The Story Behind the Verdict/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
THE INQUEST ON ARMAND LE MESURIER
After Keightley Wilbur had made that vow neither to publish nor produce until he had discovered the murderer of Harry Maingaye, he wanted to hear all Roger Macphail could tell him about Inez de Brissac. That Inez de Brissac held the clue to the mystery Keightley had no doubt. And Roger was ready enough to talk.
"I have painted her twice. The first time was at Porto Fino, twelve or fourteen years ago; I painted their son also. It was the year before the divorce suit, but Inez B. Mott, of Chicago, was already showing through the skin of Madame la Comtesse de Brissac, and there were frequent ructions."
"You've met her since—here in London?"
"Oh, yes: London and elsewhere. The last time was at Beaulieu."
"Have I seen the portraits?"
"Count Louis lent both his to the New Gallery four or five years ago, and is sending them again, at my request, to the International next year. The other is now at the Goupil."
"To whom does that belong?"
"Lord Herodsfoot."
"There was something in that story then?"
"It is possible: anything is possible with Inez. She is a man-eater."
"She shall eat no more," Keightley said confidently. "She has me to reckon with now."
But the reckoning was apparently not yet. In the hubbub following the inquest on Harry Maingaye the Comtesse left England—or at least she left the fine flat she had occupied in Ashley Gardens, and even her publishers expressed themselves in ignorance of her whereabouts. She was supposed to have gone to Nairobi, then to Australia. But Keightley could ascertain nothing positive, and many months were wasted in inquiries.
Remarkably enough, she was not the only witness in the Maingaye case to disappear in the same way. Alleging the death of his friend as an excuse, and that the associations made the theatre unbearable to him, Stanley Dacre had thrown up his part in According to Cocker and vanished from the metropolis. His name was not to be found in any of the theatrical papers; he was neither seeking an engagement nor acting in the provinces. No one knew what had become of him.
Nine months elapsed out of the twelve that had been allotted to Keightley Wilbur in which to find the man who shot Harry Maingaye before anything occurred to help him. He had kept his vow neither to publish nor produce: but he was straining at the leash, feeling the restriction, counting the weeks. He had written a complete history of woman, under the title, "Comparative Feminology," and a stirring ballad in the style of "How we Brought the Good News from Ghent," detailing how a soap boiler bought a baronetcy and informed his family.
Then, before the chain broke, a bone was flung him. It came in the form of a letter from Mr. William Kirsch, the publisher, whom the Starting Gate had alluded to as "not adamant to female graces":
"Dear Wilbur,—I hear you are inquiring as to the whereabouts of the Comtesse de Brissac. She has just written to us about a book from No. 10 Warriner Gardens, Battersea. I can take you to call upon her if you like. Let me know.—Yours,
"Willie Kirsch."
There was a ribald postscript that need not be printed. Keightley answered it and the note appropriately; and named four-thirty on an early day. When the day came, Willie Kirsch put the appointment off by telephone. "My dear fellow, I'm up to my neck in work. I don't know which way to turn. But if you'd care for a letter of introduction" And more ribaldry followed. Willie Kirsch was notorious for breaking appointments; any chorus girl could lure him from the most serious of these. Keightley accepted the offer of a letter of introduction, and gave the assurance that his morality was not in jeopardy.
Keightley sent the letter on by hand, and called that very afternoon at Warriner Gardens. He was surprised to find how poorly the lady he sought was lodged. No. 10 was one of a block of flats, obviously converted from what had been small houses. There were apparently only three flats in each block. In the narrow hall of the one to which Keightley had been directed a board announced that the first floor was occupied by Mrs. Carrington Mott; the ground floor had either an anonymous or no tenant. A Mr. and Mrs. Mead were on top. There was no hall-porter or lift; it was not that kind of flat.
Keightley mounted the stairs, and knocked at the first door he came to. The Messalina, Lais, or Catherine of Russia he had seen in the coroner's court in sables and pearls, whom he had pictured in palaces and marble halls, herself opened the door to him. Her red hair was bound round her head in plaits, her cheeks were rouged, and her lips painted; she had grown stout and looked some years older than when, nine months ago, she had appeared in the witness-box at the inquest on Harry Maingaye. She was obviously startled and surprised at seeing a stranger, and said quickly:
"I expected Mr. Kirsch."
Keightley took no chance of not being received. His foot was already inside when he answered:
"Oh, yes. I am his representative."
"Come in." She accepted without question the fact that he was a delegate from the firm, and led the way to a drawing-room, furnished in black and gold, with an overmantel and tapestry curtains, indistinctive. It was obvious a visitor had been expected; books were lying about, and a pile of MS. was on the table, also whisky and soda, and a box of cigarettes.
"I thought Mr. Kirsch would have come himself. Are you authorised to deal for him?"
"I don't think there will be any difficulty."
"I must have a large advance. I shouldn't have written to Mr. Kirsch if I had not been in need of money."
"We have been too long without a book from you," Keightley said pleasantly. He had forgotten she wrote, or what she wrote, but fell into his part quite easily. Inez at first thought he was a young partner or myrmidon of the firm. But Keightley's personality soon asserted itself, and she offered him refreshment, ceased lamenting the absence of Mr. Kirsch, and began to expatiate upon what she called her "plot."
