“I’ve heard something about it,” said Ridgway. “Queer, wasn’t it?”
“More than queer,” I answered. “I don’t mind telling you in confidence that I had reason at one time to suspect him of playing the fool with his gun, with the half intention—you know—an accident, and all the bother ended. He swore not, when I tackled him about it; but I wasn’t satisfied. I tried to get him to go home, leaving his gun with the keeper, but he absolutely refused; and he refused again to part with it when, in the afternoon, he finally did leave us, saying he was good for nothing, and had had enough of it. If only then he had done what I wanted him to do, and left his gun behind, this wretched business might never have happened.”
“Ah!” said the detective, “he feels that, I dare say, and it doesn’t help to cheer him up. Well, sir, I’d get him out, if I was you—distract his thoughts, and make him forget himself. He won’t mend what’s done by moping.”
“All very well,” I answered, “to talk about making him forget himself; but when I’m forced to affect an ignorance of the very thing he wants to forget—if we’re right—what am I to do? You might think that after having had me down for the express purpose of advising him—as I have no doubt was the case—in this scrape, he would take me more into his confidence, and not at least resent, as seemingly he does, any allusion to it.”
“Well, you see,” said the detective, “from his point of view the scrape’s ended for him, and so there isn’t the same need for advice. But I’d keep at it, if I was you, and after a time you may get him to unburden himself.”
I had not much hope, after what had passed between us; but I held the Sergeant’s recommendation in mind, and resolved to watch for and encourage the least disposition to candour which might show itself on my friend’s part. Perhaps I had gone a little further than I should have in taking the detective into my confidence about a scandal which, after all, was no more than surmise; but it was so patent to me that his judgment ran, and must run, with my own, that it would have been simply idle to pretend ignorance of a situation about which no two men of intelligence could possibly have come to differing conclusions. And, moreover, as Ridgway himself had admitted, true or not, the incident had no direct bearing on the case.
These days at Wildshott, otherwise a little eventless for me as an outsider, found a certain mitigation of their dullness in the suspicion still kept alive in me regarding the Baron’s movements, and in the consequent watchfulness I felt it my duty to keep on them. I don’t know how it was, but I mistrusted the man, his secretiveness, the company he kept, the mystery surrounding his being. Who was he? Why did he play chess for half-crowns? Why had he come attended—as, according to evidence, never before—by a ruffianly foreign man-servant, ready, on the most trifling provocation, to dip his hands in blood? That had been outside the programme, no doubt: men who use dangerous tools must risk their turning in their hands; but what had been his purpose in bringing the fellow? Throat-cutting? Robbery?—I was prepared for any revelation. Abduction, perhaps: the Baron was for ever driving about the country with Audrey in the little governess cart. In the meanwhile, following that miscarriage of his master’s plans, whatever they might be, Mr. Louis Victor Cabanis had been had up before a full bench of magistrates, and, the police asking for time in which to compact their evidence, had been remanded to prison for a fortnight. The delay gave some breathing space for all concerned, and was, I think, welcomed by every one but Hugo. I don’t know by what passion of hatred of the slayer my friend’s soul might have been agitated. Perhaps it was that, perhaps mere nervous tension; but he appeared to be in a feverish impatience to get the business over. He did not say much about it; but one could judge by his look and manner the strained torment of his spirit. We were not a great deal together; and mostly I had to make out my time alone as best I could. Sometimes, in a rather pathetic way, he would go and play chess with his father, a thing he had never dreamed of doing in his normal state. I used to wonder if the General had guessed the truth, and how he was regarding it if he had. According to all accounts, he had been no Puritan himself in his younger days.
I have said that Audrey and the Baron were about a good deal together. They were, and the knowledge troubled me so much that I made up my mind to warn her.
“You appear to find his company very entertaining,” I said to her one day. Audrey had a rather disconcerting way of responding to any unwelcome question with a wide-eyed stare, which it was difficult to undergo quite stoically.
“Do I?” she said presently. “Why?”