Stories of the Sea/Captain Black
CAPTAIN BLACK
By Charles E. Carryl
Mr. George Farnham, counsellor-at-law, having devoted ten years of his life to the remunerative toil of entangling certain persons in, and extricating certain others from, the meshes of the law, found himself, at the age of thirty-five, with a respectable balance in bank and a pronounced craving for rest and recreation. Summer was coming on, the courts would soon be closed, and a torpor was settling down upon the field of litigation, and the idea of a vacation abroad presented itself to his mind with alluring force. He was weary of briefs and bills of exceptions; his office was taking on, to his jaded eyes, an aspect of dreary dinginess that promised to become unendurable in the near future, and the long rows of buff-clad digests and revised statutes seemed to glare down upon him from their shelves, like wolves in sheep’s clothing, with grim suggestions of long nights of toil. Under these impelling influences he turned his back upon the law, packed a portmanteau, and found himself upon a bright morning in June on the steamer Servia, fairly committed to a three months’ sojourn in foreign parts.
As the hour of sailing drew near he stood on the hurricane deck, leaning against the rail and watching with lively interest the animated scene on the pier below. A double line of passengers and their friends was thronging up and down the gangway giving access to the lower deck, a crowd of spectators, idlers, and itinerant vendors of steamer-chairs and other comforts of the sea was swarming below him on the pier, and a number of agile cabin-stewards in blue jackets were rushing up and down a supplemental gang-way, bringing aboard an endless variety of steamer-trunks, hand-bags, and bundled rugs. Carriages drove up, discharged their living freight and made their way back through the surging crowd amid volleys of imprecations; while the decks of the steamer swarmed with people chattering, scolding, and weeping farewells with the feverish vehemence peculiar to such occasions. Farnham, enjoying the spectacle with all the relish of a school-boy abandoning his books for a time, turned to a fellow-passenger who stood beside him at the rail, and remarked, “A busy scene, sir.”
“I should call it a bedlam,” said the other, without looking up. “I never could understand the insane curiosity that impels people remaining at home to subject themselves to the most unpleasant feature of going abroad.”
“Meaning the crowd?” inquired Farnham.
“Yes,” replied the other, shortly, “the rabble, the deafening racket, the infernal discomfort of the whole business;” with which he turned abruptly and walked away as if not in the mood for further conversation.
Farnham, at complacent peace with himself and with the world, looked after him with good-humored surprise. He was a tallish man of powerful build, with a full brown beard and hair slightly marked with gray, exceedingly well dressed, and having the unmistakable bearing of a man of the world. By a momentary glimpse of his face as he turned away, Farnham saw that he had regular features, a dark complexion, and a certain self-contained expression that was not altogether prepossessing. As he disappeared in the crowd Farnham turned again and resumed his watch of the scene below.
At this moment the bell for “all ashore” was rung, and the crowd on the gangway began to resolve itself into a stream bound shoreward, occasionally broken by a belated passenger hurriedly making his way upward through the living tide. Then the stream dwindled to a few stragglers, and finally to the inevitable last man, scrambling downward while the gangway was swinging in the slings; the long plank was lowered and cast off, a mighty pulse began to throb beneath Farnham’s feet, and the great ship backed majestically out of the slip amid a tempest of shouts of farewell.
It was at this instant that Farnham’s attention was attracted to a cab that came rattling along the pier, scattering the crowd in every direction. As it drew up at the gangway opening, a man sprang out and crying frantically, “Stop! stop!” rushed to the edge of the pier and began running back and forth upon the string- piece as if meditating a desperate attempt to leap out and clutch at the side of the receding ship. A roar of derisive laughter burst from the bystanders as this preposterous intention became evident, and two of the wharf hands seized the distracted man and roughly dragged him back, struggling and protesting, until he was lost to view in the crowd that surged about him. Farnham fancied, from a sudden expression on his face as he was dragged away, that he had recognized some one on the upper deck, and glancing around involuntarily, discovered the bearded passenger standing beside him at the rail, gazing down upon the scene with an angry scowl. At this moment they came abreast of the end of the pier, where a scene of waving handkerchiefs and tossing sun-umbrellas of every hue and shade burst upon them like a mighty kaleidoscope, and at the same instant the belated traveller appeared in the surging mass of people, hatless and dishevelled and clutching wildly at the air, as if he would stay the departing ship. “Intolerable ass!” muttered the bearded man in a savage whisper, and striking the rail furiously with his clenched fist, he strode angrily away.
The sail through the river and down the bay was enough of a novelty to keep Farnham busily observant, and it was not until the Hook had been passed and the pilot taken off that he bethought himself of going below to don his steamer-cap and shoes, and otherwise prepare himself for a week of seafaring leisure. He had secured a berth in an outside room in the double row just aft the saloon companion-way, and as he entered the passage leading to it he met his bearded acquaintance just coming out of the room. “Mr. Farnham?” said the dark man, interrogatively. “That is my name,” replied Farnham. “I am Captain Black,” said the other, bowing stiffly; “I believe we are booked as room-mates,” and, pushing by him, walked away without pausing for a reply.
“I hope you’ll pan out better than you promise, my good fellow,” said Farnham to himself, philosophically; and entering his room, he was soon busily occupied in making a convenient disposal of his modest belongings.
