The Whispering Lane/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
THE FIRST REVELATION
After making the astounding assertion that he had masqueraded as the long-searched-for woman, More glanced delightedly round the circle of startled listeners. To three of these he addressed himself particularly, rubbing his hands with chuckling glee, and jeering contemptuously.
“Aha, Mr. Hustings, you little thought that the bewigged, spectacled, gowned and shawled, old knitter was your father-in-law to be. And you, you meddlesome brat, with all your prying, you failed to learn who your employer truly was. As to you, Inspector, you never expected to find Mrs. Jerr in me. Ha! Ha! Ha!”
Trant looked sorrowfully at the impish creature. “I never expected to find a criminal in my generous friend. And that I should be the one to—to” he stopped short, overcome with honourable emotion.
“Cheer up!” More patted him on the back and spoke kindly, not unmoved by the tribute, “You are only doing your duty, man. And I saw from the moment you entered how unpleasant you found that duty, although you aped the stern official.”
“There is no aping about me,” cried Camp, sharply, coming forward to take the lead, “I sympathise with Inspector Trant, as I gather that he owes you a debt of gratitude. But, as an officer representing Scotland Yard, I warn you, George More, that anything you say now will be used in evidence against you.”
“As if I cared,” retorted the other, disdainfully. “Have no fear, you dressed-in-brief-authority puppet, I am now going to make a clean breast of all my doings. Hitherto I refrained for Rackham’s sake, but as he agrees”
“I do agree,” resolutely declared More’s accomplice without stirring, “what my master and I did was done because no justice could be got from the law of which you are the figure-head. Go on, Mr. More, tell them how we revenged Mr. Roderick.”
“Willingly, Rackham, willingly, now that you consent. Take your seats, gentleman; get out your note-books; open your ears.” More wheeled a chair round so as to face the company squarely, and sat down, markedly insouciant. “Your story, gentleman, is interesting, but you will find mine still more so. As in a serial it is necessary to capture the reader’s attention at the outset, I will follow the example of the cunning author,” he paused, his face grew dark, and, clenching his hands, he added in deep low tones. “My son, Roderick, was—murdered!”
A thrill passed through Dick. “God! Slanton?”
“And that woman, Danby.”
“No!” the young man threw out a horrified hand to reject the imputation. “I can’t believe that. It’s impossible—incredible.”
More drooped his head, sadly, “I have thought so of late. But—Rackham!”
The man stepped forward, followed by the watchful detective. “It’s neither impossible, nor incredible, sir,” he addressed himself to Hustings, heavily emotional. “I was Lieutenant More’s batman. When he was wounded and taken to the base I went with him, being done in with a bullet in the ankle and this,” he touched the disfiguring scar. “Dr. Slanton was in charge of the hospital, and I saw that he admired one of the nurses—Sister Danby, who looked after my master. Later I learned that she loved the lieutenant and had been engaged to marry him. Mr. More broke off the engagement.”
“Alas I did,” sighed the little man, drearily, “to my cost. Had I not done so, my Roderick would have been alive now.”
“I thought that Sister Danby was all right,” continued Rackham, “especially when the lieutenant told me that he loved her and she loved him. He made his will in her favour, and I witnessed it along with Slanton. I thought that my master would die of his wounds, but he picked up when engaged again to Sister Danby, and seemed on a fair way to recovery. Then”—the speaker gulped—“then he—he died.”
“Surely of his wounds,” hinted Trant, softly, with an anxious glance at More, who had used the ominous word—murder.
Rackham’s stern lip curled, “So it was reported, sir—and by Dr. Slanton, who had his own fish to fry. Oh, yes—died of his wounds. I don’t think. After the lieutenant was buried I overheard that blarsted doctor jawing to Sister Danby in a corner of one of them French Caffys. Slanton said as she’d poisoned my master with some stuff soaking the bandages. She said that he’d prepared the bandages although it wasn’t his work. ‘And you know well enough why I did it,’ says he, ‘you know that if those bandages were put on, he’d die. Which was what you wanted, so’s to get the money.’ ‘No,’ says she, flurried-like. ‘Rats,’ says he, ‘we’re both in it, so we better get married and share the quids. If you don’t do what I tell you,’ says he, ‘I’ll’” Rackham stopped short.
