne, – saved my life, in fact. But what about this murder charge? Is it a farce, or what? You don’t believe I murdered the man, do you?”
“I? Good heavens, no! If I had I shouldn’t have troubled to set Freeman on you,” he answered languidly. I’ve met some baffling individuals, but never one more baffling than Southbourne.
“As far as we are concerned it is a farce, – though he doesn’t think it one. He imagines he’s got a case after his own heart. To snatch a man out of the jaws of death, nurse him back to life, and hand him over to be hanged; that’s his idea of a neat piece of business. But it will be all right, of course. I doubt if you’ll even be sent for trial; but if you are, no jury would convict you. Anyhow, I’ve sent for Sir George Lucas, – he ought to be here directly, – and I’ve given him carte blanche, at my expense, of course; so if a defence is needed you’d have the best that’s to be got.”
I began to stammer my thanks and protestations. I should never have dreamed of engaging the famous lawyer, who, if the matter did not prove as insignificant as Southbourne seemed to anticipate, and I had to stand my trial, would, in his turn, secure an equally famous K. C., – a luxury far beyond my own means.
But Southbourne checked me at the outset.
“That’s all right,” he said in his lazy way. “I can’t afford to lose a good man, – when there’s a chance of saving him. I hadn’t the chance with Carson; he was a good man, too, though he was a fool, – as you are! But, after all, it’s the fools who rush in where angels fear to tread; therefore they’re a lot more valuable in modern journalism than any angel could be, when they survive their folly, as you have so far! and now I want to know just what you were up to from the time you left your hotel till you were handed over by the Russian authorities; that is, if you feel equal to it. If not, another time will do, of course.”
I told him just as much – or as little – as I had already told Freeman. He watched me intently all the time from under his heavy lids, and nodded as I came to the end of my brief recital.
“You’ll be able to do a good series; even if you’re committed for trial you’ll have plenty of time, for the case can’t come on till September. ‘The Red Terror in Russia’ will do for the title; we’ll publish it in August, and you must pile it on thick about the prison. It’s always a bit difficult to rake up sufficient horrors to satisfy the public in the holidays; what gluttons they are! But, look here, didn’t I tell you not to meddle with this sort of thing?”
I had been expecting this all along, and was ready for it now.
“You did. But, as you’ve just said, ‘Fools rush in,’ etcetera. And I’m quite willing to acknowledge that there’s a lot more of fool than angel in me.”
“You’re not fool enough to disobey orders without some strong motive,” he retorted. “So now, – why did you go to that meeting?”
I was determined not to tell him. Anne might be dead, or in a Russian prison, which was worse than death; at any rate nearly two thousand miles of sea and land separated us, and I was powerless to aid her, – as powerless as I had been while I lay in the prison of Peter and Paul. But there was one thing I could still do; I could guard her name, her fame. It would have been a desecration to mention her to this man Southbourne. True, he had proved himself my good and generous friend; but I knew him for a man of sordid mind, a man devoid of ideals, a man who judged everything by one standard, – the amount of effective “copy” it would produce. He would regard her career, even the little of it that was known to me, as “excellent material” for a sensational serial, which he would commission one of his hacks to write. No, neither he nor any one else should ever learn aught of her from me; her name should never, if I could help it, be touched and smirched by “the world’s coarse thumb and finger.”
So I answered his question with a repetition of my first statement.
“I got wind of the meeting, and thought I’d see what it was like.”
“Although I had expressly warned you not to do anything of the kind?”
“Well, yes; but still you usually give one a free hand.”
“I didn’t this time. Was the woman at the meeting?”
“What woman?” I asked.
“The woman whose portrait I showed you, – the portrait Von Eckhardt found in Carson’s pocket. Why didn’t you tell me at the time that you knew her?”
“Simply because I don’t know her,” I answered, bracing up boldly for the lie.
“And yet she sat next to Cassavetti at the Savage Club dinner, an hour or two before he was murdered; and you talked to her rather confidentially, – under the portico.”
I tried bluff once more, though it doesn’t come easily to me. I looked him straight in the face and said deliberately:
“I don’t quite understand you, Lord Southbourne. That lady at the Hotel Cecil was Miss Anne Pendennis, a friend of my cousin, Mrs. Cayley. Do you know her?”
“Well – no.”
“Then who on earth made you think she was the original of that portrait?”
“Cayley the dramatist; he’s your cousin’s husband, isn’t he? I showed the portrait to him, and he recognized it at once.”