The door stood open, and Farnham presently became aware of the presence, in the room directly opposite, of a fellowpassenger similarly occupied. He seemed to be of about the height and build of Farnham’s room-mate, but his face, of which Farnham caught an occasional glimpse as he moved about, was as unlike that gentleman’s as could well be imagined. He was clean shaven, of a pallor that was almost unearthly, and had a hideous scar extending from one corner of his mouth down across his chin. To all this was added a certain wildness of eye that was so distinctly repellent that Farnham inwardly congratulated himself that Captain Black had fallen to his lot instead of this unprepossessing stranger; and completing his arrangements, loaded himself with cigars and went on deck.
Events proved that if Captain Black was not companionable, he was at least unobtrusive. Except for the mere knowledge to the contrary, Farnham had the room virtually to himself. His companion rose, had his tub, dressed, and went on deck long before the overworked counsellor-at-law had finished his supplemental morning doze, and retired at night so late and so quietly that Farnham never so much as knew when he came into the room. As for the rest, the man was singularly preoccupied in manner, acknowledging with the merest nod and with an absent air Farnham’s salutation when they chanced to meet, and keeping aloof from him and, with one exception, from the other passengers as well, with a persistence that was too marked to permit any attempt at a closer acquaintance.
The exception, to Farnham’s surprise, was the uninviting-looking occupant of the opposite room. What made this remarkable selection still more surprising was the fact that the acquaintance between the two had evidently been made aboard ship, as Farnham had seen them passing and repassing each other without the slightest sign of recognition during the afternoon of the day of sailing; yet before twenty-four hours had elapsed an intimacy had been formed and matured between these strangely contrasted men, so close that they seemed to be inseparable. Morning, noon, and far into the night they sat and smoked together in secluded corners, the man with the scar constantly talking in a smothered undertone, with a certain fierce vehemence and violence of gesture, and the captain listening with a brooding look upon his dark features and an observant eye upon the other’s face. Farnham was puzzled, and, for a while, found a singular fascination in furtively watching the two men and mentally speculating as to what strange community of interest had brought them together. The few passengers with whom he chanced to fall into conversation knew as little about the scar-faced man as he himself knew about Captain Black, and beyond the fact that his name was Leath, learned incidentally from the cabin-steward, no information of any kind was obtainable. Farnham’s interest in the matter, being rather antipathetic than otherwise, was short-lived, and in the course of a day or two subsided into a mere glance at the two men when he chanced to come upon them.
The weather was fair and promised to hold; but shortly after passing the Banks the ship ran into a rough sea rolling heavily from the southward, evidently the tail of a storm that had passed up from the tropics. As the day wore on the sea continued rising, and by nightfall the ship was rolling heavily, and Farnham, who had thus far fared well, began to experience certain premonitions that impelled him, after a proud struggle against fate, to forego his after-dinner cigar and turn in at an unseemly hour, in the hope that a night’s rest would set him right. He lay in his berth, occasionally falling into a doze and then being roused by an unusually violent plunge as the ship labored in the heavy sea, getting up from time to time to secure and make fast the various toilet articles that had drifted from their moorings, and then tumbling into his berth again with a qualmish apprehension that the supreme moment he was fighting against was upon him.
It was just after one of these excursions that the door opened and Captain Black came into the room. The curtain of the berth was drawn so that he was concealed from view, but Farnham, half dozing, was vaguely aware, above the creaking of the ship, of his movements about the room; and an occasional rattle of keys and the snapping of a lock indicated the opening of some article of luggage. These trifling noises not being disturbing in themselves, Farnham finally dropped asleep and was presently involved in a contested will case of extraordinary magnitude, with his most important witness a fugitive in the wilds of Madagascar. The details progressed with astonishing velocity, accompanied by distracting complications heretofore unheard of in law practice, and matters were assuming a portentous aspect with tremendous pecuniary penalties impending, when he awoke and started up with a sudden consciousness that the curtain had been drawn aside and that he had been looked upon as he lay sleeping in his berth. He pushed it back and looked out, and as he did so the door of the room was softly closed and he heard the heavy footsteps of Captain Black going out through the passageway. The incident was sufficiently annoying in itself, but Farnham found it doubly so from the manifest impossibility of resenting it at the moment, and after fuming over it to no purpose he lay down again, resolving to give his room-mate a bit of his mind in the morning; and bracing himself with his knees against the rolling of the ship, tried to compose himself to sleep. But sleep would not come. The sudden awakening and the resulting irritation had excited him, and he rolled and tossed about, dropping off into fitful naps and waking with every violent plunge of the ship, and occasionally muttering unseemly imprecations against the evil chance that had broken in upon his night’s rest.
It was just after one of these wakings that he heard the sound of a hurried step descending the companionway, and some one came aft through the open cabin and turned into the passageway almost on a run; the door of the opposite room was opened, closed again and locked, apparently with feverish haste, and all was still again. Farnham, listening with alert attention, heard six bells strike a moment after, and concluding from the hour that Captain Black would soon follow his friend, prepared to speak his mind then and there; nursing which amiable intention he presently fell sound asleep.