“Go on: go on,” ordered Camp, looking up impatiently from his notes, “what else did you overhear?”
“Nothing!” replied the man, bluntly, “a rowdy lot of lads barged into the caffy, and my two beauties bunked. Next day I was reported fit and sent back to the Front. But as sure as God made little apples, sir, Slanton and the woman did my master in, to get the money.”
“But Miss Danby, in your hearing, denied that she knew about the bandages being tampered with,” cried Dick, defending the unfortunate woman.
“And Slanton told Miss Danby in my hearing, sir, that she was jolly well in the know, and deliberately applied the poisoned bandages. For the money.”
“That is just what I doubt,” broke in More, uneasily. “I did think as you did, Rackham, when you told me your story. But since I have learned that Miss Danby looked for me and found my daughter, to offer back the money to us both, I think she must be innocent.”
“I don’t,” growled Rackham, savagely, “and I never shall. She and that devil murdered the lieutenant. To hell with them both.”
“Continue your story,” said Trant, noting down this reply.
“There is little more to tell, sir. After the war I wrote to Mr. More, but, as he was missing, my letter didn’t find him. When he returned to England he got it, and looked me up. Then I told him what I tell you, and we agreed to make Slanton sit up.”
Camp shook his head. “Better have gone to the proper authorities.”
“What good would that have done?” questioned Rackham, derisively. “My young master had been dead and buried for months, so there wasn’t much hope of learning anything by digging him up. And I was only one against two. Slanton and Sister Danby would have denied everything. I’d have been laughed at, coming forward after months and months, with such a steep yarn. No, sir! Mr. More and I took the law into our own hands, and sent Slanton to hell, where I hope he is now. That’s my story, sir,” ended the man, savagely. “Mr. More can carry on,” and he stepped back to his former position, the detective at his elbow.
Dick admired Rackham’s vehement fidelity to his dead master, but thought, as did the rest, that he had carried it to extravagant lengths. “When you were told this wild story,” he asked More, disapprovingly, “why didn’t you seek out Miss Danby and learn if it was true?”
“Because I mistrusted the woman. I always believed that she was an adventuress, wishing to marry Roderick for the sake of his money. For that reason I refused to sanction the earlier engagement. When Rackham told me his story I thought that she had carried out her plan of getting the property by inducing Roderick to make a will in her favour, before murdering him. I am sorry now that I did not question Miss Danby. But what with the loss of my dear son and my dreadful captivity, my heart was hot within me. I had only one idea—Rackham’s idea—to revenge myself on the man and woman who had robbed me of my boy.”
Trant looked pityingly at his friend, recognizing how his enfeebled brain had entertained the idea, until it attained to such monstrous proportions as to swamp his better nature. His paternal love had made him a fanatic. “Explain how you carried out your scheme of revenge.”
“The Whispering Lane,” said More, dully, “that was the beginning.”
“A trick—a trick!” murmured Jimmy, hugging himself, “I knew it was a trick.”
“Yes, boy—a trick, but one which you failed to discover. Rackham and I wished to get Slanton to ourselves in some lonely place, and kill him. The question was how to lure him into such isolation. Some of you,” went on More, looking from one intent face to another, “are doubtless puzzled to know why Rackham disguised himself as Wu Ti.”
Dick nodded. “Yes! And how he managed to act his part so perfectly?”
“Oh that was easy. Rackham is an old soldier and for many years was stationed at Singapore. He acquainted himself thoroughly with Chinese ways and customs; and also contracted their vice of opium smoking. To indulge in this freely and escape detection, he masqueraded as Wu Ti when seeking the opium houses of the Far East. Returning home, he still continued to do this, haunting Wung’s establishment in Whitechapel. Thence he came straight to me one night, to say that he had met Slanton, who was likewise a slave to the drug.”
“And I would have knifed the blighter if Mr. More hadn’t prevented me,” boomed Rackham’s deep voice from the end of the room.
“Naturally I prevented premature revenge,” declared More, sharply, “as I wished to have a hand in punishing a murderer of my dear son. Engaging an inquiry agent I learned all I could about Slanton. That he was a spiritualist—that he visited Miss Danby in her Essex cottage, where she lived with my daughter—how he indulged in coarse pleasures under the rose, and how he was disliked in the Plantagenet Hospital. Spiritualist and opium-smoker—those two scraps of knowledge were sufficient to suggest a scheme. And I wished that scheme to include the punishment of Miss Danby, since the visits of her accomplice to Fryfeld indicated that they were still in league. I would have taken Aileen from the woman’s evil companionship but that I feared to wreck my plans by letting my daughter know that I was alive and in England.”
