The Mark of Cain

by Andrew Lang

“What is his name?” asked the clerkly man, who was taking notes.

His name, indeed! If Maitland only knew that! His French now began to grow worse and worse in proportion to his flurry.

Well, he explained, it was very unlucky, but he did not exactly remember the man’s name. It was quite a common name. He had met him for the first time on board the steamer; but the man was going to Brussels, and, finding that Maitland was on his way to Paris, had asked him to make inquiries.

Here the clerkly person, laying down his notes, asked if English gentlemen usually spoke of persons whom they had just met for the first time on board the steamer as their friends?

Maitland, at this, lost his temper, and observed that, as they seemed disposed to give him more trouble than information, he would go and see the play.

Hereupon the clerkly person requested monsieur to remember, in his deportment, what was due to Justice; and when Maitland rose, in a stately way, to leave the room, he also rose and stood in front of the door.

However little of human nature an Englishman may possess, he is rarely unmoved by this kind of treatment. Maitland took the man by the collar, sans phrase, and spun him round, amid the horrified clamor of the porter. But the man, without any passion, merely produced and displayed a card, containing a voucher that he belonged to the Secret Police, and calmly asked Maitland for “his papers.”

Maitland had no papers. He had understood that passports were no longer required.

The detective assured him that passports “spoil nothing.” Had monsieur nothing stating his identity? Maitland, entirely forgetting that he had artfully entered his name as “Buchanan” on the hotel book, produced his card, on the lower corner of which was printed, St. Gatien’s College. This address puzzled the detective a good deal, while the change of name did not allay his suspicions, and he ended by requesting Maitland to accompany him into the presence of Justice. As there was no choice, Maitland obtained leave to put some linen in his travelling-bag, and was carried off to what we should call the nearest police-station. Here he was received in a chill bleak room by a formal man, wearing a decoration, who (after some private talk with the detective) asked Maitland to explain his whole conduct in the matter of the coat. In the first place, the detective’s notes on their conversation were read aloud, and it was shown that Maitland had given a false name; had originally spoken of the object of his quest as “the coat of a friend;” then as “the coat of a man whom he knew something about;” then as “the coat of a man whose name he did not know;” and that, finally, he had attempted to go away without offering any satisfactory account of himself.

All this the philanthropist was constrained to admit; but he was, not unnaturally, quite unable to submit any explanation of his proceedings. What chiefly discomfited him was the fact that his proceedings were a matter of interest and observation. Why, he kept wondering, was all this fuss made about a coat which had, or had not, been left by a traveller at the hotel? It was perfectly plain that the hotel was used as a souricière, as the police say, as a trap in which all inquirers after the coat could be captured. Now, if he had been given time (and a French dictionary), Maitland might have set before the Commissaire of Police the whole story of his troubles. He might have begun with the discovery of Shields’ body in the snow; he might have gone on to Margaret’s disappearance (enlèvement), and to a description of the costume (bearskin coat and all) of the villain who had carried her away. Then he might have described his relations with Margaret, the necessity of finding her, the clew offered by the advertisement in the Times, and his own too subtle and ingenious attempt to follow up that clew. But it is improbable that this narrative, had Maitland told it ever so movingly, would have entirely satisfied the suspicions of the Commissaire of Police. It might even have prejudiced that official against Maitland. Moreover, the Fellow of St. Gatien’s had neither the presence of mind nor the linguistic resources necessary to relate the whole plot and substance of this narrative, at a moment’s notice, in a cold police-office, to a sceptical alien. He therefore fell back on a demand to be allowed to communicate with the English Ambassador; and that night Maitland of Gatien’s passed, for the first time during his blameless career, in a police-cell.