This was rather a facer, and I felt angry with Jim!
“Oh, Jim!” I said carelessly. “He’s almost as blind as a mole, and he’s no judge of likenesses. Why he always declares that Gertie Millar’s the living image of Edna May, and he can’t tell a portrait of one from the other without looking at the name (this was quite true, and we had often chipped Jim about it). There was a superficial likeness of course; I saw it myself at the time.”
“You didn’t mention it.”
“Why, no, I didn’t think it necessary.”
“And the initials?”
“A mere coincidence. They stand for Anna Petrovna. Von Eckhardt told me that. I saw him in Berlin. She’s a well-known Nihilist, and the police are after her in Russia. So you see, if you or any others are imagining there’s any connection between her and Miss Pendennis, you’re quite wrong.”
“H’m,” he said enigmatically, and I was immensely relieved that a warder opened the door at that moment and showed in Sir George Lucas.
“Oh, here you are, Lucas,” said Southbourne, rising and shaking hands with him. “This is your client, Mr. Wynn. I’ll be off now. See you again before long, but I’ll give you a bit of advice, with Sir George’s permission. Never prevaricate to your lawyer; tell him everything right out. That’s all.”
“Thanks; I guess that’s excellent advice, and I’ll take it,” I said.
CHAPTER XXVI
WHAT JIM CAYLEY KNEW
I did take Lord Southbourne’s advice, partly; for in giving Sir George Lucas a minute account of my movements on the night of the murder, I did not prevaricate, but I made two reservations, neither of which, so far as I could see, affected my own case in the least.
I made no mention of the conversation I had with the old Russian in my own flat; or of the incident of the boat. If I kept silence on those two points, I argued to myself, it was improbable that Anne’s name would be dragged into the matter. For whatever those meddling idiots, Southbourne or Jim Cayley (I’d have it out with Jim as soon as I saw him!), might suspect, they at least did not know for a certainty of her identity as Anna Petrovna, of her presence in Cassavetti’s rooms that night, or of her expedition on the river.
Sir George cross-examined me closely as to my relation with Cassavetti; we always spoke of him by that name, rather than by his own, which was so much less familiar; and on that point I could, of course, answer him frankly enough. Our acquaintanceship had been of the most casual kind; he had been to my rooms several times, but had never invited me to his. I had only been in them thrice; the first time when I unlocked the door with the pass-key with which the old Russian had tried to unlock my door, and then I hadn’t really gone inside, only looked round, and called; and the other occasions were when I broke open the door and found him murdered, and returned in company with the police.
“You saw nothing suspicious that first time?” he asked. “You are sure there was no one in the rooms then?”
“Well, I can’t be certain. I only just looked in; and then ran down again; I was in a desperate hurry, for I was late, as it was; I thought the whole thing a horrible bore, but I couldn’t leave the old man fainting on the stairs. Cassavetti certainly wasn’t in his rooms then, anyhow, and I shouldn’t think any one else was; for he told me afterwards, at dinner, that he came in before seven. He must have just missed the old man.”
“What became of the key?”
“I gave it back to the old man.”
“Although you thought it strange that such a person should be in possession of it?”
“Well, it wasn’t my affair, was it?” I remonstrated. “I didn’t give him the key in the first instance.”
“Now will you tell me, Mr. Wynn, why, when you left Lord Southbourne, you did not go straight home? That’s a point that may prove important.”
“I didn’t feel inclined to turn in just then, so I went for a stroll.”
“In the rain?”
“It wasn’t raining then; it was a lovely night for a little while, till the second storm came on, and my hat blew off.”
“And when you got in you heard no sound from Mr. Cassavetti’s rooms? They’re just over yours, aren’t they? Nothing at all, either during the night or next morning?”
“Nothing. I was out all the morning, and when I came in I fetched up the housekeeper to help me pack. It was he who remarked how quiet the place was. Besides, the poor chap had evidently been killed as soon as he got home.”
“Just so, but the rooms might have been ransacked after and not before the murder,” Sir George said dryly. “Though I don’t think that’s probable. Well, Mr. Wynn, you’ve told me everything?”
“Everything,” I answered promptly.
“Then we shall see what the other side have to say at the preliminary hearing.”
He chatted for a few minutes about my recent adventures in Russia; and then, to my relief, took himself off. I felt just about dead beat!
In the course of the day I got a wire from Jim Cayley, handed in at Morwen, a little place in Cornwall.