“You are all wrong about Miss Danby,” insisted Dick, angrily, “she is a good woman and rescued Aileen from a life of poverty.”
“I know that now, but I did not know it at the time I speak of,” rejoined More calmly. “Well, to explain my scheme. It was necessary for me to retire into the country and think out things. I bought this bungalow when Mrs. Brine’s executors advertised it was for sale. Here I learned the sad story of Mrs. Brine: how she had lost her husband, how she was accustomed to wander up and down the lane crying for him. I saw in this an opportunity of luring my enemy into my nets. Slanton was a Spiritualist and would naturally, like all his class, travel far and wide to investigate any phenomenon. I prepared one for him,” More smiled cruelly, and stopped to draw breath.
“But how?” asked Dick, desperately anxious, like the rest of the company for immediate explanations.
“All in good time,” said More, coolly, and continued to tell his story in his own way. “I came down here with Rackham under the name of Chane, and lived in this house for some time. Then I set about the rumour that I had let it to a certain Mrs. Jerr, who had arrived from Hong Kong with her Chinese servant. After wards Mr. Chane and Rackham departed; Mrs. Jerr and Wu Ti arrived.”
“But your disguise—was it necessary?”
“Certainly, if my doings with Slanton were to be hidden from the law. I intended to kill him, as I said, and wished to make things safe for Rackham and myself. It was easy for me to act the part of Charley’s Aunt, as at college I had once taken that very role in an amateur performance. Also, as Mrs. Jerr, I kept myself to myself, always receiving visitors—as I did you, Mr. Hustings—seated in my arm-chair, knitting incessantly.”
“You certainly deceived me,” agreed the young man, wondering, no less at the subtilty of this long-drawn-out scheming, than at the persistence of the steady hatred which had engendered it.
“I deceived everyone, Mr. Hustings. But for yonder unscreened window, through which that brat peeped to catch Rackham undisguised, you would never have discovered what I am now telling you freely.”
“Jimmy’s a clever lad,” said Trant, admiringly.
“Much too clever for me,” retorted the little man dryly. “However, to go on with my story. When I settled myself here as Mrs. Jerr, I then created, and in a very easy way—The Voice.”
“How, how?” asked Dick again, exasperated by this slow unfolding of the mystery.
More’s light eyes twinkled, cunningly. “By wireless!”
“Oh, ah!” everyone drew deep and astonished breaths. In a second the ghostly whispering became commonplace chatter.
“And to think that I never guessed,” lamented Jimmy, vexed with his density.
“Columbus and his egg. Eh?” chuckled More, enjoying the amazement his announcement had caused. “Yes! I brought in science to encompass my revenge. Very easy, gentlemen—very easy. A transmitter in this room, a receiving aerial with a loud speaker, an amplifier, hidden up the hollow trunk of an ancient oak, and there you are.”
“But I searched the oaks,” cried Jimmy, furiously.
“And found nothing—in the day-time. Naturally, since Rackham always removed the instrument from the lane after we had given our performance.”
“So that was why Wu Ti was generally knocking about,” muttered the boy, angrily.
“Rackham, you mean. Why yes.”
“And you nearly caught me several times, you meddlesome little devil,” grumbled the ex-soldier, gruffly. “I’d have twisted your rotten neck if you’d found out what wasn’t meant for you to find.”
“What about the Morse blurring your spirit voice?” inquired Camp, who had been reflecting, “that would have given away the show as a fake.”
“Now you mention it, so it would,” assented the schemer with pretended surprise. “It is no easy matter to exclude induction noises, especially from indoor aerials. But I worked on a sixty metre wave, sacrificing length, to rid myself of blurring. That limitation has not been used—or only rarely used—since it came in handy for short distances in trench-warfare. Amateurs utilize longer wave-lengths, Mr. Camp. Therefore—” here More became aware that he was speaking much too technically for the understanding of his hearer, and checked himself—“but this is all double Dutch to you,” he ended with a sneer. “Let the cobbler stick to his last.”
