The Herapath Property

by J. S. Fletcher

“I think you are right,” assented Mr. Tertius. “Yes, I think so.”

“But—he’s in prison!” said Peggie. “Will they let me?”

“Oh, that’s all right,” answered the Professor. “Halfpenny will arrange that like winking. You must go at once—and Selwood there will go with you. Far better for you two young people to go than for either Halfpenny, or Tertius, or myself. Youth invites confidence.”

Peggie turned and looked at Selwood.

“You’ll go?” she asked.

Selwood felt his cheeks flush and rose to conceal his sudden show of feeling. “I’ll go anywhere and do anything!” he answered quietly. “I don’t know whether my opinion’s worth having, but I think exactly as Professor Cox-Raythwaite does about this affair. But—who’s the guilty man? Is it—can it be Burchill? If what Barthorpe Herapath says about that will affair is true, Burchill is cunning and subtle enough for——”

“Burchill, my dear lad, is at present out of our ken,” interrupted Cox-Raythwaite. “Barthorpe, however, is very much within it, and Halfpenny must arrange for you two to see him without delay. And once closeted with him, you must talk to him for his soul’s good—get him to search his memory, to think of every detail he can rake up—above everything, if there’s anything he’s keeping back, beg him, on your knees if necessary, to make a clean breast of it. Otherwise——”

Two days later Peggie, sick at heart, and Selwood, nervous and fidgety, sat in a room which gave both of them a feeling as of partial suffocation. It was not that it was not big enough for two people, or for six people, or for a dozen people to sit in—there was space for twenty. What oppressed them was the horrible sense of formality, the absence of life, colour, of anything but sure and solid security, the intrusive spick-and-spanness, the blatant cleanliness, the conscious odour of some sort of soap, used presumably for washing floors and walls, the whole crying atmosphere of incarceration. The barred window, the pictureless walls, the official look of the utterly plain chairs and tables, the grilles of iron bars which cut the place in half—these things oppressed the girl so profoundly that she felt as if a sharp scream was the only thing that would relieve her pent-up feelings. And as she sat there with thumping heart, dreading the appearance of her cousin behind those bars, yet wishing intensely that he would come, Peggie had a sudden fearful realization of what it really meant to fall into the hands of justice. There, somewhere close by, no doubt, Barthorpe was able to move hands and feet, legs and arms, body and head—but within limits. He could pace a cell, he could tramp round an exercise yard, he could eat and drink, he could use his tongue when allowed, he could do many things—but always within limits. He was held—held by an unseen power which could materialize, could make itself very much seen, at a second’s notice. There he would stop until he was carried off to his trial; he would come and go during that trial, the unseen power always holding him. And one day he would either go out of the power’s clutches—free, or he would be carried off, not to this remand prison but a certain cell in another place in which he would sit, or lounge, or lie, with nothing to do, until a bustling, businesslike man came in one morning with a little group of officials and in his hand a bundle of leather straps. Held!—by the strong, never-relaxing clutch of the law. That——

“Buck up!” whispered Selwood, in the blunt language of irreverent, yet good-natured, youth. “He’s coming!”

Peggie looked up to see Barthorpe staring at her through the iron bars. He was not over good to look at. He had a two days’ beard on his face; his linen was not fresh; his clothes were put on untidily; he stood with his hands in his pockets lumpishly—the change wrought by incarceration, even of that comparative sort, was great. He looked both sulky and sheepish; he gave Selwood no more than a curt nod; his first response to his cousin was of the nature of a growl.