“Returning to town at once; be with you to-morrow.”
He turned up early next morning.
“Good heavens, Maurice, what’s all this about?” he demanded. “We’ve been wondering why we didn’t hear from you; and now – why, man, you’re an utter wreck!”
“No, I’m not. I’m getting round all right now,” I assured him. “I got into a bit of a scrimmage, and then into prison. They very nearly did for me there; but I guess I’ve as many lives as a cat.”
“But this murder charge? It’s in the papers this morning; look here.”
He held out a copy of The Courier, pointing to a column headed:
“The Westminster Murder.
arrest of a well-known journalist,”
and further down I saw among the cross-headings:
“Romantic Circumstances.”
“Half a minute; let’s have a look,” I exclaimed, snatching the paper, fearing lest under that particular cross-heading there might be some allusion to Anne, or the portrait. But there was not; the “romantic circumstances” were merely those under which the arrest was effected. Whoever had written it, – Southbourne himself probably, – had laid it on pretty thick about the special correspondents of The Courier obtaining “at the risk of their lives the exclusive information on which the public had learned to rely,” and a lot more rot of that kind, together with a highly complimentary précis of my career, and a hint that before long a full account of my thrilling experiences would be published exclusively in The Courier. Southbourne never lost a chance of advertisement.
The article ended with the announcement: “Sir George Lucas has undertaken the defence, and Mr. Wynn is, of course, prepared with a full answer to the charge.”
“Well, that seems all right, doesn’t it?” I asked coolly.
“All right?” spluttered Jim, who was more upset than I’d ever seen him. “You seem to regard being run in for murder as an everyday occurrence!”
“Well, it’s preferable to being in prison in Russia! If Freeman hadn’t taken it into his thick head to fix on me, I should have been dead and gone to glory by this time. Look here, Jim, there’s nothing to worry about, really. I asked Freeman to wire or ’phone to you yesterday when we arrived, thinking, of course, you’d be at Chelsea; then Southbourne turned up, and was awfully good. He’s arranged for my defence, so there’s nothing more to be done at present. The case will come before the magistrate to-morrow; so far as I’m concerned I’d rather it had come on to-day. I don’t suppose for an instant they’d send me for trial. The police can’t have anything but the flimsiest circumstantial evidence against me. I guess I needn’t assure you that I didn’t murder the man!”
He looked at me queerly through his glasses; and I experienced a faint, but distinctly uncomfortable, thrill. Could it be possible that he, who knew me so well, could imagine for a moment that I was guilty?
“No, I don’t believe you did it, my boy,” he said slowly. “But I do believe you know a lot more about it than you owned up to at the time. Have you forgotten that Sunday night – the last time I saw you? Because if you have, I haven’t! I taxed you then with knowing – or suspecting – that Anne Pendennis was mixed up with the affair in some way or other. It was your own manner that roused my suspicions then, as well as her flight; for it was flight, as we both know now. If I had done my duty I should have set the police on her; but I didn’t, chiefly for Mary’s sake, – she’s fretting herself to fiddle-strings about the jade already, and it would half kill her if she knew what the girl really was.”
“Stop,” I said, very quietly. “If you were any other man, I would call you a liar, Jim Cayley. But you’re Mary’s husband and my old friend, so I’ll only say you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I do,” he persisted. “It is you who don’t or pretend you don’t. I’ve learned something even since you’ve been away. I told you I believed both she and her father were mixed up with political intrigues; I spoke then on mere suspicion. But I was right. She belongs to the same secret society that Cassavetti was connected with; there was an understanding between them that night, though it’s quite possible they hadn’t met each other before. Do you remember she gave him a red geranium? That’s their precious symbol.”
“Did you say all this to Southbourne when he showed you the portrait that was found on Carson?” I interrupted.
“What, you know about the portrait, too?”
“Yes; he showed it me that same night, when I went to him after the dinner. It’s not Anne Pendennis at all.”
“But it is, man; I recognized it the moment I saw it, before he told me anything about it.”
“You recognized it!” I echoed scornfully. “We all know you can never recognize a portrait unless you see the name underneath. There was a kind of likeness. I saw it myself; but it wasn’t Anne’s portrait! Now just you tell me, right now, what you said to Southbourne. Any of this nonsense about her and Cassavetti and the red symbol?”
“No,” he answered impatiently. “I put two and two together and made that out for myself, and I’ve never mentioned it to a soul but you.”
