Israel Rank

by Roy Horniman

Having tracked me to the hotel at Lowhaven, the police were somewhat at a loss. They utterly failed to establish the fact that I had any poison in my possession at that time. They then threw themselves with ardour into the details of Ughtred Gascoyne’s death. Here, again, although it was possible to show that I was not infrequently at his flat late at night, their most strenuous efforts could not prove that I was there on the night on which the fire had taken place.

I was sure that suspicion about this began to creep into my wife’s mind. Perhaps she had learned that the Parsons were fictitious individuals. It may also have struck her that I must have passed the road where her brother was found dead, earlier on the same evening. These two facts, taken together with my being in the same hotel with young Gascoyne when he died, and as much evidence as could be raked up against me in connection with Ughtred Gascoyne’s death, must have forged a chain of implication which could not but shake the most serene confidence. Not that I had the least fear of her acting in a hostile manner. She could not have done anything had she wished to; besides, she belonged to that class of woman who, possessing most of the virtues, would never drag her husband’s name in the dust. Her conscience might—had she been questioned—have triumphed, but that she would speak out of her own free will I did not believe.

As the day of the trial drew nearer and nearer without any new charge my confidence rose. I suppose this optimism lies at the back of every prisoner’s mind. The possibility of an acquittal probably never disappears till the foreman of the jury delivers the terrible word guilty, a word which has a leaden sound complementary to the deadliness of its meaning.

My wife came to see me the day before the trial, and though she strove hard against the awful horror that I could see was in her mind, the strain was at last telling on her. She was taken away in a dead faint. I was sorry for her. I knew it was the last thing she would have wished should happen. My own danger had driven all three women out of my mind, and it was a psychological point which interested me extremely. I had loved them so fervently; and I could love fervently, even if not on the highest level. My own position, however, was so enormously important in my eyes that they were quite dwarfed. I could not rouse myself to any degree of emotion over their sufferings. It was not the idea of losing them that predominated in my mind, nor the idea of dwelling in their memory as a thing for pity, the victim of a terrible and gloomy death.

I regret to say that my departure for London, considered as a spectacle, was a failure.

I left the county prison in an ordinary carriage, and was put into a special train which drew up at a crossing in the depths of the country. I remember as I passed from the carriage to the railway-train casting my eye over a mellow, moonlit landscape, and wondering where I should be when they cut the corn. To one of my temperament it was a beautiful world I was perhaps leaving, and it was a dismal reflection that I might not share in the next year’s harvest of pleasant things.

The train reached London at an early hour of the morning, and such perfect arrangements had been made that the few porters about hardly realised who it was who was hurried into a private carriage and driven off.

Passing through the streets as dawn was breaking, I could see on the advertisement boards outside small newspaper shops the soiled posters of the evening papers. They bore large headlines with: “Trial of Lord Gascoyne,” “Latest Arrangements,” etc., etc. There was not a paper which had not displayed it more prominently than any other item of news. This was gratifying. The carriage drew up at the peers’ entrance to the House of Lords, for such was my privilege, and in a few minutes I had full assurance that I was receiving the hospitality of gentlemen. I was ushered into two rooms which had been set apart for me, and in one of which was laid a comfortable and substantial breakfast. To this I did full justice. Arrangements had been so made that I was practically alone in the room, although, of course, I was being very carefully watched. It was exceedingly comforting to feel that if they were going to hang me, they were going to do it with tact and breeding.

Parliament being in session, my trial would not take place before the Court of the Lord High Steward. I was glad, for that would have been comparatively a very small affair.

It may be as well to state that the House of Lords is a Court of Justice, of which all Peers of Parliament are judges, and the Lord High Steward the President. It differs from an ordinary court of law, inasmuch as all the peers taking part in the trial are judges both of the law and of the facts.