"I think the book is bound to make a great sensation. There is a scene …"
But what our amateur detective had come to hear was not the plot of the Comtesse de Brissac's new book. He said he was quite sure that Messrs. Kirsch would be delighted with such an original idea, and asked if she had a synopsis. He said again what a pity it was that she had been so long silent.
"Well, you see, after poor Harry's death" she began hesitatingly. And then paused, not being sure how much her visitor knew about her.
"Oh, yes; I remember now. You and Harry Maingaye were great friends. His death must have been a terrible shock for you, a great loss," Keightley said feelingly. "Not but what you must have many other friends, a woman of your extraordinary attractions."
He was a little uncertain of his ground, but was soon reassured. Her quick, coquettish exclamation: "Why! you don't say you find me attractive?" gave him the keynote, and he proved his Latin blood by the delicacy of his compliments, and the way, whilst admitting her charm, he led her to observe his own. They progressed far even that first afternoon.
Inez B. Mott, for it appeared she had dropped her title for the moment, had arrived at the age when the younger the man the more desirable seemed his attentions. Before Keightley left her he had been invited to come again, and had received a certain measure of her confidence. He brought the conversation back to the popular actor, for instance, and said carelessly, as if he had half forgotten the circumstance:
"They never found out who killed him, did they?"
It was then he heard that, after the inquest on Harry Maingaye, Inez B. had found herself the object of threats and anonymous letters, her contributions to various papers had been returned, and she was made to feel there was a prejudice or cabal against her.
"I had been too candid, that was the fact. I ought to have denied everything; said I scarcely knew him."
"Perhaps that would have been better," he answered sympathetically.
"But it is my nature to be frank. Now, say, Mr. Wilbur, what sort of woman appeals most to you? The woman, like me, who, if she cares for a man cannot conceal her feelings, or those shy, furtive ones who play underground?"
Keightley, of course, said the women he liked best were those of her own candid and sanguine temperament. Whatever the one before him had been twenty years ago, when Comte Louis de Brissac had given her his title, her mode of life had coarsened her, and a practised man of the world like Keightley Wilbur soon saw that subtlety and delicacy were no longer necessary in dealing with her.
She told him, not perhaps this afternoon, but without any great delay, of the alteration in her circumstances since Harry Maingaye's death. He heard of straitened means, of jewellery that had been pledged or parted with; he was urged to use his influence with Messrs. Kirsch to get an advance of at least five hundred pounds on the novel. She knew by now that he was not one of the firm, but thought he might be the capitalist behind it. Women of her type always find it easy to believe what they wish. And her belief was, in a measure, justified. For Keightley rang up Willie Kirsch and desired that he should negotiate for the book.
"Never mind whether you publish it or not. That's a matter for yourselves. You can always make an excuse. But she is short of money, and I want you to send her something on account. Send her a hundred or two. I'll give you my cheque. Not regular business? Who said it was? But to oblige me" Keightley Wilbur was accustomed to being obliged. He had always a quid pro quo to offer.
"My dear fellow!" Willie Kirsch called everyone "My dear fellow." And he raised every possible difficulty, yielding in the end, however, but not without a warning, in his characteristic note of loose raillery, against the perils of knight-errantry.
"You must be a little careful. You know she is a very dangerous woman. I don't want to tell you my own experience with her, one must not kiss and tell, but" And he would have told, notwithstanding that one must not, only Keightley rang him off after he had secured his promise. The paunchy little publisher was not a favourite with him.
He took the news himself to Inez. She was to have a hundred pounds on the delivery of the MS., the rest on publication.
"Will a hundred see you through?" he asked.
"It is only that I want to get away from here."
And then she told him that she was nervous and uneasy in this remote part of the world.
"I have an idea that I am being watched all the time, that I don't go out or come in without someone knowing it."
Keightley questioned her closely. What made her think she was being watched? Who did she think was watching her—why?
She did not know, she could not say; she cried a little hysterically and said she was sure she had never done anyone any harm. He was unable to get any more from her at the moment. She showed a tendency to continue her weeping on his shoulder, and, as he was not prepared to go as far as that, he left. But came back the next day, and the next, on one excuse or another, bent on his detective work.
He had been visiting her in this way for the better part of a week when he became aware that, whether she was watched or not, he certainly was: a door creaked, there were footsteps on the stairs: once he caught a glimpse of a stealthy figure behind the closed blind of the ground-floor window. There was no doubt that when he came in and when he went out of No. 10 Warriner Gardens there was someone extraordinarily interested in his movements. Quite a curious feeling came over Keightley Wilbur when he had convinced himself of this, the hunter had become the hunted. He was exhilarated, confirmed in his purpose, all his curiosity aching.
"Has anyone the right to question your conduct, or check your visitors," he asked Inez. She said "No" with such vehemence that he suspected the answer should have been "Yes."
"Who has the ground-floor flat?" was his next question.
"It isn't occupied."
"Sure?"
"A Mr. Stanley did occupy it, but he has left." She was so obviously unwilling to tell him more that he insisted.
"Was he a friend of yours?"
