The Marathon Mystery/Part 4/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
A Study In Probabilities
FOR a moment I thought that Godfrey was joking. How could that tangle of haphazard clippings tell any story? And if they did, how could it be connected with the one which we were trying to decipher? Then, at a second glance, I saw how in deadly earnest he was. There could be no doubting it; he had read into them some meaning which I had failed utterly to see.
I sat down in my chair again, my nerves a-quiver; at last, we were on the verge of success. “Well, let’s hear it,” I said.
“I intend that you shall—wait till I get them arranged. I’ll build up the story as I go along, and I want you to ask any questions or point out any defects that occur to you. Of course, it will be only a study in probabilities; but between us, I think we can get it pretty straight.”
He got up from the desk with the clippings in a neat little pile, and sat down in the chair facing mine. He took a meditative puff or two before he began.
“We’ll have to start with a few general observations,” he said, at last. “It’s evident that Thompson wouldn’t have carried these clippings around with him for so long unless they in some way concerned him. It’s evident that Miss Croydon would never have dared to take them unless she was pretty certain that they somehow vitally concerned her. It’s evident that Tremaine wouldn’t have taken so much trouble to look for them unless he was mighty anxious to find them. We arrive, then, at our first conclusion, namely, that these clippings necessarily shed some light upon the tragedy recently enacted in this room, and upon the connection of these people with each other.”
“Yes,” I agreed; “unless all these people were mistaken in their estimate of the value of the clippings.”
“That, of course, is possible; but I don’t think it probable. At any rate, let us disregard that suggestion for the moment, and proceed along the other line. What light is it possible for these clippings to shed on the murder of Thompson? Obviously, it must be only by explaining motives. The majority of them seem to be concerned with the adventures of a Frenchman, who goes under various names, but who, I am sure, is one and the same person. He must, then, be either Tremaine or Thompson. But Thompson was evidently not a Frenchman, and Tremaine pretty evidently is, though his contact with the world has served to rub away a good many of the marks. I think we’re pretty safe, therefore, in assuming that the Frenchman of these clippings is Tremaine. As we go on, I believe we’ll find some internal evidence confirming this. You agree with me thus far?”
“Perfectly,” I said, “admitting your first premise that these clippings are really concerned with the case.”
“That, too, I believe, we’ll soon be able to prove by internal evidence. Of course, if they haven’t any connection with it, they’ll soon lead us into chaos. But there’s another thing; we mustn’t expect too much from them. We mustn’t expect a story complete in all its parts—it’s bound to be fragmentary. The wonder is that Thompson succeeded in keeping this many links in the chain. Maybe in his more prosperous days he had a mania for clippings. At best, we mustn’t be disappointed if there are long gaps in the story.”
“Yes,” I agreed again; “that’s evident enough.”
“Very well; we’ll begin with the clippings, then, substituting Tremaine’s name for the one used. The first clipping is merely a marriage notice, announcing that on the 23d of August, 1883, Tremaine married one Thérèse Bertigny, at Dieppe. Let me see; Tremaine was then probably about twenty years of age. No doubt he was born at Dieppe, so that the name given here, Victor Charente, is his real one. You’ll notice that he’s retained his first name-which is a bit of corroborative evidence.”
“Or a mere coincidence,” I supplemented.
“I’ll wire our correspondent at Dieppe to look up this Charente—perhaps he can get a photograph. That would settle the question.”
I nodded. Yes, that would settle it, for Tremaine at forty was probably not greatly different from Tremaine at twenty.
“The second clipping,” proceeded Godfrey, “shows us that our hero soon wandered from the straight and narrow path, and gives us, too, a little light upon his personal history. In the spring following his marriage—April 16, 1884, to be exact—while assistant manager of the ship supplies house of Briquet Frères, he absconds with sixty thousand francs. It is discovered that he kept a mistress at Rouen. He is believed to have gone to America—to have been smuggled out of the harbour by a friendly American captain. Surely, it is not impossible,” he added, “that this friendly American captain was Thompson.”
“Very few things are impossible,” I commented; I began to be impatient with Godfrey. He was permitting his prejudice against Tremaine to warp his judgment.