“Wireless! Damned clever,” murmured Camp, undisturbed, “you spoke?”
“And Rackham. We both knew from the gossip about Mrs. Brine, what were the exact words she cried nightly in the lane.”
“But the tone of her voice?” questioned Dick, doubtfully.
“Oh, I imitated her parrot, who had caught her intonation accurately.”
“Her parrot!” echoed the young man. “Yes! I wrote to Mr. Horace Brine about that parrot, think- it might have flown back here to account for the Voice.”
More shrugged his shoulders. “Much good that would have done. It couldn’t have re-echoed Mrs. Brine’s wailings. But it did pick up other sayings from her which I heard, when seeing Brine about purchasing the bungalow. In that way I caught the tone of the woman’s voice—so did Rackham.”
“I see, you left nothing to chance,” commented Camp, dryly. “Go on please.”
“Well,” drawled More, wearily, “Slanton came to my lure in a few weeks, as I guessed he would sooner or later. Rackham recognized him when he called here after hearing the Voice in the lane. And he recognized Rackham as an habitué of Wung’s house. Mrs. Jerr!”—More tapped his chest, lightly, “entertained this welcome visitor: gave him tea, chatted about Hong Kong, and—smoked a pipe.”
“Of opium?”
“What else? It was necessary to awaken Slanton’s craving, if he was to be drugged. I explained that I had contracted the habit to relieve my rheumatic pains, and usually smoked a pipe before retiring, to ensure a restful night. My guest was wholly unsuspicious, and when Rackham brought in my pipe he begged to join me.”
“But didn’t Slanton regard Rackham as his enemy?” asked Dick, recalling what Jenny had said.
“Of a sort—a despised enemy, having knocked him about a few times when they quarrelled in Wung’s cellar.”
“And I let him,” growled Rackham, sombrely, “the better to trick him into thinking me a fool. And I fooled him proper, by doing some funny business to the pipe I prepared for him, which laid him out proper. He was like a dead man when he got my brand of the black smoke.”
“And then,” asked Trant, anxiously, “when Slanton was insensible?”
“I wanted to knife the blighter and bury his blinking corpse in the garden.”
“A drastic proceeding, which I would not permit,” said More, shuddering. “No, gentlemen. Wicked as the man was; evilly as he had done to me and mine, at the eleventh hour I decided to spare his life. But I was determined that the world should know him as the murderer he was, and”
“You tattooed that name on his forehead?” interrupted Dick, shuddering as the speaker had done, for the whole revelation was ghastly.
“I did not. Rackham was the operator, having learned in Singapore how to tattoo. Cain was scored on Slanton’s forehead plainly for all to see. The Mark of the Beast!” More rose with a fanatical look in his light eyes, and threw up denunciatory hands. “And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him,” he quoted, exultingly, and with fierce approval.
Rackham laughed harshly. “But I was jolly well determined that some one should kill our blarsted Cain,” he grated, “Sister Danby for choice, since she was in the know, and would be glad enough to put a stopper on his tongue.”
More shuddered again, nodding. “It was Rackham’s idea that the villain should be taken to Fryfeld to implicate the woman.”
“You wanted her to kill him?” said Dick, with a look of repugnance.
“I left that to her. If she killed him, well and good—he would be dead and she would be hanged. If she spared him then the whole wicked story would come to light, and both would be punished.”
“Oh, she did him in right enough!” declared Rackham with grim satisfaction, “I made sure she would. And she did; strangled him, as the newspapers said.”
“You were lurking on the farther side of the wall,” suggested Hustings, “Miss Danby told me that she heard your footsteps.”
“She heard footsteps I don’t deny, any more than I deny they were mine. But she didn’t know that. I brought Slanton to Fryfeld in the side-car, chucked him down on the lawn, and then climbed in through the window into the cottage to hide my tattooing tools in the place where I meant them to be found, so that Sister Danby might be tied up.”
“You’re a devil!” said Camp, stirred out of his ordinary official composure. “What had the poor woman done to you?”
“Murdered my master, along with the Slanton blighter,” snapped Rackham, tartly. “Haven’t you heard? D’y want me to pitch the yarn again?”
More signed that he should be silent. “That’s all!” he said, pacing about restlessly, and holding him self in as best he could.
“Not quite!” declared Trant, regretting the necessity of exerting further pressure. “Why did you and this man run away?”