"Never you mind what he was. He is nothing to me now."
"What about that frankness"
"I don't want you to think badly of me."
"How could I?"
This was the opening for an interlude of coquetry in which Keightley found it difficult to play his part. Either his coolness or her own emotions presently brought about an hysterical burst of confidence.
"He said I had had another man in the flat," she broke out suddenly, her handkerchief to her eyes. "Not a soul can come near me without his making scenes. I've been driven from pillar to post, he has made my life a perfect hell upon earth. I'm sick to death of dodging about and hiding. I have told him over and over again I am not going to stand it any longer. I am not ashamed of anything I have done; if he is—well, that is his affair."
"What did he say when you told him that?" Now Keightley was keenly interested.
"He said: 'Then it is all over between us.' He caught hold of my arm like a mad creature."
She pulled up her sleeve to show a large discoloured bruise.
"You have not seen him since?"
"He has never been near me, nor written."
But try all he might he could not get from her the name of the man who had treated her so unconscionably, who had occupied the ground-floor flat and then left it, the man with whom she admitted she had been on such friendly terms. He could neither hear his name nor how long she had known him, whether it was before or after Harry Maingaye's death.
"You think he has set a watch upon you?"
The baffling and unexpected answer was that before they quarrelled both of them had been conscious of espionage.
"I do believe he was always fearful of being shot at, like poor Harry."
"You are quite certain he is not still in the downstair rooms?"
"They are empty: even the furniture has been taken away." She began to cry again.
Keightley asked if it were possible to get access to the rooms, and heard that the landlord would gladly let him have the keys. Mr. and Mrs. Mead used to have them and show the flat, but Mr. and Mrs. Mead were away.
"You are alone in the house, then?" he asked.
"Nearly always."
He smiled, and she did not resent it.
"So!"
"One can't be alone day and night," she said sullenly, but half-apologetically. Presently she suggested he should come oftener. To which he replied evasively.
Keightley Wilbur was extremely puzzled at the way in which the situation had developed. He satisfied himself of the truth of what Inez had told him by sending a man to see over the ground-floor flat. It was unoccupied and unfurnished. A little further professional assistance confirmed him also in his belief that Inez was visited by someone besides himself. He wanted to know who it was, but more urgently who was the man with whom she had been practically in hiding since Harry Maingaye was shot. Was it the assassin? He felt that he was on the threshold of discovery, as he knew he would be, once he had got in touch with Inez de Brissac. Nevertheless, the darkness before him was impenetrable, and although he was on the threshold the door was not open before him.
Now the fascination of the pursuit fastened upon him; he forgot his bet, his cherished work, everything. He could not keep away from Warriner Gardens, although he no longer paid visits to the Comtesse de Brissac. In the dusk of the winter evenings he made himself acquainted with all the approaches, the exits and entrances to what he instinctively felt would be the scene of a drama. He walked up and down Prince of Wales Terrace, and in and out the miserable pretence of a public garden. He got to know that part of Battersea by heart, the Suspension bridge and Albert and Battersea bridges, the park and adjacent river, the whole dreary surroundings.
Such patience and industry could not but be rewarded. One evening he became conscious of a fellow prowler, one, not like himself, bent on exploring the neighbourhood, for at the moment he had convinced himself that was his own objective, but intent on staring at the windows or watching the door of No. 10. When Keightley Wilbur had convinced himself of this, he went softly and stealthily out of the gardens, and then, whistling and quickly as if it were a mere thoroughfare, he traversed the pavement: so quickly, indeed, that the other watcher had no time to get out of the way. Keightley brushed against him, almost rudely, but recollected his good manners in time, and stopped to apologise. Then he had a shock, a quick shock of surprised recognition.
"Good heavens! Dacre!"
The recognition was mutual. Stanley Dacre's first impulse was to deny his identity, to pull his hat over his eyes, to turn sullenly away. But Keightley was too friendly and quick for him.
"Who would have expected to see you here? We were all wondering what had become of you. It's good to see you again."
"I've only just come back," Dacre mumbled or stammered. It was obvious he had not wished to be recognised, but Keightley ignored that.
"Sorry I nearly knocked you down. The fact is, I'm in a devil of a hurry. I didn't hurt you, did I?"
It was no part of Keightley's hastily conceived plan to make Stanley Dacre suspicious of his own presence here. He wanted time to collect his thoughts, and of course one is not a playwright or a poet without the story-telling faculty. He went on:
"I've been at the Chelsea Hospital, getting notes from one of the old soldiers. Another 'Waterloo.' By the way, there is a part in it would suit you. You're not doing anything just now, are you? You might give me your address. You're not staying about here by any chance?"
"Here! Oh, no!" And he gave an address in Maida Vale.
"So long, then. I'll see you again."
He went off, leaving Stanley Dacre without an idea the encounter had been anything but an accident, leaving him to continue his self-imposed task.
"Stanley Dacre!"
Keightley's breath had been taken away for the moment. He had stumbled over the threshold now. There was no darkness, but the light was blinding, disconcerting, amazing.
