Chapter Fifteen.
Van Bleit’s trial occupied considerably less time than was anticipated. It came on early in the session, and was quickly disposed of. The evidence was contradictory and unsatisfactory. Van Bleit, who was put in the witness box by his counsel, gave the only clear and unreserved account of the night’s doings. His plea was that he killed Simmonds in self-defence. There had been ill-feeling between himself and Simmonds for some time. On the night in question he had gone to the bungalow in perfect good faith. There was nothing remarkable in his being armed. He had carried a revolver ever since he had roughed it in Rhodesia. At the bungalow he had met with a hostile reception. Simmonds had locked the door of the room and put the key in his pocket. He had then drawn a revolver from his coat pocket and had covered Van Bleit with it.
“I recognised that I must defend my life,” Van Bleit finished with fine dramatic effect. “A man hasn’t time to consider on such occasions; he acts on impulse. But I solemnly declare I had no intention to kill the man. I fired wildly, and I am certain no one could have been more distressed than myself when I discovered that my shot had proved fatal. I was scarcely conscious that I had fired until Simmonds fell.”
Colonel Grey corroborated his statement as to the locking of the door; but he added that there was nothing hostile in the act. He believed it had been done to guard against interruption. He further allowed that Simmonds had been somewhat hasty. He had been the first to produce a revolver. He had not, however, covered the prisoner with it. The prisoner had been excited and had fired without provocation.
The jury retired for about ten minutes. When they returned they pronounced the prisoner Not Guilty. The verdict was received with cheers. When a man has stood on trial for his life the tension of feeling is sufficiently strained to cause a strong reaction on his acquittal in favour of the accused.
Van Bleit left the court with his friends, and Smythe, who was as much astonished as relieved at the turn affairs had taken, drove him home to his wife as the surest proof he could offer her that her cousin was a free man.
“I don’t know how he does it,” he confided in Van Bleit’s counsel, who was a personal friend, and whose fee he was responsible for. “I take it, he’s reserved for something worse than hanging.”
The strain had told on Van Bleit. He had recognised that he stood in a particularly tight place. Death had been his constant companion sleeping and waking for so long that his nerve was shattered for the time. Excitement had kept him up hitherto, now that the necessity to brace himself was ended he collapsed like a deflated paper bag.
When he got alone with his cousin he gave way and blubbered feebly as a child blubbers who has been beaten and desires to but cannot retaliate. Mrs Smythe was shocked. She pressed whisky on him with a heart overflowing with pity, and he helped himself liberally from the decanter until his lachrymose condition gave place to a bombastic assurance that was almost as pitiful to witness. Mrs Smythe sent her husband off to his club, unmindful that he should encounter Karl in his present mood, and she and her cousin dined alone.
“We’ll have a nice quiet time together,” she said gently. “You’ll sleep here to-night, Karl?”
“I might as well—yes,” he replied.
He got up, wandered aimlessly round the room, and then came back, put his arms round her shoulders and kissed her.
“You haven’t told me anything about Her yet,” he said. “Has she been upset? ... anxious? ... I’ve thought about her day and night.”
Mrs Smythe looked troubled.
“You mean—Zoë?”
He stared at her in surprise.
“Why, who else?” he asked.
“She has been with me a lot,” she answered evasively. “She’s very kind, Karl—so sympathetic.”
“Of course she didn’t believe me guilty?” he questioned, his bold dark eyes holding hers, confident in the remembrance of his last interview with Mrs Lawless that she could not have thought unkindly of him in the interval.
“I don’t know... She never spoke of you,” Mrs Smythe returned unwillingly. “Zoë is very reserved.”
He smiled with some complacence.
“She won’t be reserved with me,” he said, “when I see her to-morrow. I’m living for to-morrow. I would have gone to her this evening only—”
He hesitated to complete the sentence, but Mrs Smythe understood.
“I think it just as well not to be too precipitate,” she said.
Something in her manner arrested him. He glanced at her sharply.
“You don’t know... you haven’t heard anything?” he stammered.
She had neither the heart nor the courage to shatter his hopes. She smiled at him and shook her head.
“Women don’t bare their hearts to one another,” she answered. “But I always feel with Zoë Lawless that she lives in the past.”
“Pshaw!” he returned easily. “You’re a sentimentalist, Kate.”
The following day when Van Bleit called upon Mrs Lawless he had occasion to remember his cousin’s words, and to wonder whether she might not have some grounds for her opinion. The message he received at the door was that Mrs Lawless was out. He left the magnificent basket of flowers he had brought with him, and scribbled hastily on a visiting card that he would call again on the morrow, and went away dissatisfied. She must have known that he would call that day. If she had felt kindly towards him she would have remained at home to receive him. He was undecided whether to infer from her action that she no longer had any wish to meet him, or if she was merely piqued that he had not gone straightway to her after his liberation, and desired to show by her coldness her displeasure at his negligence. The latter view appealing more to his self-esteem he inclined towards adopting it; though a knowledge of Zoë Lawless’ character should have dispelled any such supposition.
The next day when he reached the house and rang the bell, with considerably less confidence than on the former occasion, he was met with the same disconcerting message as before. Mrs Lawless was not at home. There could be no mistake this time as to the intention of the rebuff.
He ground his heel savagely into the gravel of the path and turned away. It was the trial and the charge of murder, he decided, which had probably shocked her. It was not sufficient apparently that he had been acquitted of the charge; womanlike, she held him responsible for the life he had taken.
He went back to his own rooms. He had left the Smythes. The animosity that existed between himself and Smythe rendered it inadvisable for them to remain long beneath the same roof. And he had no inclination for his cousin’s society. He shrank from the thought of her sympathy. It was humiliating beyond measure to have to acknowledge his defeat to her.
