The master criminal

by G. Sidney Paternoster

Some of them sneered at him and Hora attributed the sneers to Marven's influence, though wrongfully, and his irritation became anger.

Later, a greater cause of jealousy arose through the interposition of the essential feminine element in all drama. Hora had fallen hopelessly in love, and he had reason to think that the affection he had bestowed would be returned. Then Marven appeared on the scene, and Hora's hopes had vanished. Marven had only to be natural to dazzle the eyes of all beholders with the rays of his sunshiny disposition. Hora's temperament was of an intellectual coldness more likely to provoke esteem than love. The attack of aerotitis which affected both of them accentuated in each his natural characteristics. Marven became more brilliant than ever, Hora more passionately reserved. Then Hora, his natural judgment in suspension, had imagined that it would be possible to out-dazzle Marven. Reckless of consequences, he joined in all the pursuits from which he had hitherto stood aloof. His useful charger had been replaced by two magnificent mounts. His tailor had been made temporarily happy by a swiftly swelling account. He had begun to entertain lavishly—a year's income, apart from his pay, would not have met one single week's expenditure. He had known that the pace could not last, but fate had been kind to him at the outset. He had speculated on the turf and had won. From the card table, too, he rarely rose a loser and the play that went on in the card room of the mess, when the Colonel was not there, would have genuinely shocked the commanding officer, had he been aware of the amount of the stakes at issue. Hora's comrades thought he had come in for a legacy, and he was no longer deemed a discredit to their ranks.

Though delayed, the day when the inevitable reckoning was to be met could not be averted forever. When fortune frowned, instead of smiling upon his turf speculations, he was forced to visit the Jews. There he could obtain but trifling accommodation, for he had never had any expectations, and was heir to nothing but an unstained name. Even the five hundred pounds he had ultimately raised was only advanced at ruinous interest on a three months' bill. He had plunged more wildly than ever. He had lost. He had become short of cash to meet his daily out-of-pocket expenses. Even then, he might have been saved from utter extinction had not he imagined that he had succeeded in putting his rival in the shade. He had staked everything upon one last hazard. There had been under his control certain regimental funds. He had made use of them, knowing full well that so soon as his anticipated engagement was announced he would have no difficulty in obtaining a further loan, since the object of rivalry between Marven and himself was wealthy, as well as beautiful. With that loan he had counted on being able to replace the money he had embezzled. But Marven was before him, and the day Marven's engagement to Beatrice Challys was announced an unexpected investigation of Hora's accounts by the Colonel of the regiment disclosed the defalcation. Hora was placed under arrest, and the torrent rushed over him.

When he had reached his own apartment, Lynton Hora spared himself not a single pang of bitterness of the memories of what had followed. The weary days under arrest, the long-drawn-out inquiries, the court martial, the day of the promulgation of the sentence, when he was drummed out of the regiment, and had walked out of the barrack yard into the hands of the civil police, who were awaiting him to bring him to further trial.

He had been spared nothing. There was no influence which could have been exerted to save him from any one of the ignominies which he had incurred. He had supplied an excellent example for exhibiting the impartiality of the law. No private in the ranks should be able to say that he received harsher treatment than the officer of a crack cavalry regiment.

He had faced his punishment bravely, indeed, he had welcomed the solitude of the cell when he had eventually exchanged his cavalry dress for another of H. M.'s uniforms. There he had not to meet the scorn of men's eyes.

One by one he recalled the incidents. They had never ceased to pain him, even though he tried to laugh at his weakness in imagining that the wound to his pride still rankled. But he would not have been without that smarting sore. He took the same fierce satisfaction in the pain with which the martyrs of Smithfield solaced themselves as they thrust their arms into the fire. He told himself always that the mental suffering, the intolerable scorn he had faced, had shown him the world as it is, and not as it pretends to be. He postulated a deceitful, hypocritical world with a smile on its face for the man of wealth, and a frown and a brick for the poor devil who had the will to enjoy and not the means to gratify his longings.

Before his disgrace he had hated only one man—afterwards he hated all men, and at least one woman—she who preferred Gay Marven, fortune's favourite, to himself, fortune's scapegoat. But in addition to enabling him to appreciate the smiles and frowns of the world at their proper worth he told himself that his experience had made a man of him. It certainly left him a purposeful, resourceful, scrupleless being, with a definite object in existence.

That object was revenge. Revenge on the world which had scorned him, revenge on the world which had labelled him criminal, revenge above all upon Marven.

He had made all his plans long before his sentence had expired. He saw that he must die to the world if the future was to have any promise at all, for a past, such as his, would have been an incubus no man might carry for long. So, when his term of imprisonment was over, he disappeared in the broad light of day. At least the ex-convict disappeared from English eyes when he sculled out to sea in a fair-weather craft from a south coast watering-place. A day or two later the overturned boat was picked up with the ex-convict's coat still entangled in the seat, and with his ticket-of-leave still in the pocket. There was nothing to connect the Lynton Hora who a few weeks later landed from an English tramp steamer at an Italian port with the missing man.