"Stanley Dacre!" He said it to himself over and over again as he got farther from Warriner Gardens. Why had he not thought of him before? The last man to see Harry Maingaye alive! Dacre's words in the witness box came back: 'I would have given twenty lives to save his.' He had protested too much. Keightley did not think so then, but he did now. He did not allow any of the difficulties and discrepancies of the case to interfere. He rushed at his conclusion without dwelling upon detail. He thought he saw it all. The men had been friends. The woman had come between them. And ever since Harry Maingaye had been murdered, Dacre and the woman he had loved, or who had loved him, had been skulking about together, afraid to be seen or recognised, afraid lest they should be suspected, afraid of themselves, each other, everything.
"Not that they would have been: not that anybody but I would have penetrated the situation. And now I suppose she has another lover. …"
Keightley's self-satisfaction inflated and floated him. He was so buoyant that he walked all the way home, thinking of how he would triumph over David Devenish, win his bet, spread himself over that column and leader. In justice to him, however, it must be admitted that he never thought of what his discovery might be going to mean to poor Stanley Dacre, or what would be the upshot.
Keightley had to talk, every man had a weakness, and that was admittedly his. Because David must not know until the last minute, and he could not talk to his mother of Inez B. Mott, Roger Macphail seemed marked out for his confidant. But he was unable to find Roger that evening, and was compelled to keep his discovery to himself. The next day, however, was the private view of the International Exhibition in Grafton Street, and he already had an appointment to meet Roger there. Roger was on the committee of the society and Keightley found him in the hall, surrounded by people. But Keightley never thought that anyone's work or play was as important as his own.
"I say, Macphail: I must speak to you. I've got the most extraordinary thing to tell you. Get rid of all these people."
Roger moved back a step with him.
"I can't: not at the moment. We are being 'opened' at twelve by the Duke of Connaught; there are no end of things to arrange. We've only just heard. But don't go away: go inside, there is plenty to interest you. I'll come to you the first moment I am free. I suppose you've found the man with the light eyes, the man who shot Harry Maingaye?" Then someone came up, and in another moment Roger was again submerged.
But his words lingered. Keightley had for the moment completely forgotten all about the young man who had met him in the passage of the Fin de Siècle Theatre, and stammered that they were calling out "Murder." A horrid doubt came over him, black dark went that dazzling threshold again, and for the moment he wished he had never looked at crime except in the columns of the papers, that if he wanted subjects for his stories, plays, or poems he had been satisfied to invent them.
"Curse it, I haven't got to the bottom of it yet."
Now the difficulties and discrepancies that had not occurred to him before buzzed obtrusively about him. Keightley believed in his instinct, and his instinct had told him unerringly that the young fellow with the light terrified eyes and the stammering tongue, the breathlessness of terror, had fired the shot
And when he came as far as this—when he came as far as to admit that, although he had met Stanley Dacre staring at the windows of Inez's flat, it was not sufficient proof that he had murdered Harry Maingaye in order to enjoy her company, he found himself quite suddenly, and without any preparation at all, gazing again into those very eyes with which he had told the court at the coroner's inquest he was familiar—those strange light eyes.
"My God!" He brushed his hand over his own and looked again. There was no doubt, no doubt at all. From the wall, from their gilded frame, they gazed into his, and he stared back. The painting was a little thin and flat, but obviously by the hand of a master; it was a child's face, pale and fair, a full-length figure holding itself upright, eyes of the palest blue. Keightley, after he had stared his fill, referred to the catalogue. But he knew, he knew already.
"Roger Macphail.
No. 7.—The Young Count."
The painting was in the artist's earlier manner; a little dry perhaps, but the pose superbly caught, the Goya-like perception of character compensating for anything the portrait lacked in richness of colour or voluptuousness of decoration. It was the materialisation of high lineage and young pride. "The Young Count" stood, erect and lonely, facing destiny.
"You know who it is?" Roger Macphail was beside him again, and speaking. "Not so bad, I think. Come and see his mother; she is on the other wall. I wish I could have got Herodsfoot to lend us his copy; in a way it is better, more devilry in it. But I think you'll like the brocaded dress What's the mattter?"
"Macphail!" Keightley Wilbur was pale, and Roger wondered at his emotion. "About that picture?"
"I painted it at Porto Fino. I thought I told you before. It is the son of Louis de Brissac, and Inez B. Mott."
"It is the portrait of the young man I met in the passage the night Harry Maingaye was murdered," Keightley said palely.
"What passage?"
"You haven't forgotten?"
"You don't mean My God!"
"I couldn't make a mistake."
"Her son!"
They gazed at each other like two who saw ghosts. "You—you are quite sure? Her son!" he repeated.
"He would be eighteen or nineteen now."
"Was he in England at the time? I never heard that he was in England. Wilbur, don't say or think it—it's—it's impossible! Don't look like that: everyone will be staring at us. Pull yourself together. This is not what you came here to tell me. What did you come to tell me?"
Keightley answered dully, "I came to tell you Stanley Dacre shot Harry Maingaye, that he was intriguing with Inez at the time. But it isn't true: of course it isn't true."
The magnetism of the picture drew him. He looked again into the light, visionary eyes of a boy of high lineage, holding himself proudly, the son of Inez B. Mott.
"Stanley Dacre!" repeated Roger in a bewildered manner.