Then, like an inspiration, the advice Lawless had given him on the last occasion when they had lunched together flashed into his mind. He decided to adopt it, to leave Cape Town immediately. It did not seem to occur to him that had absence been likely to further his cause his recent detention should have considerably advanced him in favour.
At this crisis a telegraphic message arrived from Lawless himself.
“Congrats try change of air bed board and welcome here grit.”
Van Bleit read this message many times, and considered it for fully half an hour before he wrote a reply. He considered his reply with equal care, and made several alterations in the form before finally writing it out on a fresh form and dispatching it.
“good travelling with denzil might as well come your way karl.”
He put on his hat and went out. It remained for him to look up Denzil and inform him of the holiday he had planned. He had taken all the risks he intended taking. He had had experience of two men against one; on this occasion he determined the strength of numbers should be on his side.
Denzil was astonished, and not altogether delighted, when he heard Van Bleit’s proposal. He had no particular fancy for wintering on the high veld, and he did not desire to leave Cape Town.
“What makes you suspect treachery in Grit Lawless?” he asked. “I thought he was a particular chum of yours.”
“I thought so myself until I found out he was in Colonel Grey’s pay.”
“And how did you discover that?” the other inquired sceptically. “Told you, I suppose?”
“Not much,” Van Bleit answered craftily. “But I keep a watch on the Colonel’s doings, and I know fairly accurately all the visitors he receives at the bungalow. It was the greatest surprise in the world to me when I tracked Grit Lawless there. I watched him unseen go in and out on three separate occasions. He has passed me so close that by stretching out a hand he could have touched me, and bade me good-night in response to my ‘Good-night, baas,’ taking me for the Kaffir I disguised myself to represent. He is very wide awake is Grit Lawless, but I’m wider awake still. I’ve followed him up to the stoep of the bungalow and heard him greet the old man, unconscious of a listener. He can’t kid me. The only thing that puzzles me is his absconding with that she-devil. It’s just possible that he has had a split with the Colonel. But that doesn’t make him any friend of ours, you understand. Grit is cunning enough to play the game off his own bat. I’m not for trusting any man. We’ll go, but we’ll need to be wide awake.”
Denzil looked at the speaker admiringly. He was cunning himself; it was due to his fertile brain that the letters had fallen into Van Bleit’s hands, otherwise he would never have participated in the profits; but his cunning was not equal to the Dutchman’s, nor his courage. He was a nervous little fellow, and would gladly have parted with the letters for the handsome sum offered by the other side. He was always keenly alive to the danger of his profession as blackmailer. It was only his fear of Van Bleit that kept him in subjection. And he was sorely afraid that Van Bleit would overreach himself and land them both some day into difficulties with the law.
“Why go,” he asked sensibly, “if you don’t trust the man?”
Van Bleit shrugged his huge shoulders.
“It suits me to go somewhere,” he answered. “And I’d like to test the fellow.”
“You’re more than a match for him,” Denzil remarked tentatively.
Van Bleit smiled drily.
“I daresay, Dick,” he said. “But I’ve a fancy for your company... I shouldn’t like the Colonel to get worrying you just now.”
“You mean,” Denzil said stiffly, “that you distrust me?”
“Not you, my dear fellow, but your judgment,” Van Bleit replied easily. “If it hadn’t been for me you would have parted with a fortune for a beggarly sum long since.”
“I’d be content,” observed Denzil in an injured tone, “with a handsome sum down. Where’s the sense in squeezing a man past his endurance?”
“We’ve got to find out how far his endurance goes,” the other answered. “Your conscience is over sensitive, my boy, for a job of this kind. We’ve a handsome annuity in those letters... Why on earth should we sink it in a sum we should both squander in a year? There’s no reason in it, and no commercial instinct. Apart from that, I’ve gone through an experience that entitles me to redress. Do you suppose I’ve endured nothing in standing on my trial? I wasn’t responsible for Simmonds’ death; it was his own silly fault. But I might have had to pay for it. The other side has got to make that good to me, and it isn’t to be done cheaply. Putting a man’s private feelings on one side, think of the expense of counsel’s fees, and such things?”
Van Bleit was careful not to mention that all the expenses of his trial had been borne by Theodore Smythe, who laboured under the delusion that his wife’s cousin had very little ready money at his command. It was a mystery to him how Van Bleit lived. Had he suspected him of blackmailing, he would not have lifted a finger to save his neck from the rope.
Denzil nodded shortly.
“Yes, of course... I quite see your point,” he said. “At the same time, I wish you could come to some sort of agreement. I think after this Grey might meet you quite handsomely. And it would be satisfactory to me, at least, to be finished with the business. Men have got twenty years for blackmail before now.”
Van Bleit drew himself up and eyed his subordinate aggressively.
“If you’re funking it,” he said, “say so, and be done with it. I’m not going to work with a man I can’t be sure of. We have worked together so far satisfactorily that it will be regrettable if you separate our interests now. But it has to be now or never. I’m not throwing this up for any scruple. Do you, or do you not, stand in with me?”
Denzil’s nature was weak, prone to any influence; and the dominating personality of the other man bore him down easily.
“Of course I stand in with you,” he said. “Our interests are identical.”
“Good!” Van Bleit rejoined. “You’re a wobbler, Dick; but you generally rise to the occasion. Then you go with me to-morrow? You won’t find it very amusing, though it may have its exciting moments... Unless, of course, the lady is still keeping house for Grit. But from the invite I imagine she has left him in the lurch.”
“He’d scarcely ask you up there if he’d got any women about,” was the reply, which Van Bleit construed into a compliment. He smiled complacently.
“I wouldn’t mind hunting down the quarry on my own account,” he said. “She was devilishly handsome—and a dashed bad lot.”