I breathed more freely when I heard that.
“I just said when I looked at the thing: ‘Hello, that’s Anne Pendennis,’ and at that he began to question me about her, and I guessed he had some motive, so I was cautious. I only told him she was my wife’s old school friend, who had been staying with us, but that I didn’t know very much about her; she lived on the Continent with her father, and had gone back to him. You see I reckoned it was none of my business, or his, and I meant to screen the girl, for Mary’s sake, and yours. But now, this has come up; and you’re arrested for murdering Cassavetti. Upon my soul, Maurice, I believe I ought to have spoken out! And if you stand in danger.”
“Listen to me, Jim Cayley,” I said determinedly. “You will give me your word of honor that, whatever happens, you’ll never so much as mention Anne’s name, either in connection with that portrait or Cassavetti; that you’d never give any one even a hint that she might have been concerned – however innocently – in this murder.”
“But if things go against you?”
“That’s my lookout. Will you give your word – and keep it?”
“No.”
“Very well. If you don’t, I swear I’ll plead ‘Guilty’ to-morrow!”
CHAPTER XXVII
AT THE POLICE COURT
The threat was sufficient and Jim capitulated.
“Though you are a quixotic fool, Maurice, and no mistake,” he asserted vehemently.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I suggested. “Something pleasant, for a change. How’s Mary?”
“Not at all well; that’s why we went down to Cornwall last week; we’ve taken a cottage there for the summer. The town is frightfully stuffy, and the poor little woman is quite done up. She’s been worrying about Anne, too, as I said; and now she’ll be worrying about you! She wanted to come up with me yesterday, when I got the wire, – it was forwarded from Chelsea, – but I wouldn’t let her; and she’ll be awfully upset when she sees the papers to-day. We don’t get ’em till the afternoon down there.”
“Well, let her have a wire beforehand,” I counselled. “Tell her I’m all right, and send her my love. You’ll turn up at the court to-morrow to see me through, I suppose? Tell Mary I’ll probably come down to Morwen with you on Friday. That’ll cheer her up no end.”
“I hope you may! But suppose it goes against you, and you’re committed for trial?” Jim demanded gloomily. His customary cheeriness seemed to have deserted him altogether at this juncture.
“I’m not going to suppose anything so unpleasant till I have to,” I asserted. “Be off with you, and send that wire to Mary!”
I wanted to get rid of him. He wasn’t exactly an inspiriting companion just now; besides, I thought it possible that Southbourne might come to see me again; and I had determined to tackle him about that portrait, and try to exact the same pledge from him that I had from Jim. He might, of course, have shown it to a dozen people, as he had to Jim; and on the other hand he might not.
He came right enough, and I opened on him at once. He looked at me in his lazy way, through half-closed lids, – I don’t think I’ve ever seen that man open his eyes full, – and smiled.
“So you do know the lady, after all,” he remarked.
“I’m not talking of the original of the portrait, but of Miss Pendennis,” I retorted calmly. “I’ve seen Cayley, and he’s quite ready to acknowledge that he was misled by the likeness; but so may other people be if you’ve been showing it around.”
“Well, no; as it happens, I haven’t done that. Only you and he have seen it, besides myself. I showed it him because I knew you and he were intimate, and I wanted to see if he would recognize her, as you did, – or thought you did, – when I showed it you, though you wouldn’t own up to it. I’m really curious to know who the original is.”
“So am I, to a certain extent; but anyhow, she’s not Miss Pendennis!” I said decisively; though whether he believed me or not I can’t say. “And I won’t have her name even mentioned in connection with that portrait!”
“And therefore with, – but no matter,” he said slowly. “I wish, for your own sake, and not merely to satisfy my curiosity, that you would be frank with me, or, if not with me, at least with Sir George. However, I’ll do what you ask. I’ll make no further attempts, at present, to discover the original of that portrait.”
That was not precisely what I had asked him, but I let it pass. I knew by his way of saying it that he shared my conviction – and Jim’s – that it was Anne’s portrait right enough; but I had gained my point, and that was the main thing.