"I was right about having seen him before, about the face being familiar to me."
"You saw it in the New Gallery four or five years ago." And then Roger Macphail added, for he too had imagination and saw to what the recognition was leading, "I wish to God I had never painted the damned thing."
They moved away from the picture. The time of the reception was growing near and the rooms were filling. Roger Macphail was in request, and acquaintances began to greet Keightley. It was impossible for the two men to speak privately together. But they pledged each other to secrecy without words. Now Keightley felt as David Devenish said he should, like a spy in a friendly country. The boy was a young gentleman or nobleman, with the pride of caste; Keightley understood and sympathised with him. But he had no time to think. Social duties claimed him. His mother was there with some folk from the country who wanted to be near the platform, to hear the Duke speak. Keightley found them chairs. Then he had to defend the French Impressionists, and afterwards to attack them, maintaining his pose.
"Is anything the matter with you?" his mother asked, as Roger had done.
He answered "Nothing!" and "Why?" but afterwards admitted to a headache, and said he thought he should go home. He wanted to be by himself, to think the thing out.
All that afternoon Keightley Wilbur sat in his study, trying to piece the puzzle, to find what place Stanley Dacre had in it, to decide what he must do. He knew now that when Inez had told him she was watched she had probably been speaking the truth. She said Stanley, too, went in fear of his life. And now he, Keightley, thought that fear also might have a sound foundation.
When he got as far as that in his survey of the situation it was already dusk. Every evening at dusk for the last few days he had gone to Warriner Gardens, watched the watcher! Then his curiosity drew him, or, as Devenish would have said, his vanity. He wanted to prove his cleverness by discovering the mystery that had evaded the police, the mystery of the death of Harry Maingaye. But this afternoon, now, it was no longer curiosity nor vanity. It was conscience—an impelling sense of duty. All at once it became clear to him that neither Inez de Brissac nor Stanley Dacre knew who had killed Harry Maingaye, that each of them perhaps suspected the other, that only he, Keightley Wilbur, knew.
But what he would do with the knowledge he did not know. For that denied and hidden heart of his was ablaze with sympathy for and comprehension of the boy who had Inez B. Mott for mother. That very day he had sat through luncheon with his own; she had entertained guests at the Ritz—distinguished guests, but herself the most distinguished amongst them. Her talk came back to him—brilliant, vivid, gracious; a mother of whom to be proud. This afternoon she had been in to see him twice: understood he was worried, but had not vexed him' with questions: brought him his tea because she knew she was quieter than any butler, for he had often told her so, and disturbed him less: dropped a kiss on his hair as she went out. He was her whole heart, the pivot of her life. And he knew it, appreciated what such love and care meant in a man's life, for all he talked so lightly.
But if, instead of such a mother, he had woke one day in early manhood to the knowledge that he was the son of one who was loose and almost public, flaunting her looseness in salacious novels, admitting to lovers …? Keightley Wilbur projected his own into the mind of the boy whom he had pledged himself to hound down.
To hound down, or to save from another crime? He hardly knew which alternative drove him back that evening to Warriner Gardens; he was never sure. Nor why he took the motor, except perhaps because it was standing before the door and Kito was on the box. His mother came out of the drawing-room when she heard his study door open.
"Will you be home to dinner?" she asked.
"I don't know. Don't go out."
He felt it was possible he might want someone to whom to talk. He hardly knew what spirit moved him.
"Of course not." She was uneasy, troubled about him; he knew that when he drove off, and thought again about mothers and sons, and how fortunate he was in his own.
Kito was told to go to Chelsea. But in a very few minutes Keightley whistled through the tube and changed the direction to Battersea Park.
"Battersea Park!" The Japanese valet may have thought it a strange drive at this time of night. When he got on the bridge he looked about for a petticoat. But no one was in sight who by any possible association of ideas could be thought to have an assignation with his strange English master.
When he got to Battersea Bridge Keightley got out.
"I may be an hour, or more, or less. Wait for me.
Almost before the echo of the words had died away in the deserted street and Kito had realised his instructions, Keightley was in Prince of Wales Terrace, and in sight of Warriner Gardens. And there, running at top speed, as if for his life, he caught sight of someone getting over the garden wall. Instinctively he gave chase. The man, or boy, dropped from the wall. Keightley vaulted over it lightly, and was upon him before he had recovered himself. Now they both began to run again, madly. Keightley was handicapped by his overcoat, but he soon saw that he was gaining. The boy who was running saw it too, and on Albert Bridge, midway, he stopped short. The lamplight flared into his face; his eyes were little less horror-stricken now than on the night Harry Maingaye was murdered. They were the same eyes, and it was the same hoarse voice:
"Why are you following me?"
"Why are you running away?"
The boy—he was little more, not really a man grown—pale and defiant, answered quickly:
"By what right do you question me?"
"No right at all." They stared at each other, two surprised and panting figures in the evening gloom.
"I have done nothing to you."
"Have you done anything to anybody? Am I too late?" Keightley hardly knew what he was saying. For he feared that he was indeed too late. "You arc Louis de Brissac."