••••••••
“Beg pardon, sir,” said a voice, and Farnham started up. It was morning, and the bath-steward was standing in the doorway. “Beg pardon, sir,” said the man again, with a startled look upon his face; “but Captain Black isn’t here, sir, and his berth hasn’t been used.”
“Well, I’m not responsible for his not coming to bed,” said Farnham, testily. “What time is it?”
“Just gone seven bells, sir,” said the steward.
“Very good, I’ll get up,” said Farnham, after a moment’s deliberation. “See if you can get me a bath,” and the man withdrew.
Farnham, reflecting upon the steward’s rather startling announcement, found his irritation giving way to a vague foreboding of evil, with which came a disturbing recollection of Leath’s hurried return to his room the night before. Could the man tell anything? He looked out into the passageway, but the door of the opposite room was closed and Farnham could not bring himself to knock and learn he knew not what; and he dressed with feverish haste, and went on deck with an increasing sense of an agitation which he could not shake off. He made a complete tour of the ship, examined every part of the decks, looked into the smoking-room, and finally went into the dining-saloon, where a vacant chair marked Captain Black’s place at the breakfast-table; and then, coming across his cabin-steward, questioned him, and learned that the man had been off watch the night before and could tell him nothing. The matter began to assume an ugly look, and Farnham went direct to the purser, and in ten minutes the ship was being thoroughly searched from stem to stern. Not a trace of the missing man could be found; Captain Black had vanished as absolutely as if he had been absorbed into the atmosphere.
When Farnham related the events of the preceding night it was determined to question Leath at once; and on the steward’s report that the man was ill and was still in his berth, Farnham and the purser went to his room and knocked for admittance. Leath unlocked the door without parley and was back again in his berth as they entered the room, leaning on one elbow and glaring angrily at them as he demanded their business. The man was evidently ill and looked horrible. His face, apparently tanned by the sea air, had taken on a swarthy hue that made his extraordinary pallor even more ghastly than before, and the scar on his chin blazed with an angry flush as though he had been freshly branded on the face.
He listened to the purser’s statement, manifesting extreme agitation as the story proceeded, and at its conclusion fell back upon his pillow and covered his face with his hands. “I can tell you nothing,” he said, after a brief silence, speaking in a smothered voice that was singularly discordant. “I left him, smoking and leaning on the rail near the turtle-back, and came below at eleven o’clock. You must have heard me,” he added, appealing to Farnham, who nodded assent. “What followed is as dark to me as it is to you. I had been drinking and my recollection is confused; I only remember that the sea was horrible to look at!” and with a shudder he turned his face to the wall, and Farnham and the purser, exchanging a significant glance, left him.
“We must go to the old man with this,” said the purser, with an ominous shake of the head, and requesting Farnham to follow him, led the way to the captain’s room. The news had already spread about the ship, and as they passed along the deck, little groups of passengers were discussing the tragedy with repressed voices, and Farnham observed, with great annoyance, that they glanced curiously at him as he went by, and felt that he was being connected with the affair in a thoroughly unpleasant manner.
The captain heard the grim story through and reflected for a few moments with a disturbed countenance. “There’s nothing to be done,” he said at length; “when we get in I shall ask this gentleman and the other to remain aboard until we can communicate with the authorities. If Leath refuses,” he continued, fixing on the unfortunate man with the same suspicion that possessed both Farnham and the purser, “I shall take the responsibility of detaining him. Meanwhile, take charge of the missing man’s effects and tell the men not to talk.”
And now that the dark premonition had grown into a gruesome fact, Farnham began to experience a depression of spirits that promised to put an end to his enjoyment of the remainder of the voyage. As the day wore on, the gloom fastened upon him like a pall, until he was impelled, just before nightfall, to go to the purser and ask to be given another room, where he could be free from the disquieting associations of his late quarters, and away from the immediate proximity of Leath, for whom he had conceived an unconquerable aversion. The purser fell in with his humor without demur, and Farnham found himself transferred to a stuffy inside cabin on the main deck with a positive sense of benefaction. His former apartment was abandoned to the goods and chattels of Captain Black, and Leath, locked in his room, was left alone with his secret, if he had one.
It was with a sense of infinite relief that Farnham, coming on deck one morning, saw the Skelligs rising like mammoth teeth from the sea, and soon afterward the green cliffs of the Irish mainland. His spirits rose as the steamer ran along the coast, passed inside the Fastnet Rock, and finally turned into the mouth of Queenstown Harbor; and he watched with lively interest the arrival alongside of the rakish little tender and the transfer of an interminable number of mail-bags to her ample deck. The procession of bag-bearing stewards having finished their labors, he crossed to the opposite side of the ship, and was engaged in serene contemplation of the whitewashed glories of the Roche’s Point light, when he was touched on the shoulder, and turning, saw the purser at his side with two strangers.
“We are beginning to get a little light on our affair, Mr. Farnham,” said the purser. “These gentlemen are officers from Scotland Yard with a requisition and a warrant for the arrest of Captain Black on a charge of forgery. Mr. Lethbridge and Mr. Darke—Mr. Farnham,” and the two detectives touched their hats and regarded Farnham with a professional air, as if longing to take him into custody in the absence of their legitimate prey.
