CHAPTER XXXVI.
Left to myself, next morning, I sought out Detective Inspector Lavender—a large, fair, pink-faced, grey-eyed man, with a soothing voice and fatherly smile, as unlike the human sleuth-hound of melodrama and fiction as could well be. Before making my fateful call upon Fédore it would be very desirable, I felt, to learn whether he had any fresh news for me and shape my course accordingly.
He greeted me with—
‘Well, sir, you are the gentleman of all others I was wishing to see. My fellow officers are a bit jealous sometimes of what they are pleased to call Lavender’s luck—and my luck is uncommonly to the fore, I must say, this morning.’
I inquired why.
‘Because this little man-hunting job of yours and mine seems on the tip of success. A word from you may settle it.’
I inquired how.
‘Well, sir, could you undertake to identify this Mr. Marsigli if you saw him?’
I answered that I believed I undoubtedly could.
‘Then the affair becomes very simple. Lavender’s luck, sir, Lavender’s luck. So, if you have an hour or two to spare, I will ask you to go with me to a certain humble residence, from the windows of which two of my men are keeping watch on a certain door, in a certain garden-wall, not very many miles from here.’
‘In Chelsea?’ I said—the question surprised out of me by his words, before I had time to consider the wisdom of asking it.
‘Just so, sir—in Chelsea—you’ve hit the right nail on the head.’ And, for all his soothing voice and fatherly smile, the detective’s grey eyes grew uncommonly keen and bright.
‘Pray may I ask, have you any particular interest in a door in a garden-wall giving access to a queerly stowed-away little house in a Chelsea side street?’
Clearly there was nothing for it but to put him in full possession of the facts; at the same time urging him to bear in mind the relation in which the inhabitant of that same queerly stowed-away dwelling stood, or was supposed to stand, to Lord Hartover.
He considered, for some minutes in silence, rubbing his hand slowly over his chin. Then—
‘This promises to be a more delicate piece of work than I expected. Either we must act together, fair and square and above-board, you understand, sir, without reserve on either side; or you must leave it all to me; or I must retire from the business, making the best case I can for myself to the authorities, and leave it all to you. It is a ticklish enough job either way. Now which shall it be, sir? The decision rests with you, since you are, in a sense, my employer; but I must ask you to make it at once, before I give you any further information. And please remember, sir, that while I am ready to do all in my power to meet your wishes and spare the young nobleman’s feelings, my first duty and first object is to bring the guilty party, or parties, to justice, whatsoever and whosoever they may be.’
It was my turn now to consider, since I could not but admit the soundness of his position. And I found myself, I own, in a dilemma. To leave all to Lavender appeared to me at once cowardly and somewhat lacking in good faith towards the dear boy; while to take the entire responsibility upon myself would be, I feared, both presumptuous and foolhardy.
‘No, we must work together, Inspector,’ I said, finally. ‘You may depend upon my loyalty; and I may, I am sure, depend upon your discretion, so long as the ends of justice are in no wise imperilled.’
‘Well said, sir,’ he replied. ‘I believe you will have no reason to regret your decision.’
And we proceeded to talk matters over thoroughly, he asking me again for a careful description of Marsigli.—Tall, of good figure and distinguished appearance, as I told him, a genuine North Italian type, crisp black hair, clear olive skin, and regular features; a serious and courtly manner, moreover.
Lavender consulted some notes.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said, ‘that tallies with the account of an individual my men have had under observation for the best part of a fortnight. Twice he has called at the house I spoke of. Our gentleman has added a neatly-grown moustache and beard to his other attractions, recently, as I fancy; but it will hardly prevent your recognising him—that is if Lavender’s luck holds, sir, and I can procure you a good look at him.’
Regarding my mission to Fédore—we agreed, since Hartover could not be back in town under a couple of days at soonest—it might very well stand over until to-morrow, and that meanwhile I should place my time entirely at my companion’s disposal.
‘If we have not laid hands on this fellow before midnight, you shall be free to follow your own wishes as to visiting the lady,’ he promised me; and therewith, calling a coach, bore me off south-westward to Chelsea.