Before the words were out of his mouth, before he had time to realise his folly, the boy, whose white face had gone grey, whipped out a revolver. Keightley made a rush to close with him; he was no coward, as has been said.
"Not for you—for me." A shot rang out. Keightley found himself holding a limp figure in his arms, heard a cough and a bubble of choking breath. There was not a soul in sight, not a sound save the reverberation of that shot ringing in his ears. The revolver dropped from a powerless hand. Still holding the slight figure in his arms the amateur detective stood for a moment irresolute, then with his foot slid it to the bridge's edge, and over. He did not hear it reach the river, and there was no sound as it sank. The boy was growing heavier in his arms. Keightley, although not tall, was strong, and now braced his muscles, calling upon his brain too, which responded like a trained soldier.
"Grit your teeth and help me all you can. I'm going to carry you into safety. If we don't meet anybody there's a chance. For the name's sake make an effort. I'm your friend, not your accuser. Now!"
He hoped the words got through, but knew less well what to say than what to do. Chance helped them, or the murk of the winter evening. The feet dragged, the arms were supine, but by some miracle of speed or circumstance when he came in sight of the waiting motor at the corner of Battersea Bridge Road Keightley knew it was life and not death he held in his arms.
"Drive as quickly as you can," he said to Kito. "You can risk a fine." And then he added, more for his own satisfaction than Kito's: "My friend is worse than I thought."
The speed limit was exceeded, the empty grey roads unrolling before them, but luckily they were not stopped. All the way from Battersea Bridge to Belgravia, and until they came to Carlton House Terrace, Keightley supported that inert body, listened to the cough and choking breath, felt now and again upon his hands the warm splatter of mucilaginous blood.
Kito climbed down from his box.
"Get the front door open, then come and help me to carry him in," Keightley said hurriedly.
It was near the dining hour, and no one was in the hall; a nervous housemaid fled before them when they got to the second floor. There was always a spare room ready, for Keightley often brought a friend home late at night. Kito and he laid the inert figure on the bed.
"Get his things off. Do what you can for him." In less time than seemed possible, Keightley, at the telephone beside the bed in his own room, was ringing up Dr. Ince.
"Come round at once, will you? A friend of mine has had an accident. What sort of accident? Oh! monkeying with a gun, shot himself. Don't say a word to anybody. I'll be on the lookout for you."
Later on, but not much later, Keightley Wilbur, in evening dress, was being served with soup in the panelled dining-room, and explaining to his mother that he might have to leave the table before the end of dinner because he had brought a pal home with him who had met with an accident, and Ince was coming round to see him. Whatever surprise she may have felt she did not show, only persuaded him to take champagne, hoped the accident had not been a serious one, and offered her services.
"Kito is looking after him. I shall hear what Ince says; we may have to get in nurses."
Keightley had no idea what he was going to do, what was going to happen, why he had acted as he had. He forgot to wonder about Warriner Gardens, or what had taken place there. His brilliant and irregular mind, never like other people's, was now entirely occupied with the boy upstairs who had shot himself the moment he knew that he was recognised.
All that night Keightley Wilbur sat up in the spare room. Bob Ince with him, and the Japanese manservant came in and out. Ince made a very careful examination when he came in after dinner, but before he was through with it Keightley knew what he was going to be told. Death's seal, gradually, unmistakably, became stamped upon the boy's face. Towards dawn he seemed to rouse himself from stupor and endeavour to speak. Ince gave him a cordial. Keightley came to the side of the bed, and it was towards Keightley the dying eyes turned.
"Am I dying?"
It was Ince who answered:
"Is there anything you want to tell us?" Dr. Ince had had a hurried and disingenuous explanation from Keightley, and had not questioned it.
"Have I time?"
"Drink this—that's better! You can go on."
Dr. Ince found no sense in what he heard; it seemed like delirium, or the meaningless mutter of a dying man. But to Keightley it was all clear, cruelly clear.
"Everybody knew … she wrote it in a book. I heard it only last year, my first year as a cadet. 'And now she is living with an actor!' My own friend told me, François told me. I said, 'If it is true I will kill him—kill them both. But I could not kill my mother …’" He lay still, his breathing loud and difficult.
"I could not kill my mother," came through again, more hoarsely.
Keightley, who talked in paradox and lived by epigram, felt a choke in his throat. Then the boy's eyes opened, and he went on again, through his difficult breath.
"She loved me when I was little, kissed me once when I lay in my cot. I could not kill her. But all our name was stained. Here I live under a different name, and watch and watch, not knowing what to do … there were always men. But this one, this—he struck her, bruised her arm. I could not let him do that. Mother, don't you remember that night when you kissed me in my cot?"
His mind was wandering; he was only semi-conscious, drifting out. Dr. Ince held him up, supported him in his arms; the death pangs were on him, and his breathing could be heard in the next room. The last time he opened his filmed and dying eyes they were fixed upon Keightley. They were dying eyes, and because of the agony of pleading in them they were awful to see.
"You called me by name. My poor, proud father!—he knows not what I do: he has other sons, they will, perhaps, be glad if I come back no more. So I die here. No one knows my name—no one but you. You will not tell?" His eyes pleaded, implored, and they were dying eyes. "Keep my secret!"
