“You have entertained,” it said, “another Unfortunate. Here is a man nearly fifty years of age. He has revealed himself and exposed himself: he is by his own confession, although he is rich and successful, the companion and the friend of riffraff; his sentiments are theirs. He has no morals; he drinks without stint or measure; he has disgraced you in the Club. No doubt the Committee will interfere.”
It is, the moralist declares, an age of great laxity. A man may make a living in more ways than were formerly thought creditable; men are admitted to clubs who formerly would not have dared to put their names down. In Leonard’s mind there still remained, strong and clear, the opinion that there are some things which a gentleman should not do: things which he must not do: companions with whom he must not sit. Yet it appeared from the revelations of this man that, whatever he had done, he had habitually consorted with tramps, hawkers, peddlers, and shepherds.
CHAPTER XI
THE BOOK OF EXTRACTS
LEONARD turned up his light in the study. His eye fell upon the Book of Extracts. He looked at his watch. Nearly twelve. He took up the book resolutely. Another wave of loathing rolled over his mind. He beat it back; he forced himself to open the book, and to begin from the beginning.
The contents consisted, as he had already seen, of cuttings from a newspaper, with a connecting narrative in writing. On the title-page was written in a fine Italian hand the following brief explanation:
“This book was given to me by Mrs. Nicols, our housekeeper for thirty years. She cut out from the newspapers all that was printed about the crime and what followed. There are accounts of the Murder, the Inquest, and the Trial. She also added notes of her own on what she herself remembered and had seen. She made two cuttings of each extract, and two copies of her own notes; these she pasted in two scrap-books. She gave me one; the other I found in her room after her death. I sent the latter copy to my brother three days before he committed suicide.”
This statement was signed “Lucy Galley, née Campaigne.” The extracts and cuttings followed. Some of the less necessary details are here suppressed.
The first extract was from the weekly paper of the nearest county town:
“We are grieved to report the occurrence of a crime which brings the deepest disgrace upon our neighbourhood, hitherto remarkably free from acts of violence. The victim is a young gentleman, amiable and respected by everyone—Mr. Langley Holme, of Westerdene House, near the town of Amersham.
“The unfortunate gentleman had been staying for some days at the house of his brother-in-law, Mr. Algernon Campaigne, J.P., of Campaigne Park. On Tuesday, May 18, as will be seen from our Report of the Inquest, the two gentlemen started together for a walk after breakfast. It was about ten o’clock: they walked across the Park, they crossed the highroad beyond, they climbed over a stile into a large field, and they walked together along the pathway through the field, as far as a small wood which lies at the bottom of the field. Then Mr. Campaigne remembered some forgotten business or appointment and left his friend, returning by himself. When Mr. Holme was discovered—it is not yet quite certain how long after Mr. Campaigne left him, but it was certainly two hours—he was lying on the ground quite dead, his head literally battered in by a thick club—the branch of a tree either pulled off for the purpose, or lying on the ground ready to the hand of the murderer. They carried the body back to the house where he had been staying.