The glorious summer weather of the past three or four days was about to terminate in the proverbial English thunder-storm. I seldom remember a more oppressive atmosphere. London still offers a not altogether satisfactory example of applied sanitary science, but, at the date in question, once you left the fashionable districts and main thoroughfares, was frankly malodorous, not to say filthy. Half-way along King’s Road Lavender paid off the coach, and conducted me, on foot, by festering, foul-smelling by-ways, to the back of a row of mean two-storied houses. Gaining access to one of them—which from its dilapidated condition I judged to be empty—through a yard strewn with all manner of unsightly rubbish, a dead cat included, we passed by a narrow passage and stairway to a front room on the first floor. Here two detectives awaited our coming, and here, seated on a remarkably comfortless Windsor chair, by the defaced and broken window I passed what appeared a small eternity, looking out into the ill-paved street, where groups of squalid, half-naked children played and fought, and hawkers plied a noisy, unremunerative trade.
Opposite was a long stretch of much-defiled drab brick wall, pierced by a green-painted door, and furnished with a fringe of broken bottle glass along the top, above which showed the upper branches of a plane-tree and the roof and chimney-pots of an otherwise invisible dwelling. The whole presented a sordid and disheartening picture in the close heavy heat, beneath a sullen grey-blue sky across which masses of heavy cloud stalked upright in the face of a fitful and gusty wind.
And to think this was the place to which Hartover—heir to immense wealth and princely possessions, heir to royal Hover affronting the grandeur of those wind-swept Yorkshire fells—must needs descend to seek comfort, companionship, and some ordinary human kindness of care and woman’s love! The irony, the cynicism, of it struck through me with indignation and disgust.
I am under the impression Lavender did his best to lighten the tedium of my vigil by talking, humorously and well, of matters pertaining to his profession. That he discoursed to me of the differences between English and Continental methods of criminal procedure—the former of which he held notably superior in dignity and in fair-play—while his underlings smoked their pipes in modest silence. But I am afraid I accorded his well-meant efforts for my entertainment scanty attention; nor even, when the storm broke, did I pay much heed to the long-drawn cannonade, the boom and crash of warring elements.
For, throughout that lengthy waiting, the thought of Hartover and of his future had grown to be a veritable obsession, dwarfing all else in my mind. Again his pathetic outcry over the ‘poor, poor, hateful little Chelsea house’—the roof and chimney-pots of which I could see there opposite, above the fringe of broken bottle glass topping the wall—rang in my ears. And, as it did so, Self, by God’s grace, at last, was mastered. Yes, it came to this—to all else would I give the go-by, readily, gladly—to my pleasant studious life at Cambridge and its prospect of solid emoluments, of personal distinction and scholarly renown, to my last lingering hope—for even yet a faint, sweet, foolish hope did linger—of some day making Nellie Braithwaite nearer, and ah! how vastly, exquisitely dearer than a mere friend—if thus I might be permitted to redeem Hartover, to save him from the consequences of his own wayward, though not ignoble, nature, and from the consequences of others’ wholly ignoble conspiracies and sins. I was ready to make my sacrifice without hesitation or return; only, in my weakness, I prayed for some assurance it was accepted, prayed for a sign.
Was the sign given? It seemed so. I sprang to my feet, calling Lavender hurriedly by name.
It was late afternoon now. The worst of the storm over, though big plashy drops still fell, while steam rose off the sun-baked paving-stones. Through this veil of moisture a man walked rapidly to the door in the wall and knocked. Waiting for his knock to be answered, he turned, took off his hat, shook it sharply to dislodge the wet, and, so doing, glanced up at the still lowering sky. I saw his face distinctly.
Lavender stood at my elbow.
‘Well, sir, well, sir?’ he said, an odd eagerness and vibration in his voice.
‘Yes,’ I declared. ‘Marsigli, Lord Longmoor’s former butler, without doubt.’
‘You would be prepared to swear to him in a court of law, if required?’
‘Absolutely prepared,’ I said.
Here the door was opened cautiously from the garden. Marsigli thrust past the servant, and disappeared within.
Now or never! Lavender and his underlings darted down the crazy stairs and across the road. I followed at my best pace, very vital excitement gripping me, in time to see him knock, await the opening of the door, and—then a rush. The three were inside so quickly that, before I could join them, the servant—a middle-aged, hard-featured, somewhat shrewish-looking French-woman—was safe in the custody of the younger detective, Lavender and the other pushing on for the house.
