Israel Rank

by Roy Horniman

Here the family lawyer interposed, advising me to be very careful of my answers. I was not obliged to reply to anything which might incriminate me.

There was nothing more to be done. Towards the end of the inquest the chief constable crossed to my side, and, sitting down in quite a friendly manner, asked me to accompany him after the inquest into the next room.

The jury, evidently taking into consideration the fact that I was the next heir, that I had arsenic in my possession, that there was every motive, and that I was the only person who could have done it, returned a verdict of ‘Wilful murder’ against me. In my own eyes I stood convicted as the veriest bungler who ever danced at the end of a few yards of rope.

Lord Gascoyne was inexpressibly horrified, and there was a something in his face which I had not seen before. Was it suspicion? Perhaps he was thinking of the occasion when he learned that I was in the Lowhaven hotel at the time of his son’s death. Truly I had made some inexcusable mistakes.

If nothing succeeds like success, it is also true that nothing fails like failure.

I found it somewhat difficult to play a sentimental role which should be convincing. I felt that I ought to take a dramatic farewell of my wife. Scenes of this sort, however, were distasteful to me. I asked Lord Gascoyne to go and explain the situation to her, and when she arrived I received her with a manner which entirely forbade any outward expression of anguish. To do her justice, she was not the kind of woman who was likely to make a scene. She displayed the most perfect self-control, although I could see that she was suffering acutely. It came as a terrible blow to her. No suspicion, I am sure, of the possibility of such a thing had before entered her mind. I don’t think anybody really thought me guilty, which was, to say the least of it, peculiar, for it seemed to me as though the evidence were plain enough. From his manner the chief constable might have been driving me over to his place to stay for a day or two, and the first intimation I received of the unpleasant reality of the situation was the passing under the great gates of the county prison and the knowledge that for the future I was not free to go where I liked.

Chapter XXVIII

I suppose I must be thoroughly selfish, for at this moment of extreme depression and misery I was thinking chiefly of myself. Of course, I am curiously constituted, quite artificial from the world’s point of view. I cannot say that I was a victim to the agony and woe which I believed would have been the lot of most people in my condition.

I, who had staked so much to win what I coveted, might have been expected to suffer tortures at the reflection of what I had lost. I had always thought that the most terrible thing about shame and imprisonment must be the complete triumph of those who have hated one—the triumph of the ‘I told you so.’ This and the irrevocable loss of earthly pleasures and the binding hand and foot as if one had no passions or emotions, were the things I had always dreaded. My consolation was that my failure could not be a commonplace one. Ordinary criminals might wear out their lives in captivity and lose their identity through long years of vile slavery, but the law, stupid and sordid as it is, had at least a due sense of the dignity of my crime, and would meet a defiance like mine with the dignified retort of death. Sordid crimes must meet with sordid rewards. Death is never sordid, and it shuts out the derision of a virtuous world.

I was caged, and through my own folly. A little patience and ordinary care would have saved me. To have failed after such triumphs, and to have failed where failure was irretrievable, was maddening. I hated myself more than a converted sinner could have done. It was all quite dreadful. A miserable fiasco, with a tragedy as the result. I turned hot and cold whenever I thought of it—I mean the fiasco, not the tragedy. I felt like an actor who has mangled his part and knows it. The only thing to do was to make the end as flamboyant as possible. There was strong temptation to proclaim my triumphs forthwith. I was certain that for all hope there could be of retrieving the position I might do so. I had, however, thrown away too many cards. One never knows how time, even of the briefest, will deal with facts, so I determined to be wary. I would fight every inch of the ground. It would, at any rate, be an amusement till the end, and my memoirs would keep my fame alive after death. One does not sin greatly to be forgotten, and, after all, the great sinners of history have had their share of posterity, and without the aid of public monuments. The world is always more curious to hear about vice than virtue.