“No statement to make, I suppose,” said Mr. Lethbridge, a sharp-featured, fresh-faced man with light hair.
“None,” said Farnham. “Mr. Neal knows all I can tell you.”
“Very good, sir,” said Lethbridge, affably. “Now, then, Mr. Neal,” he added, turning to the purser, “if you’ll be good enough to show us below, we’ll take a look at the effects;” and touching their hats again, the two officers followed the purser, leaving Farnham to resume his interrupted observation of the lighthouse. Meanwhile, with a prodigious ringing of bells, the tender cast off and paddled up the harbor, the great pulse began to throb again, and the steamer, turning her prow seaward, went on her way up the Channel.
Farnham, slowly pacing the deck, presently saw the purser and Lethbridge emerge from the companionway and come toward him. “Mr. Farnham,” said the former, “I’m afraid you and I, without saying much about the matter, have been doing that poor devil Leath a great injustice. Read this,” and he handed Farnham an unsealed envelope. It was addressed “To whom it may concern,” and opening it, Farnham found enclosed the following letter:
In the almost absolute certainty of being apprehended upon my arrival, I have chosen the only means open to me of avoiding the disgrace and punishment that would inevitably follow. I had hoped to escape, with the firm intention of never resting until I had made restitution for the only crime that has ever stained my life; but it was not to be. The appearance, at the moment of departure, of a man upon whose blind confidence and dull apprehension I had relied, for such a tardy discovery of my betrayal of trust as would give me ample time for escape, has told me that the cable would assuredly carry the intelligence abroad long before I could reach English soil.
I had at first no intention of leaving New York. I expected, with incredible fatuity, to delay exposure until some lucky chance should permit me to cover, for all time, the traces of my wrong-doing; but the mental strain consequent upon continued and complicated falsifying of accounts, became unendurable, and in an evil moment I appropriated certain funds from a quarter where immediate examination and discovery were improbable, and ventured all upon that mirage of defaulters—faro. I lost. There was no time for resort to the expedients of disguise and concealed identity which might have saved me. I attempted to deceive my associate by the desperate subterfuge of a forged cable message calling me abroad on family affairs; made up my luggage and boarded the steamer almost at the hour of sailing, only to find myself unmasked at the last moment.
I feel no longing for the life I am about to end, nor do I leave a single soul who will mourn my death. I regret, alone, that restitution is beyond my power. The sea is merciful to me in all else.
Lansing Black.
“Poor fellow!” said Farnham. “How bad a matter was it?”
“Extensive forgeries and about sixteen thousand pounds in hard cash, supposed to be with him,” replied Lethbridge. “That’s all we know. Particulars by mail.”
“I am glad Leath is out of it, at all events,” said Farnham, heartily enough.
“So am I, sir,” echoed the purser; “but I’m blessed if it didn’t look ugly for a while.” With which reminiscence he and Mr. Lethbridge went below again to resume their examination of Captain Black’s effects.
Leath kept his room with extraordinary persistence until the last moment. Farnham, with a vague idea of making amends for his recent suspicions by some sort of friendly advances, looked for him on the tender the next morning, but failed to find him in the crowd of passengers; nor did he get a sight of him until the very last of the number were disembarking, when Leath, wearing a mackintosh reaching to his heels, and with a muffler or scarf swathed about the lower part of his face, suddenly appeared at the head of the gangway leading to the landing-stage, and paused irresolutely, as if loath to come ashore. Farnham, who was awaiting his luggage on the landing-stage and chatting meanwhile with the two detectives, was about to attract his attention by a sign of recognition, when Leath, as if suddenly mastering his indecision, strode rapidly down the gangway, and began roughly pushing his way through the throng of waiting passengers. At this moment Lethbridge touched Farnham on the arm and pointed significantly to a woman who was standing at the foot of the gangway with her eyes intently fixed upon Leath. She was a sad-faced woman, plainly clad, and Farnham noticed that she was holding her hand tremulously to her mouth, as if endeavoring to control excessive agitation. As Leath passed her without a glance of recognition, her eyes dilated as with a sudden sickening terror, and then, apparently moved by an uncontrollable impulse, she flung herself before him with her hands against his breast, crying, “Roger! Don’t you know me?” Leath’s face, for an instant, looked as if it had been turned to stone, then, catching sight of Farnham’s astonished gaze, he instantly passed his arm about the imploring figure before him and said hurriedly, “I did not see you. Come away,” and pushed on with the woman, sobbing convulsively, on his arm.
“Rather a rum meeting, that,” observed Mr. Lethbridge, dryly, and Farnham, who had witnessed the scene with an immediate revival of his former antipathy, shrugged his shoulders in infinite disgust, and washing his hands of Mr. Leath and his affairs, went off to look after his own effects.
No further incidents of importance marked Farnham’s sojourn abroad. He traversed the beaten road of insular and continental sightseeing for his allotted time, and returned to his legal grindstone with such agreeable recollections of his vacation, that the following June found him again in London with the pleasant prospect of further rambles before him during the summer months. He had heard the particulars of the forgery while at home, but it was simply the old story of securities raised from their face value, followed by the coarser crime of actual theft, and ending with a ruined firm and a beggared partner; and the affair had almost passed from his memory, when it was suddenly recalled by an incident of the most startling character.