“Well, we’ll keep that for a hypothesis, anyhow,” and he turned to the third clipping. “This,” he continued, “shows us that he indeed came to America. It is dated July 23, 1885, and states that a young Frenchman and a tramp skipper named Johnson—ah, you see?”
I did, indeed, see—here was the first appearance of Tremaine’s zombi—of his familiar devil. I looked at Godfrey with the liveliest admiration. This constructive reasoning was something which I, certainly, was quite incapable of.
“So that J on Thompson’s arm was the initial of his real name,” observed Godfrey. “I thought it was—it had been there a long time, and an effort had been made to erase it. After a man has started on the crooked path, he doesn’t want any tattoo marks on him—they make identification too easy. For Johnson, then, we’ll hereafter read Thompson.”
I nodded; I was beginning to be convinced.
“Well,” continued Godfrey, “Tremaine and Thompson, then, were arrested in New York, July 23, 1885, at a low resort where they were having a carouse. They had beaten and robbed another sailor. It seems that nothing was left of the sixty thousand francs, and naturally Tremaine found it difficult to go honestly to work again. The fourth clipping, undated, but probably some months later, shows that Tremaine and Thompson were sentenced to three years each in Sing Sing. But they didn’t stay there so long,” he added, turning to the next clipping, “at least Tremaine didn’t. On the night of January 2, 1886, in the midst of a tremendous snowstorm, they managed to hide themselves in one of the workshops, and afterwards to scale the outer wall. In the morning Thompson was found at the foot of the wall with his head cut open and nearly frozen. Tremaine got clear away. Thompson was brought around with the greatest difficulty, and would say nothing except to indulge in terrible imprecations against his companion. You see,” concluded Godfrey, looking up, “we begin to get at the motive.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “it’s very plain, now you’ve started on the right track. It’s a good deal like Columbus’s egg.”
Godfrey smiled and turned to the sixth clipping, the longest of them all.
“It’s that way with most mysteries,” he said, “and here’s the internal evidence that all this theorising is pretty straight. It’s the clew, too, which we’ve been seeking so long.”
“It explains Miss Croydon’s presence here?” I asked, intensely interested and deeply stirred.
“Just that!” he said, and shot me a triumphant glance. “Let us see if you can catch it. The clipping is in French, and though my French isn’t of the highest order, I can get the sense of it pretty well. It is dated Suresnes, and is evidently a letter from a provincial correspondent to a Paris newspaper, who like most other provincial correspondents, is delightfully vague. However, I gather from it that on the night of September 16, 1891, a beautiful young English girl—name not given—ran away from the convent school of the Sacred Heart at Suresnes and that the next morning she was safely married to a ‘gallant Frenchman’—Tremaine, of course—by the curé of the little village of Petits Colombes. The marriage was quite regular—though no doubt the curé’s fee was larger than usual—for the banns had been published as required. ‘Thus,’ concludes the eloquent correspondent, ‘does the grand passion once more prevail over the hypocrisies of the cloister.’ Evidently the correspondent is a rabid anti-clerical.”
“But still,” I objected, “I don’t see that that explains anything.”
“Let me help you. It was this clipping I happened to look at first the night we found the body. I read two or three lines aloud, then Simmonds put it back in the pocket. It must have been those few lines which told Miss Croydon the nature of the clippings and their importance to her. The date line would have been enough to do that. Besides, if she’d already known of them, she’d have taken them before we got here.”
“You mean Miss Croydon is the girl who ran away with Tremaine? But then, she couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve years old in 1891.”
“Eleven,” corrected Godfrey, and I was struck by the radiant expression of his face as he took a yellow paper from his pocket. “Let me read you two sentences from this old report concerning the Croydon family—you ought to have recalled them, my dear Lester.”
“Go ahead,” I said helplessly.
“‘Eldest daughter, Edith, born in France, August 26, 1874. Educated at school there, but broke down from overstudy and returned to Beckenham. Religion, Catholic.’ Now,” he demanded, “do you understand who it was married Tremaine at Petits Colombes in 1891?”