"Before God I will!" said Keightley Wilbur, and a minute later dropped on his knees beside the bed.
Ince laid his burden down gently.
"It is nearly over," he said. And all of them were silent until the boy's spirit passed—the young, bruised spirit, and the confused and wounded mind.
"It is all over," Ince said. He had looked upon death so often that for him it had lost its terror. But Keightley remained upon his knees.
"I'll look in the morning," the doctor said to Kito. "You had better get your master to bed now. This has been a trying scene for him."
But for himself he wanted the rest of the night for sleep. The morning would be time enough for writing a certificate, going through the crude formalities of concrete action. He had not heard how the accident had occurred, but he would hear in the morning.
Keightley got up from his knees presently.
"Shall I straighten him out, sir?" asked the servant.
Keightley felt cold, his teeth chattered, and he answered unsteadily:
"Do whatever is necessary."
He turned to go into his own room, but could not face the solitude. He found himself instead in his mother's room, talking incoherently. He had startled her out of her sleep, and at first she lay dazed and without initiative. Then all at once he flung himself on the bed beside her. Keightley so rarely cried, even when he was quite a small boy. Now she saw his shoulders heave, and put her arms about him, soothing him, trying to comfort him dumbly, not questioning him at all.
His breakdown only lasted a few minutes. Then Keightley got off the bed, and, with his back to her, mumbled that he had a confounded headache. She pretended to believe him, got up and put on her dressing-gown, fetched him an aspirin cachet, which he took with a whisky and soda that she brought at the same time.
"I haven't been able to sleep."
He was still in evening clothes, which made her aware of the possibility that he had not tried very hard.
"May I smoke in here? I believe a cigarette would do me all the good in the world."
"I'll have one with you."
Then he walked about the room, and found fault with her Japanese prints and the colour of the dressing-gown that hung at the foot of the bed.
"All the nice women I know wear pink and blue. This passionate purple I suppose you call it passionate purple?"
"Violet."
"Is neither one thing nor another. Why don't you get a proper kimono? I know where there is one—yellow. The real thing: suit you down to the ground. I say, it's nearly five o'clock." He pulled aside the blind. "Foggy, too! Shall I ring and get your fire lit? You don't want to go to sleep again, do you?"
"But you? If you have not been to bed"
"Oh, curse sleep! I say, mater"
Then he stopped short. He knew he would have to tell her, he didn't exactly know what, but, anyway that a boy lay dead in the spare room, and that, whatever crime or crimes he had committed, he had been so greatly sinned against that his memory was not to suffer from them.
He got out an inchoate explanation presently. All she realised at first was that death had been a visitor in the house during the night; even now was cold above her head, in the grey and pink of the luxurious spare room. Afterwards she waked slowly and confused to the story he was trying to tell her, but more quickly to his need of help. Motherwise, her spirit leaped to his, understood.
"I've got to hide it, keep his secret. I promised him—I swore it. Mater, nobody must ever know who he is."
"No, no. I see."
"I promised it to him."
"His identity"
"Must be lost." Keightley spoke feverishly.
"You will go to bed now."
"I can't—I can't rest, nor think."
"Trust me. You are not fit to think: you must let me think for you. Is that all? That his identity must be lost, that no one must ever know who it is lies dead upstairs? Very well. I have already an idea. It will all be quite easy. Keightley, I have never failed you, not in all your little school-boy troubles, and others. I shan't now. No one shall ever know. Don't look like that—so troubled and unhappy."
"He shot himself … through me."
"Take a hot bath. I'll bring you in some coffee presently. Empty your mind; look upon me as taking your place; leave everything in my hands. Don't fret. I understand; I quite understand. Nobody shall ever know. …"
She went to him after he had had his bath, persuaded him to bed. Perhaps the aspirin helped. Before she went to her own room he was asleep.
It was nine o'clock when he woke. For the moment he had forgotten his trouble. But this happy oblivion was not for long. With the breakfast tray came the morning papers. He did not know why his hand shook as he opened them. Premonition may have come to him. There, on the middle page of the Grail, in large letters, he saw, with sudden sickness and conviction:
"Actor Shot in Warriner Gardens.
"Crime in a Battersea Flat.
"Mr. Stanley Dacre, the actor, aged fifty, was found shot last night at a fiat in Warriner Gardens, Battersea"
When he had read as far as that Keightley put the paper down. His throat was dry and the coffee tasteless. He had blundered into a quagmire, and the mud of it choked him. He left his breakfast, got out of bed and put on a dressing-gown. He walked aimlessly about the room, then to the window. The portent of the day was dull, and his mind refused to act. Upstairs in the spare room lay the dead boy whose secret he had promised to guard. But he had not known all the secret that it was. He lit a cigarette, but soon threw it away.
"Can I come in?" Mrs. Wilbur was more considerate to her son than he to her. "I thought you might be asleep," she said.
"Asleep! I'm not likely to sleep." He spoke irritably, but pulled a chair forward for her. Then he saw she was dressed in black, and commented upon it. "It doesn't add to a fellow's cheerfulness," he said. She looked him in the face, and answered, smiling a little, rather a wan humour at its best:
"I could not avoid going into mourning for my young cousin, could I?"