Farnham, waiting for a friend, was standing at the window of that depressing apartment, the smoking-room of Her Majesty’s Hotel, gazing aimlessly into the side street and observing the grimy wall of a noble lord’s grounds on the opposite side of the way, when his attention was attracted to two men who came from the direction of the neighboring thoroughfare, and stopped, conversing leisurely, at the entrance to the hotel. With the man who faced him Farnham had no concern; but he was instantly and strangely interested in the other, who stood with his back toward him. The subtile individuality which occasionally asserts itself in the human back told him that he knew this man, and the consciousness sent an unaccountable thrill through his veins. A moment after, the other of the two walked away and the owner of the expressive back turned to enter the hotel. As Farnham caught sight of his face his first impression was that he had been mistaken; then there arose in his memory, like a flash of light, a vision of the deck of the Servia a year ago and the two consorting men who had so unpleasantly impressed him, and he recoiled as though he had been shot. The full brown beard had disappeared, and a carefully waxed gray mustache and pointed goatee had replaced it; but if Captain Black ever walked upon the earth he stood in the flesh before Farnham at that moment. As this astounding fact divulged itself the man disappeared through the doorway, and Farnham sank breathless into a chair.
The apparition, for it seemed little more to Farnham’s excited fancy, came directly into the smoking-room, glanced casually at him as he sat quaking in his chair, and went out without a sign of recognition. Farnham breathed again. He had grown stouter and wore a beard, and it afforded him unspeakable relief to feel that these changes in his outward man had effectually concealed his identity. He sat still, watching through the open doorway the man who had apparently risen from the sea, and saw him stop for a moment at the office window and then pass through the hall and up the stairs. He was evidently staying at the hotel, and Farnham, presently recovering his composure, sauntered out of the room with as much unconcern as he could assume and inquired of the hall-porter who the gentleman was who had just come in.
“His name is Pelham, sir,” said the man; “Mr. Francis Pelham, I think. He’s not stopped here before, sir.”
“Thank you,” said Farnham. “Be good enough not to mention that I inquired; he might consider it an impertinence;” and impressing this injunction upon the porter by a judicious bestowal of a shilling, he went out and, oblivious of his appointment, hailed a hansom and was driven to Scotland Yard as fast as an indifferent horse could take him.
Lethbridge was absent, but upon Farnham’s assurance that his business was urgent, he was sent for and presently came in, and Farnham was again reassured by finding that even the detective’s keen eye failed to recognize him in his altered personality. A reference to the events of the preceding summer, however, immediately recalled him to Lethbridge’s memory, and he told, as concisely as possible, the extraordinary discovery which he believed he had made. Lethbridge heard him through and then shook his head incredulously. “I’ve come across strange things in my line, Mr. Farnham,” he said, “but this is the toughest yarn I’ve ever heard yet. It can’t be, sir, it can’t be. Darke and I prodded every corner of the ship, and I tell you the man wasn’t there.”
“And I tell you that the man is in London at this moment,” said Farnham, vehemently. “Apply any test that you please, and you’ll find I’m right.”
Lethbridge pondered dubiously for a moment, and then asked Farnham to repeat to him, in their consecutive order, all the details of Captain Black’s disappearance from the steamer. This Farnham did with scrupulous exactness, Lethbridge listening attentively and checking off the narrative from time to time with affirmative nods of his head.
“Now,” said Lethbridge, “go over the business on the landing-stage in the same way, so I may be sure I’ve got the thing straight in my head.”
Farnham complied as before, and was carefully reciting the sequence of events, when he became suddenly aware of a change in the detective’s manner. Lethbridge was leaning forward in his chair in an attitude of the most alert attention, and with a strange gleam in his eyes that betokened extraordinary emotion; and as the story ended, he brought his hand down upon his knee with a resounding slap and exclaimed exultingly, “By George, I have it!”
“Now look here, sir,” he continued, before Farnham could speak; “you can help us if you will. If this is the right man, he is an extraordinary cool hand, and we mustn’t touch him until we are ready for him. That won’t be until day after to-morrow, as I must send a man out of town to bring up another party that we shall need.”
“But suppose—” said Farnham, who would have preferred immediate action; “suppose, meanwhile, our man takes it into his head to leave.”
“Then I’ll stop him at a venture,” said Lethbridge, with a grim smile, “but I don’t want to move a minute too soon if I can help it. Now, I want you to take a table near him in the coffee-room—say to-morrow at breakfast.”
“But I’m not staying there,” objected Farnham.
“Take a room there over-night,” said Lethbridge, promptly, “and give ’em a wrong name.”
“I don’t fancy doing that,” said Farnham, after a moment’s reflection.
“There isn’t a bit of ’arm in it,” said Lethbridge, “and it will help us a lot.”
“And what then?” said Farnham.
“Why, then,” continued Lethbridge, with a reassuring smile, “when you’re ready to go in to breakfast, just step out of the ’otel door for a moment so I can see you, and then leave word if any one asks for you, to have him shown in direct to your table. That’ll give me a chance for complete observation of your party without attracting any attention whatsoever, and without anybody being any the wiser but me. After that you can go off and leave the business in my hands until everything’s ready. I suppose you’d like to see the end of it, sir?” concluded the detective, with a confident interrogation.