‘If she attempts to scream, throttle her,’ Lavender said, in a sufficiently loud aside to have a wholesomely restraining effect upon the captive. ‘Now, sir,’ to me, ‘as little noise as possible in getting upstairs, please.’
And he glanced meaningly, though not unkindly, at my lame leg.
I crept after them as quietly as I could, and had reason; for on reaching the landing we heard voices, a man’s and a woman’s, high in altercation.
The door of the front drawing-room, I should explain, stood open, the front room communicating with the back by folding doors. These were closed, and within them the quarrel took place; but so loudly that, as we advanced, I could distinguish nearly every word.
‘It is impossible. I tell you he is still away.’
‘No one else can have taken them. No one else has a key to this sweet little nest—and so the game is up, my child, by now the fraud discovered. You are trapped—trapped!’
‘Beast,’ the woman cried, in a tone of concentrated fury and contempt. ‘Go. Do you hear? I tell you to go, or I send Marie for the police.’
‘Pish, you little fool, you know you dare not. What money have you?’
‘Money, indeed! I have none, and if I had I would rather fling it in the gutter than you should have it. Go—go—are you deaf?’
‘Hand over the rest of the jewels then; or I call in the police myself, and tell them—you know what.’
‘It is a lie—a lie. I am his wife.’
‘Idiot—you are my wife, not his.’
‘You cannot prove it,’ she said fiercely.
‘I can. I have the documents safe in Paris.’
‘Go and fetch them, then.’
‘So I will, and take you and the jewels along with me. For I am willing to forgive—yes, listen—it is your only chance now that you are found out.—I, your lawful husband, Bartolomeo Marsigli, am willing to forgive, to condone your infidelities, and receive you back.’
‘And I spit upon your forgiveness. Understand, once and for all, I will never go back to you, never—I would die first. Having had the nobleman, what can I want with the nobleman’s valet? Keep off—you brute. Touch me at your peril. Take that—and that’⸺
The sound of a tussle. Then the man’s voice—
‘Heigh! my fine lady, would you bite then, would you scratch? There, be reasonable, can’t you, for I repeat the game is up. Your aristocratic boy-lover is lost to you for ever in any case. Come away with me to Paris while there still is time. I love you—and I will have you’⸺
Again the sound of a tussle, wordless, tense.
‘That will do, I think, sir,’ Lavender looked rather than spoke, and quietly opened the folding doors.
There are certain spots—in themselves often commonplace enough—which are branded, by mere association, indelibly upon the retina. So is that inner room on mine. I remember every stick of furniture it contained; remember even the colour and pattern of the wall-paper—a faded fawn dotted with tarnished gold and silver fleur-de-lis. The room—like every other back drawing-room in an unfashionable suburb of that day—was narrow, but high and of some length, a window, at the far end, opening down to the floor, a little balcony beyond, and the tops of a few fruit-trees in the garden below.
Across the window a couch had been drawn, upon which Fédore—wrapped in a loose dressing-gown of some pale silk stuff—had either been thrown or thrown herself in the heat of the recent struggle. On this side the couch, near the head of it, stood Marsigli, his back towards us.
Fédore’s nerve was admirable, her self-control consummate. Quick as thought she grasped the situation and used it to her own advantage. As she saw the doors open, disclosing our presence, she neither exclaimed nor shrank. On the contrary, drawing herself into a sitting position, she calmly extended one hand, with a proud sweeping gesture, and, as calmly, spoke.
‘Marie has done her duty then, faithful soul, without waiting to be told! There is the door, Marsigli, and there, behind you, are the police—and Mr. Brownlow, an old friend of mine too—how fortunate! Yes, arrest him, gentlemen; and hang him if you can—I do not understand your English laws—as high as St. Paul’s, for the most cowardly and insolent villain you ever took.’
Marsigli turned, saw us, and suddenly raised his right arm.
‘Die then, since you prefer it,’ he said. ‘Thief, liar—adulteress.’
While, with a terrible cry, Fédore leapt off the couch.
‘A knife!’ she screamed. ‘Save me. He has a knife.’
And, as she ran towards us, I saw something narrow and bright flash downwards between her shoulders, and—a red spout of blood. Her knees gave under her. She lurched, flung up her arms, kneeling for an instant bolt upright, a world of agony and despair in her splendid eyes, and then, before either of us could reach her, fell back.