“What else did you expect us to do?” retorted More, whose self-possession was fast yielding to uncontrollable passion. “Hustings visited me and from what he said, I saw that the Law was gathering up the threads to weave a net, in which we might be enmeshed. It was necessary for our safety to relegate Mrs. Jerr and Wu Ti to obscurity. Rackham cast off his disguise”
“And took it with him,” suggested Jimmy, meaningly.
“Clever boy: so he did. But it was in European kit that he drove the machine, knowing that the sight of a Chinaman doing so would lead to awkward questions being asked. I went as Mrs. Jerr and finally left that lady”
“In the little wood where I found her clothes,” finished Jimmy, nodding.
More nodded also, and savagely. “You have been my evil genius. But for you, all this would never have come to light. Not that I mind the revelation. I want all the world to know how a father has avenged his beloved son.”
“You sent Rackham to London, after Mr. Hustings and your daughter discovered your identity,” remarked Camp, ignoring the burst of passion.
“I thought it best that he should be out of the way,” said More, irritably, and striving desperately to control his feelings, “but I never thought that he would be such a fool as to go to Wung’s house in his Wu Ti dress.”
“I thought it was safe, master,” Rackham glared at Jimmy, “if only that little devil hadn’t put the cops on the trail”
“Jimmy had nothing to do with that,” interrupted Dick, sharply, “it was Jenny Walton who told me that Wu Ti was a customer of Wung’s.”
“Then I’m glad she’s gone west.”
“Not yet,” declared the Inspector, “dying slowly, but still alive.”
Camp rose putting away his notes. “Well, that’s that. I think we have enough evidence to settle this business. My prisoner”—he laid his hand on Rackham—“is here. Yours, Inspector,”—he nodded towards More.
Trant went through the ceremony of arrest as best he could. “I won’t put the handcuffs on,” he mumbled, shamed by the memory of past favours.
More laughed shrilly. “Lord, man, why make a song about it. I am not ashamed of what I have done; neither is Rackham.”
“You can stake your life on that,” blurted out the ex-soldier, stubbornly.
“I rejoice! rejoice! rejoice!” More’s voice leaped an octave as he let loose the full flood of his long-suppressed passion. “I am the Lord, who set the Mark of the Beast upon the forehead of him who adored the Beast. Call him no more Slanton, but Cain! Cain! Cain! the accursed one who slew his brother.”
“My friend. Steady on!” Trant grasped the poor soul’s arm soothingly.
More shook him off and went on shouting loudly. “Behold the Lord, the Lord, who doeth justice, when the hands of men wax feeble and the hearts of the wicked are hardened to wickedness. The worshipper of the Beast is slain, is slain, is slain. Yea. Yea, and in his high place. Sealed to the Beast, he hath gone to the Beast. Down, down, fathoms down to the eternal burning!” and the crazed creature flung himself wildly about the room, crying and gesticulating.
“Off his rocker!” commented Rackham with grim satisfaction, “not for the first time either. No prison for the master, I guess. He’s past punishment.”
“Any motor-car hereabouts?” Trant asked Jimmy, hurriedly.
“The Squire! I’ll get his!” and the boy fled away with the speed of a wing-heeled Mercury.
“Selah! Selah! Let none give voice, when the Lord thundereth!” raved on the insane man. “Bring up the chariot, that He who reigneth may ride in triumph through the hosts of the Philistines. Anathema Maranatha! Anathema Maranatha! The Lord cometh to take vengeance. I am the Son, who bringeth the sword to smite and slay and spare not. The Son who—who,”—his voice faltered, broke; something snapped in his brain, and he sagged to the floor, muttering and plucking at his face. “The son—my son—Oh, Roderick! Roderick! Would I had died for thee, my son!” and the frenzy ended in a burst of human tears. The tender father, the brilliant scientist, the cruel plotter was now a mere wreck of what had once been a man.
“Thank God!” breathed Rackham, reverently, “he has escaped you devils.”
“You haven’t!” Camp assured him tapping his shoulder. “I’ll lay there’s nothing dotty about you.”
“Who said there was? What about it?”
“This! You’re the man we want—the man who climbed that wall to complete your damnable work by strangling Slanton.”
Rackham looked at the officer long and hard. “Prove it,” he said briefly, and shut his grim mouth, firmly.