“Well—yes; after having gone so far—I would,” said Farnham.
“Very good, sir, I’ll look you up,” said Mr. Lethbridge, cheerfully. “Mind you sit with your back to him.”
Farnham went away with a disquieting sense of having been cleverly impressed into the English detective service; but an irrepressible desire to follow up the unravelling of the mystery that lay before him enabled him to stifle certain stirrings of conscience by the self-assurance that he was merely furthering the ends of justice. He wandered aimlessly about, avoiding the vicinity of the hotel until bedtime, when he sneaked in, carrying a satchel, and with a humiliating consciousness of imposture lying heavily on his mind, and was allotted a gloomy back room at the top of the house. Here he passed a horrible night, largely occupied in running down preposterous criminals of all grades, and awoke with a pardonable feeling of repugnance for his self-invited breakfast company.
Pelham was already seated in the coffee-room when he went down-stairs, and having bespoken the adjoining table, he went to the entrance door of the hotel as agreed and looked up and down the street. Not a sign of Lethbridge could be seen, and Farnham, with a cheering hope that the appointment had miscarried, went in to breakfast and seated himself with his back to his unsuspecting neighbor. He had ordered his customary eggs and bacon and breakfast tea, and was looking through the morning paper, when a dark-complexioned man with a profusion of black hair, and wearing spectacles, was shown in to his table, and, before Farnham could utter a protest, seated himself, and taking from his pocket a bundle of documents, began, “I have looked into the matter of the mining prospectus, and I have all the figures here as you requested.” With this there came a warning pressure of his foot beneath the table, and Farnham knew that Lethbridge sat before him.
Farnham was already sufficiently out of humor to be excessively annoyed by what he considered a useless and ridiculous masquerade, and ate his breakfast in sullen silence, while Lethbridge rattled on with amazing volubility, giving the most astounding statistics about the mining property, and keeping meanwhile a stealthy watch upon the suspected man at the adjoining table, until having presumably familiarized himself to the proper standard, he gathered up his papers and took his departure, to Farnham’s infinite relief. That thoroughly disgusted gentleman dawdled over his breakfast until he heard Pelham leave the room, and seeing him presently pass the coffee-room window, took his own departure, satchel in hand, mentally vowing never to be caught again in a similar mess.
The next morning, just as he had finished breakfasting at his own lodgings, Lethbridge, fresh-faced and fair-haired again, made his appearance in such confident humor that Farnham’s spirits revived somewhat under the buoyancy of the detective’s manner, and he inquired what was the next step to be taken.
“I’m going to bait a hook,” said Lethbridge, with an expression of infinite relish, “and if your man doesn’t rise to it you can call me a Dutchman. It may be a long fish, but if we catch anything it will be as good a day’s work as ever I did in my life.”
The baiting of the hook, which Farnham awaited with considerable curiosity, proved to be a simple matter enough. Lethbridge merely wrote the words “Captain Lansing Black” in a large bold hand on a sheet of note-paper, enclosed it in an envelope addressed “Francis Pelham, Esq.,” and with an air of extreme confidence invited Farnham to accompany him to the hotel and witness the landing of the fish.
They strolled back and forth upon the Piccadilly pavement in a line of observance of the hotel entrance, until Mr. Pelham, gloved and well apparelled, was seen to go out. Then Farnham, acting under Lethbridge’s instructions, walked into the hallway, and explaining that he was awaiting a friend, seated himself at one side of the entrance door and became absorbed in perusal of a morning paper. Presently Lethbridge strolled in and, after a brief interview with the manager in that gentleman’s private office, placed the envelope in Pelham’s letter-box in the hall, and seating himself on the opposite side of the entrance door, became a silent rival of Farnham in the matter of looking up the day’s news. The hall-porter, a pompous fellow with a double chin and wearing a black skull-cap, seated himself in his leather-covered bath-chair, all unconscious of the drama that was developing under his very nose, and dropped off into a nap—and the watch began.
It was a long one, as Lethbridge had surmised, and the hours wore slowly on. Farnham having digested the exhaustive details of events in Her Britannic Majesty’s realm, and the scant references to other portions of the globe peculiar to the British press, was endeavoring to concentrate his attention upon the advertisements and occasionally relapsing into a doze, when Lethbridge coughed, and at the same moment Pelham opened the door and walked into the hall. Farnham, with his heart thumping like a trip-hammer against his ribs, glanced at his companion; but that imperturbable individual was so absorbed in the news that Farnham, for a moment, feared that he had not noticed that their man had arrived. The next instant, however, Lethbridge’s eyes appeared, gleaming like coals of fire over the top of his newspaper, and Farnham, following their gaze, saw that the supreme moment had come. Pelham was at the letter-box.
A lump suddenly rose into Farnham’s throat, and he was conscious that he was trembling violently from head to foot as Pelham took the envelope from the box, glanced carelessly at the address upon it, and then opened it. As his eyes met the name on the enclosed sheet he recoiled, glanced like lightning about the hall, and then, crumpling up paper and envelope, he thrust them into his pocket and was in the street again almost before Farnham could realize what had happened. Lethbridge, alert and as agile as a cat, was after him and at his side before he had taken a dozen steps, and Farnham, looking through the window, saw that there was a brief colloquy, followed by a shrug of Pelham’s shoulders, and then the two men entered a cab and were driven away. “Now for it!” said Farnham to himself, and, calling a cab in his turn, he followed at all speed, in a curious whirl of speculations as to how the matter would end.