At last I saw it, and I could only sit and stare at him, marvelling at my own stupidity. This was the key—the key to the whole enigma. Miss Croydon had taken her sister’s place, had tried to buy him off, to get him out of her sister’s way. It was Tremaine who had opened the door—it was Tremaine whom she had come to the Marathon to meet. But—and I started upright—since they were Catholics, only his death could release Mrs. Delroy! Perhaps it was Thompson, after all, and his death had released her! But no; and in an instant the whole terrible position of the elder woman burst upon me. She was not Delroy’s wife, she was…
“So,” I said hoarsely, “Tremaine is then the true husband of Mrs. Delroy!”
“Let us finish the story of the clippings before going into that,” suggested Godfrey. “I confess, I don’t quite see the bearing of this next one. It’s a New York dispatch, perhaps to a London paper, under date of February 18, 1892, and chronicles the loss of the bark Centaur, with all on board, off the coast of Martinique. The Centaur was bound from Marseilles to Fort-de-France with a cargo of wines and muslins. Let us leave it, for a moment, and pass on to the next one, which is the last.
“This is dated Sydney, Australia, October 23, 1896, and relates how a daring scheme to rob the Bank of New South Wales was frustrated by a sailor who had been a member of the gang, but who got frightened and informed the police. The ringleader, a Frenchman, was captured and would receive a term of years in prison. There are four copies of this clipping, which no doubt means that it is the one which Thompson was sometimes in the habit of sending to Tremaine, to remind him of that Australian experience.
“Now, don’t you see, we reconstruct the whole story. Tremaine, starting out as a defaulter and robber, escapes from prison, leaving his partner in the lurch, treacherously, no doubt, since it awakened his violent anger—there isn’t any hatred more vindictive than that of one criminal toward another who has betrayed him. Tremaine finally goes back to France and succeeds in entangling Edith Croydon, then only about sixteen, in a marriage. We know how fascinating he is, and it’s not wonderful that he should be able to mislead an inexperienced girl. Of course what he wants is money, and so she writes to her father. He comes for her and takes her home—no doubt paying Tremaine a handsome sum to take himself off—in fact, mortgaging his home to do it.
“Miss Croydon gradually recovers; but she is Tremaine’s wife. Yet in 1900 she marries Delroy. She must, therefore, have had good reason to believe Tremaine dead.”
“Don’t you see?” I cried. “That’s the meaning of that item about the foundering of the Centaur, with all on board. Tremaine was a passenger and she knew it.”
“Good!” nodded Godfrey. “That’s undoubtedly it. Let me see,” and he turned back to the clipping; “that was in 1892. His name, perhaps, appeared among the missing; she waited eight years, and at last, believing his death established beyond a doubt, married again.
“Now let us see what Tremaine was doing. In 1896 he was in Australia, planning a bank robbery. He meets Thompson, descended from his estate of captain to that of common sailor. Tremaine takes Thompson in on the plan; and Thompson, to get even for that treachery at Sing Sing, gives him away. Tremaine, no doubt, got a penitentiary sentence. He probably broke jail again, for in 1899 he appears at Martinique, supposedly from South America. He has considerable money, which he no doubt stole somewhere, and perhaps he chose St. Pierre as a safe place to stay in hiding until the hue and cry after him was over. He would have some acquaintance with the island, if he landed there from the wreck.
“Thompson learns where he is—perhaps even sees him at St Pierre—and puts a bouquet to his revenge by driving him into fits of rage by reminding him of that Australian treachery. But at last he sends him a message, which brings him to New York.”
“Yes,” I said, “and I have cudgelled my brain in vain trying to imagine what that message could have been.”
“Well,” remarked Godfrey, “while we can’t, of course, give its actual text, I don’t think it very difficult to guess its general tenor. We know what Tremaine came here to do—he came to blackmail Mrs. Delroy. It’s pretty safe, then, to suppose that the message told him that she was blackmailable—in other words, that she had married a rich man. No doubt, Tremaine’s money was running low, and he jumped at this chance of replenishing his purse. Thompson was working his way toward St. Pierre to join him, and actually reached there on the Parima just as Tremaine was leaving. Perhaps Tremaine had tried to play Thompson false a second time.