The hearing at the police court next day was more of an ordeal than I had anticipated, chiefly because of my physical condition. I had seemed astonishingly fit when I started, – in a cab, accompanied by a couple of policemen, – considering the extent of my injuries, and the sixty hours’ journey I had just come through; and I was anxious to get the thing over. But when I got into the crowded court, where I saw numbers of familiar faces, including Mary’s little white one, – she had come up from Cornwall after all, bless her! – I suddenly felt myself as weak as a cat. I was allowed a seat in the dock, and I leaned back in it with what was afterwards described by the reporters as “an apathetic air,” though I was really trying my hardest to avoid making an ass of myself by fainting outright. That effort occupied all the energy I had, and I only heard scraps of the evidence, which seemed, to my dulled brain, to refer to some one else and not to me at all.
At last there came a confused noise, shouting and clapping, and above it a stentorian voice.
“Silence! Silence in the court!”
Some one grasped my right arm – just where the bandage was, though he didn’t know that – and hurt me so badly that I started up involuntarily, to find Sir George and Southbourne just in front of the dock holding out their hands to me, and I heard a voice somewhere near.
“Come along, sir, this way; you can follow to the ante-room, gentlemen; can’t have a demonstration in Court.”
I felt myself guided along by the grip on my arm that was like a red-hot vice; there were people pressing about me, all talking at once, and shaking hands with me.
I heard Southbourne say, sharper and quicker than I’d ever heard him speak before:
“Here, look out! Stand back, some of you!”
The next I knew I was lying on a leather sofa with my head resting on something soft. My collar and tie lay on the floor beside me, and my face was wet, and something warm splashed down on it, just as I began to try and recollect what had happened. Then I found that I was resting on Mary’s shoulder, and she was crying softly; it was one of her tears that was trickling down my nose at this instant. She wiped it off with her damp little handkerchief.
“You poor boy; you gave us a real fright this time,” she exclaimed, smiling through her tears, – a wan little ghost of a smile. “But we’ll soon have you all right again when we get you home.”
“I’m all right now, dear; I’m sorry I’ve upset you so,” I said, and Jim bustled forward with some brandy in a flask, and helped me sit up.
I saw then that Sir George and Southbourne were still in the room; the lawyer was sitting on a table close by, watching me through his gold-rimmed pince-nez, and Southbourne was standing with his back to us, staring out of the window.
“What’s happened, anyhow?” I asked, and Sir George got off the table and came up to me.
“Charge dismissed; I congratulate you, Mr. Wynn,” he said genially. “There wasn’t a shred of real evidence against you; though they tried to make a lot out of that bit of withered geranium found in your waste-paper basket; just because the housekeeper remembered that Cassavetti had a red flower in his buttonhole when he came in; but I was able to smash that point at once, thanks to your cousin.”
He bowed towards Mary, who, as soon as she saw me recovering, had slipped away, and was pretending to adjust her hat before a dingy mirror.
“Why, what did Mary do?”
“Passed me a note saying that you had the buttonhole when you left the Cecil. I called her as a witness and she gave her evidence splendidly.”
“Lots of the men had them,” Mary put in hurriedly. “I had one, too, and so did Anne – quite a bunch. And my! I should like to know what that housekeeper had been about not to empty the waste-paper basket before. I don’t suppose he’s touched your rooms since you left them, Maurice!”
“It might have been a very difficult point,” Sir George continued judicially; “the only one, in fact. For Lord Southbourne’s evidence disposed of the theory the police had formed that you had returned earlier in the evening, and that when you did go in and found the door open your conduct was a mere feint to avert suspicion. And then there was the entire lack of motive, and the derivative evidence that more than one person – and one of them a woman – had been engaged in ransacking the rooms. Yes, it was a preposterous charge!”
“But it served its purpose all right,” drawled Southbourne, strolling forward. “They’d have taken their time if I’d set them on your track just because you had disappeared. Congratulations, Wynn. You’ve had more than enough handshaking, so I won’t inflict any more on you. Wonder what scrape you’ll find yourself in next?”
“He won’t have the chance of getting into any more for some time to come. I shall take care of that!” Mary asserted, with pretty severity. “Put his collar on, Jim; and we’ll get him into the brougham.”
“My motor’s outside, Mrs. Cayley. Do have that. It’s quicker and roomier. Come on, Wynn; take my arm; that’s all right. You stand by on his other side, Cayley. Sir George, will you take Mrs. Cayley and fetch the motor round to the side entrance? We’ll follow.”
I guess I’d misjudged him in the days when I’d thought him a cold-blooded cynic. He had certainly proved a good friend to me right through this episode, and now, impassive as ever, he helped me along and stowed me into the big motor.
Half the journalists in London seemed to be waiting outside, and raised a cheer as we appeared. Mary declared that it was quite a triumphant exit.