He was evidently expected at Scotland Yard, and on giving his name was shown without inquiry into a well-lighted room, where Lethbridge and a military- looking official, who proved to be the inspector, were conversing in a low tone in a corner. Pelham, who had apparently quite recovered his composure, was looking out of the window with his back toward them, standing with his legs well apart, and swinging his walking-stick with an air of supreme unconcern. He glanced indifferently at Farnham as he entered the room, and then, apparently relegating him to the obscurity of the official staff, resumed his former attitude at the window and gazed steadily into the court-yard until the inspector said, “Now then, Mr. Pelham, if you please,” when he turned, showing a face deadly pale, but with features evidently under full command.
“Mr. Pelham,” continued the inspector, with extreme urbanity, “it is probably unnecessary to inform you that we have no power to compel you to give us any information. In fact, it is quite within your discretion to preserve absolute silence if you choose, until you have taken legal counsel. At the same time, as it is quite possible that this is a case of mistaken identity, you can readily avoid further complications, and perhaps your further detention, by answering a few questions.” Here the inspector paused, and Pelham, after a moment’s deliberation, inquired haughtily, “What are the questions?”
“First,” said the inspector, “are you Captain Lansing Black?”
“Captain Black was lost at sea a year ago,” replied Pelham, without manifesting the slightest emotion. “The papers were full of the affair, and you must have known of it through them, if not through the investigations of your own department. The question strikes me as an absurdity.”
“Next,” said the inspector, with unruffled composure, “were you a passenger on the Servia, on her homeward passage in June of last year?”
“I was not,” replied Pelham.
“This gentleman—” said the inspector, quietly, indicating Farnham by a motion of his head—“is prepared to swear that you were.”
Pelham instantly concentrated his gaze upon Farnham, and regarded him intently for a moment with knitted brows, much to that gentleman’s discomposure. The recognition that must have followed this scrutiny was, however, effectually concealed. Beyond a momentary flush upon his face, Pelham evinced no discomfiture whatever, and, turning to the inspector, said, with a contemptuous smile, “Then this gentleman is prepared to swear to a lie,” adding, with a sudden burst of anger, “what rot all this is!”
“Possibly,” replied the inspector, coolly, “but our description of the man we want tallies so closely with your appearance that the mistake is pardonable. Read it, Mr. Lethbridge,” and Lethbridge, taking a folded paper from his pocket, read as follows, Pelham, meanwhile, fixing his eyes upon the ceiling, and resuming his former expression of nonchalance:
“Height, about five feet ten; erect, military carriage, broad shoulders, small hands and feet; brown eyes, stern in expression, regular features, dark complexion; reserved and haughty manner; wore, when last seen, a full brown beard—” here the detective paused.
“That doesn’t help me,” remarked Pelham, with cool effrontery; “a man’s beard may turn gray in a twelvemonth, and shaving is, I believe optional.”
“Go on, Lethbridge,” said the inspector, with his eyes steadily riveted on Pelham’s face; and Lethbridge continued—“Had on his left forearm two crossed arrows in India ink—” when Pelham, removing his gaze from the ceiling, broke in sharply with “What’s that?”
Farnham, who chanced to be watching Lethbridge as he read, saw him exchange a significant glance with the inspector, which for an instant puzzled him; but as he turned his eyes upon Pelham and noticed the expression of his face, the truth burst upon him like a flash. The man had been betrayed into surprise by the mention of this mark in a description of himself.
Pelham instantly saw his mistake, and his features moved convulsively for a moment before he could bring them under control. In the death-like silence that ensued the ticking of the clock was distinctly audible, and it seemed to Farnham’s excited fancy to be solemnly marking off the few minutes that remained before the closing in of the net. Then, with a sang-froid which under the circumstances was amazing, Pelham began to unbutton the sleeve-link on his left wrist. “That is not necessary, Mr. Pelham,” said the inspector, with his deadly gaze still upon the other’s face. “Your word will be sufficient in this case,” with an unpleasant inflection upon the last words which caught Farnham’s alert attention at once. By this time the tension on his nerves had become almost unbearable, and as he moistened his dry lips and clinched his hands, he felt that he was perhaps the most agitated man in the room. Pelham, whose angry flush under the examination had given place to his former deadly pallor, had recovered his nerve and, but for the great beads of sweat upon his forehead, was holding himself well in hand.
The inspector spoke again. “We have one more test to apply, Mr. Pelham,” he said, with an ominous accentuation of the name; and making a sign to Lethbridge, the detective left the room and almost instantly returned, followed by a woman, who stood just within the door gazing at the group with startled eyes. One glance at her showed Farnham a sad, worn face, and a trembling hand shielding the quivering lips, and he recognized the poor creature who stood on the landing-stage a year before, and stayed Leath with her hands against his breast. With this scene thus suddenly recalled to memory, he turned his eyes upon Pelham, who had fixed his gaze with terrible intensity upon the woman’s face, and a strange horror came over him as he saw the semblance of Captain Black apparently fading into a contorted likeness of Leath as if a metempsychosis were unveiling itself before his eyes. The inspector’s voice again broke the silence, addressing the woman. “Mrs. Leath, do you know this man?”