“Now,” he continued, “let us see how nearly we can reconstruct the scene which occurred in this room. Tremaine supplies Thompson on the voyage up with whiskey, and agrees to keep him supplied, believing that he may be useful—not daring, at any rate, to make an open enemy of him, lest he spoil his game here—Thompson had only to speak a word to the police to put Tremaine back in Sing Sing to serve out his unexpired term. Arrived at New York, he establishes himself in the suite across the hall, and spends a week or two in looking over the ground, ostensibly boosting his railroad scheme. Thompson, who has been in jail, joins him and takes these rooms.
“At last Tremaine is ready—or perhaps his lack of money forces him to act. He writes a note to Mrs. Delroy, telling her that he’s alive and wishes to share in her prosperity. He demands that she meet him in these rooms, asking for Thompson—that leaves him free from suspicion should she show the note to her husband and should he attempt to have the writer arrested for blackmail. But she isn’t so sensible. Perhaps she disregards his first note; perhaps she’s unable to decide what to do. She has, of course, been thrown into a panic. He writes again; in despair, she seeks the advice of her sister, and Miss Croydon, who is by far the stronger of the two, offers to come here herself, see the man, and find out what he proposes to do.
“Tremaine has secured Thompson’s key, given him some money, and sent him out to get drunk. But for Jimmy the Dude, he would have stayed away—probably in the lock-up—but Jimmy brings him home. Tremaine has to make the best of it, since there isn’t time to get Thompson out of the way again. Anyway, he’s so dead-drunk, that Tremaine anticipates no interference from him. He shuts him in the bedroom, and sits down to wait for Miss Croydon.
“She arrives promptly, despite the rain, and we can imagine that the dialogue which followed was not of a milk-and-water kind—both of them are full of fire, and they made the sparks fly.
“Thompson is aroused by the voices, or perhaps wakes naturally—comes into the outer room and interferes. He is still half-drunk; perhaps he threatens Tremaine. At any rate, Tremaine picks up the iron pipe and knocks him down; then, in a sudden black frenzy of anger, remembering Australia, seeing how Thompson will always stand in his way, he draws his revolver and shoots him through the heart. That done, he walks out, closes the door, goes to his room, and, at a favourable moment, leaves the building.”
He leaned back in his chair and applied a fresh match to his cigar.
“That,” he concluded, “is my idea of the story. There’s one person who can fill in the details. I’m going to apply to her as soon as I get back from Boston.”
“You mean Miss Croydon?”
“Yes,” he nodded, “and I think Tremaine is pretty near the end of his adventurous career.”
“There’s one thing,” I remarked, after a moment, “that diamond I found on the floor here didn’t come from Tremaine’s pin. I tried it last night and it didn’t fit.”
Godfrey smiled as he placed the clippings carefully in his pocket-book.
“I know it,” he said; “I meant to tell you. It came from a ring belonging to Jimmy the Dude. I saw him tonight across the street—Simmonds had him in for another sweating—Simmonds isn’t quite convinced yet that Jimmy’s innocent—and I noticed a ring on his finger containing a cluster of little diamonds. One of them was gone, and when I questioned him, he said he’d lost it somewhere the night Thompson was killed. He probably dropped it here as he was helping Thompson to bed.”
“That’s it, no doubt,” I agreed; “but it breaks one thread of evidence.”
“We don’t need it!” declared Godfrey confidently, as he arose to go.
“We’ve got a chain about Tremaine, Lester, that he can’t break-and we’ll compel Miss Croydon to forge the last rivet.”
But in my dreams that night, I saw him breaking the chains, trampling upon them, hurling them from him. I tried to hold them fast with all my puny strength, for I fancied that, once free, he would sweep over the earth like a pestilence. Then, suddenly, it was not Tremaine but Cecily I was holding; she turned to look at me with a countenance so terrible that it palsied me; her eyes scorched me with a white heat, burnt me through and through. Then she raised her hand and struck me a heavy blow upon the head—again-again—till, blindly, in agony, I loosed my hold of her and fell, fell…