"Your young—cousin!"
"I have just been speaking to Dr. Ince. You will explain to him exactly how the accident occurred."
"Accident!" he repeated stupidly. But that was the last moment of his stupidity.
"I told him how you met Armand at the station, and brought him here; that he was showing you his revolver, boylike, when it went off"
"It went off!"
"Dr. Ince fears there will have to be an inquest. I am sending a note round to Humphrey Marden, asking him to represent the family. Armand's grandfather, being such an old man, will hardly be able to come over. …"
"Armand!"
"Annand le Mesurier, the young cousin I was expecting."
"By gad! mater. How wonderful you are!"
"I have asked Humphrey Marden to advise me. He and Dr. Ince will meet here presently."
"But Ince?"
"Dr. Ince will do what he can. I have explained … something. And he sends you a message. ‘The jury will want to see the revolver.’"
"The revolver! But"
"There must be no buts."
Hesitatingly he said, "I have a pair."
"One has been discharged."
"One has been discharged., I'll see to it. Tell me more about this young cousin."
"Le Mesurier? He is the son of François le Mesurier, my mother's cousin: came over on a three months' visit prior to serving his time in the army."
"You have seen him?"
"Not until this morning. But, of course, I was expecting him. Kito tells me none of the clothes he has on are marked. I understand his luggage has not yet come. Is there anything more about him that you wish to tell me? Have I not carried out your wishes?"
Keightley was impressed by what was being suggested to him: the ingenuousness of it, and simplicity. He had often suspected his mother of ability, but never had it so clearly been brought home to him. He knew that Humphrey Marden was an old and tried friend of his mother's. If a young relative of hers had met with an accident in her house, he would see that she suffered the least possible inconvenience. Dr. Ince would only have to tell the truth; say that the wound was self-inflicted. Kito was absolutely reliable.
Keightley kissed his mother before she went out of the room, although he was not often so demonstrative.
"I'll have a hat-band put on and get some ties."
"The revolver!"
"Oh! I'll do my part. You'll have the blinds pulled down."
"Send a paragraph round to the papers. I have already telegraphed to Brussels."
"To Brussels?" He came back into the room.
"I told Humphrey I would telegraph at once, and see if anyone wished to come over. But his grandfather is old, and there is no one else."
"I'm beginning to believe it is true."
"I said you were going out, and would take the telegram yourself."
Keightley went upstairs presently. The faithful Kito was still in charge; the room had been tidied, a sheet covered what was on the bed. Keightley had to do his part, and that curious, erratic mind of his found pleasure in setting the scene for the inquest, in making the story that was to be told complete in every part. Kito had to be coached, a certain amount of hand luggage improvised, and amongst it the case of revolvers with one cartridge discharged. Sometimes it seemed he was acting a play; at others compounding a felony. There was a sense of unreality over everything. At times during that long day and the next it seemed as if the farce could never be played out. At others as if it were all true, that the boy had come to visit them and shot himself accidentally within an hour of entering their house.
The only thing Keightley could not do in these two twilight days was to read the papers. It was bad enough when he went out, for he could not avoid the posters:
"Battersea Flat Crime.
"Murder in a Flat."
How could there be anything in common between a sordid crime in a sordid flat in Battersea and the young boy who now lay in the coffin upon the trestles in the spare bedroom at Carlton House Terrace, his hands folded and his brow clear, flowers about him?
Because there was nothing in common between them, and because, under whatever Government or conditions we live, the law takes cognisance of consequence and believes in the words of the wealthy and well represented, twelve good men and true, within forty-eight hours of his death, found Armand le Mesurier, second cousin of Mrs. Fecamp le Mesurier Wilbur, of Carlton House Terrace, had accidentally shot himself. There had been no delay in summoning assistance: there was no suspicion of suicide. He was at the commencement of a greatly looked forward to holiday. The whole proceedings took less than an hour, and "Death by Misadventure" was the unanimous verdict.
David Devenish, who met Keightley the same day, said a sympathetic word, and Keightley answered:
"It has upset my mother very much."
"I am sorry."
"And by the way, Devenish, that bet of ours is off. I'm going to take her south. I hate doing anything like what would be supposed to be my duty, but she isn't at all well, and roughing it at the Paris and Monte Carlo is a sacrifice I am prepared to make for her."
"Then you've given up the idea of finding out who murdered Harry Maingaye, of meeting the assassin whose eyes were familiar? By the way, I suppose you've heard about the Battersea Flat murder? Do you know the same woman has appeared upon the scene? The woman poor Dacre was visiting when he was shot was Inez de Brissac! You ought not to give the thing up until after the inquest: there might easily be some fresh evidence. Dacre was Maingaye's friend. It looks fishy on the face of it."
Roger joined them, and David said to him:
"Wilbur says the bet is off: he admits to being unable to find the man with the extraordinary, familiar eyes who shot Harry Maingaye."
Roger Macphail's and Keightley's eyes met.
"I always thought he was making a mistake," Roger said coolly, as he took his seat "He dreamed of that man in the passage: 'there was no sich pusson,' it was just a Mrs. Harris. Have you fellows ordered lunch?"
The conspiracy of silence was complete.