“Stop!” said Pelham, imperiously, before she could reply. “Don’t question her. This lies between ourselves, and you have no concern in it. There is no use in further subterfuge. I shall make proper amends to this injured and deserted woman, and I believe there is no law requiring the detention of a man who has merely absented himself from his home and his wife.”
“None whatever,” replied the inspector, with a grim smile.
“And this gentleman,” continued Pelham, turning with a ghastly smile to Farnham, “will, I hope, pardon the rudeness of a man caught in a hole. The confusion of my face with that of Captain Black was natural enough. We were not altogether unlike, and the lapse of a year might well mislead anyone;” and with this he turned to Mrs. Leath with an assumption of heartiness and held out both his hands. But the woman recoiled with horror in her eyes and with her hands held up to repel him. “God save me!” she cried, tremulously, “it’s like him and it is not. I don’t know him.”
“It’s the beard that confuses you,” said Pelham, anxiously insisting upon his identity. “See, Margaret!” and separating the hair upon his chin, he revealed the hideous scar running downward from the corner of the mouth. “Isn’t that enough?” he added appealingly to Farnham, who could only stare in utter bewilderment at this seemingly incontestable proof; and then realizing that his protestations were being received in ominous silence, he turned to the two officers and cried passionately, “What more, in God’s name, do you want?”
“Well, if it isn’t asking too much,” said the inspector, quite unmoved by this outbreak, “it would be a little more satisfactory to have your wife recognize you.”
“She does recognize me. She must!” exclaimed the suspected man, with desperate eagerness. “We had not met in eighteen years when she saw me land at Liverpool, and I left her there almost without a word. The woman is simply misled by her absurd emotion. Can’t I be allowed even to know who I am?”
“Certainly,” said the inspector, coolly, “but you have been several persons lately. If you are quite sure who you are now, you may expose your left arm. It was Leath who had the mark of the crossed arrows.”
Farnham, glancing at the man who had been so adroitly unmasked, saw him recoil as though he had been stung, and averted his eyes to avoid witnessing the distressing spectacle of collapse which he thought was at hand; but the other, nerving himself for a final defiance, turned his back upon Mrs. Leath with brutal indifference and said, with cool insolence, “I seem to have fallen into your clumsy trap, and,” he added, with a vindictive scowl at Farnham, “I congratulate this gentleman upon his police work as a spy, in running me down. I am Lansing Black. Is there anything more?”
“Yes,” said the imperturbable inspector, “What became of Roger Leath?”
Black glared at him wildly for an instant, and then sank back into a chair and covered his face with his hands, while Mrs. Leath, with a heartrending cry, fell heavily to the floor.
••••••••
The next morning Farnham was nervously pacing the floor of his breakfast-room, suffering from what may be concisely described as a surfeit of detective work, when Lethbridge was shown in; and a glance at that astute gentleman’s face assured him that matters were not altogether as they should be in the affair of Captain Black. “He swears he never touched Leath,” said the detective, “and we haven’t anything to go on but the circumstantial evidence. I hoped he would break down and confess, but he is as hard as a flint.”
“What explanation does he offer?” inquired Farnham. “The business couldn’t possibly look blacker for him as it stands.”
“Well, his story is pretty straight as it goes,” said Lethbridge. “He says his attention was first attracted to Leath by the scar on his chin, having one precisely like it himself. Then he saw there was enough resemblance between them to pass among strangers if he took off his beard. He swears he wrote the note then without any definite plan and put it into his portmanteau simply to have it already there if he had to act without premeditation. Likewise, he says his idea was to buy up Leath to act with him in some way. That may be or it may not. As luck would have it, Leath drank heavily that night, and Black got his keys from him on pretence of going down to get him some cigars or something of that sort; and when at last they went out of the smoking-room, Leath, who was as full as a lord, put on the other man’s ulster by mistake; so you see things seemed to work pretty handsomely for Captain Black. Now he says the end of it was that Leath insisted on sitting upon the rail, and, by George, the first roll the ship took, over he went.”
“I shouldn’t fancy standing trial on such a yarn as that,” said Farnham.
“No more would I,” said Lethbridge, with a fine idiom, “but there it is. When he was locked up in Leath’s room, of course he read over his papers and was prepared to meet his wife, and by the way, sir, it was his dropping of Mrs. Leath as gave me the clue. He took her out to a cab and told her he’d go and look after his luggage, and that was the last she saw of him. Having been on the ship, I was called in to look him up, but he seems to have an extraordinary way of making way with himself, and I couldn’t find a trace of him. Says he boarded an outgoing sailing-ship and went to Copenhagen, which is likely enough. Now,” continued Mr. Lethbridge, who seemed to have conceived a marked admiration for Farnham’s detective abilities, “I’ve another little thing on hand which perhaps you’d like to follow up with me.”
“Thank you,” said Farnham, dryly; “I believe I’ve had enough.”