The Red Redmaynes

by Eden Phillpotts

But though she did not win her way, yet, in defeat, her final, glorious deed was to intercept the death intended for me, that I might still live. Loyal to the last, she sacrificed herself, forgetting, in that supreme moment, how life for me without her could possess no shadow of compensation. When Jenny shook off the dust of the world, I was ready and willing to do the same. As for that future life, in which I most potently believe, since she and I have merited a like treatment, we shall share eternity together and so be in heaven, whatever the Great Contriver may desire to the contrary. Yet who shall presume to dogmatize? "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." And what the Almighty Mind may be pleased to think of any human performance is for the present hidden with Him alone. He did not make the tiger to eat grass or the eagle to feed on honey.

My wife's deeper sanity and clearer vision always inclined her to distrust our American acquaintance, Peter Ganns. From the first moment that Jenny's eyes fell upon that fine figure of a man, she judged him to be built on a very different mental pattern from Brendon. He was no New World edition of our poor, tame Marco; and the preliminary fact that he should have anticipated us and arrived beside Como before he was expected to do so, convinced Jenny that he must prove a factor of extreme gravity in all future calculations. I, too, perceived his force of character, and rejoiced to do so, for here appeared an enemy worthy of my invention and resource.

It seemed clear that Pietro was a skeptical person—doubtless made so by his dreadful trade. "Thomas" rather than "Peter" should have been his name. He had a disconcerting habit of taking nothing for granted; and his "third eye" as he called it—an eye of the mind—saw a great many things concealed from ordinary observers. He would have made a classical criminal.

The artist's pride, that had prevented me from acting so that Ganns should have been invited to discover the murderer of Albert rather than set the task of preserving his friend's life—this false, foolish sense of superiority and security wrecked all. Had Albert slept beneath the waters of Como before Ganns arrived, then not the wit of twenty Peters had ever found him; but while no man living could have saved the life of Redmayne, since had I determined to take it, the predestined sequel to his death was confounded by my own error. Once more Ganns struck before I expected him to do so and I was, too late, confronted with the shattering truth. He had in fact found me out. He returned to England, worked like a mole, dug up my history, no doubt, and so came to the logical conclusion that it appeared more reasonable Michael Pendean should murder Robert Redmayne than the opposite. Having reached this conviction, his reconstruction of each event threw added light; but even so it must have been a spark of prodigious inspiration that identified in Doria the vanished Cornishman.

Ganns is a great man on his own plane. But, though he is a greedy creature who digs his grave with his knife and fork, though his habit of drenching himself with powdered tobacco, instead of smoking like a gentleman, is disgusting, yet I have nothing but admiration for him. His little plot—to treat me to a dose of my own physic and present a forgery of "Robert Redmayne" in the evening dusk—was altogether admirable. The thing came in a manner so sudden and unexpected that I failed of a perfect riposte. To confess that I saw the ghost was dangerous; but to pretend afterwards that I had seen nothing was fatal. His own immense cleverness, of course, appeared in assuring me that he saw nothing, thus tempting me to suspect that I had in reality been a victim of my own imagination. From that moment the battle was joined and I stood at grave disadvantage.

How much or how little he had won from my slip I had yet to learn. In any case the time was all too short, for I guessed now that Ganns must at least have associated me with the unknown—he who had worn Redmayne's clothes and had tried to shoot Brendon in his absence. It was Jenny, of course, who had assisted me to dig Marco's grave on Griante and who shared my disappointment when we found that Brendon had escaped my revolver. Even so only the accident of biting his tongue saved him. Had I not seen blood flowing from his lips, I should have fired again.

I was not aware that Peter proposed to arrest me on the night of Albert's death, for upon what ground could he do so? Indeed I judged that after my final operations were completed and Albert destroyed, good Ganns would swiftly prove, to his own satisfaction, that I could not be associated with that crime and so feel his whole theory open to suspicion. Had I known that Peter was at his goal, my first thought might have been to disappear instantly and only appear again under a new impersonation, a year or two later, when the storm was over. In that case I should have indicated how "Giuseppe Doria" had committed suicide and left every tactful and sufficing proof of the fact.

But I never guessed the majestic heights of Peter's genius and, taking the chance of his temporary absence, slew Albert with a simple trick. There was only Mark Brendon to prevent it; and Jenny, having reserved her final and irresistible appeal for some such vital occasion, found no difficulty in absorbing all Marco's limited intelligence, while awakening for him fond hopes and visions of a notable future in her arms. It needs to be pointed out that this worthy person's infatuation served again and again to prosper the situation for us and handicap the efforts of Peter Ganns; but that Ganns should have trusted him upon that all-important night to shepherd Albert from my attention, only shows how Peter never appreciated the limitations of his assistant. Yes, even Peter was human, all too human.

While Jenny related her sufferings and made appeal to her listener's overmastering devotion, I left the house and Brendon saw me go. To get a boat, that I might cross to Bellagio, was the work of ten minutes. I took one without troubling the owner, loaded a dozen heavy stones and soon rowed to Villa Pianezzo and ascended the water steps. A black beard was all the disguise I used, save that I had left my coat in the boat and appeared before Redmayne in shirt sleeves.

With trembling accents I related to Assunta, who of course knew me not, that Poggi was taken fatally ill and might hardly hope to last an hour. It was enough. I returned to the boat and in three minutes Albert joined me and offered me untold gold to row as I had never rowed before. A hundred and fifty yards from shore I directed him to pass into the bow of the boat, explaining that I should so make greater speed. As he passed me, the little pole-axe fell. He suffered nothing and in five minutes more, with heavy stones fastened to feet and arms, he sank beneath Como. The pole-axe followed, its work completed. In more spacious times the weapon would have become an heirloom. All this happened not two hundred yards from Villa Pianezzo under the darkness.