Читать книгу: «Mrs. Vanderstein's jewels», страница 18

“It was not many minutes after I had taken this decision that my companion paused in his rapid walk; and after looking about him doubtfully seemed to recognise some landmark in the darkness, and came to a sudden halt. ‘Can you get over these railings?’ he said. We had been following the line of an iron fence that bordered the path, and I could feel rather than see that it reached above the height of my waist and was ornamented with spikes. ‘I think it is hardly possible,’ I replied; ‘but why should I get over?’ He did not answer, but seemed to consider. ‘I think I can lift you over,’ he said at length, and before I could object he had his arms around me, and with a tremendous effort swung me up in the air and across the railings. ‘Now you must help me,’ he said, holding tightly to my arm as I landed safely on the other side. And partly by my help, partly by holding on to a tree that leant up against the fence near by, he managed to scramble over.

“Now, by the roughness of the ground under my feet, I knew we were on the grass, even before a flash of lightning showed me that we had wandered away from the fence and were standing on the top of an embankment, at the bottom of which I caught sight of a high wooden paling. With instinctive reluctance, I hung back as my companion began to descend the bank, tugging me in his wake. At the bottom of the hill we came to the high wall, which we followed for a little way, and presently stopped before an opening through which I saw the gleam of water. ‘We must get through here,’ said the man. ‘There’s plenty of room where these two boards have been torn off.’ There was, as he said, a gap where some planks were missing and only the cross pieces of wood remained. ‘Why should we go this way?’ I asked again, full of misgivings. ‘Where are you taking me?’ ‘Where you will be safe,’ said he. ‘Come on,’ and stepping before me through the gap he dragged me roughly after him.

“Then, for the first time, he suddenly removed the hand that all this while had clutched me by the arm; and as I stood there, bewildered, not knowing what to do with my freedom, the scene was lighted up by a tremendous flash, brighter than any that had gone before, and I saw that he was fumbling with a cord that was attached to the handle of the spade he carried. His arms were stretched towards me, and before the light had faded from the sky I realised that he was trying to throw the end of the rope round my neck, passing it from one hand to the other as he did so.

“Perhaps I leapt too suddenly to a conclusion, or perhaps – as I think more likely – my understanding was quickened by fear, but in that instant I became as certain of his intention as though he had explained it to me in every detail. He was going to drown me in the canal, first tying the heavy spade to me to make sure that I should sink, never to rise again. I screamed aloud and pushed him away with all my strength. On that steeply sloping bank he was at a disadvantage, the rain had made it slippery, and for a minute I frustrated his purpose. Then came another flash, and by it the man seemed to catch sight of something behind me, which at the same time horrified and infuriated him, for I saw his expression change, and with a snarl of frightened rage he lifted up the spade and hit at me with it. Somehow I managed to jump aside, but I saw him raise it for another blow, and after that – after that – I can remember no more.”

Barbara’s story was finished. It had been told slowly, and at intervals the girl lay back with closed eyes, too weak to continue. But on any proposal to defer her account to another day she had roused herself, and proceeded with it resolutely till she came to the end.

The shadows had time to grow long during the telling of it, so that when at length, after they had finally taken leave of the invalid and issued forth once more from the doors of the hospital, the two men found themselves again in the open air it was already dinnertime.

“Come back with me, Jennins, and have something to eat,” said Gimblet, as they walked away. “There is sure to be food of sorts ready for me at the flat.”

But Jennins was bound elsewhere.

“I’m going to have a try at hunting out that horse,” he said. “Miss Turner thinks she’d know it again and, as she says, the number of dun coloured beasts with a decided dish and a peculiar crooked blaze of white over the nose and one eye must be more or less limited. Then, you remember, she thinks the driver was no other than our friend West, and if, after he had set the ladies down in Scholefield Avenue, he was less than half an hour in making his reappearance, one may argue that the stables were not half a mile away from No. 13. Don’t you think I am right?”

“I think your reasoning is perfectly sound,” said Gimblet. “You ought to be able to find out something about the horse without much trouble; and incidentally, I hope, about the driver. Let me know as soon as you have news. For my part I will try and see if I can’t get some information about him also. In the meantime, I’ve eaten nothing since breakfast, and exhausted nature calls. I’m off to get some dinner.”

“I suppose,” Jennins called after him, “from what you said to me this afternoon, that you have ascertained that this Madame Querterot is beyond our reach for the moment?”

“Yes,” said Gimblet.

“And do you think the girl, her daughter, has any idea as to the woman’s whereabouts?”

“No,” said Gimblet gently, “I am sure she has not.”

In the flat Gimblet found a telegram awaiting him. It was from Boulogne, and ran as follows:

“Murdered woman not my aunt Mrs. Vanderstein or anyone known to me there is no clue to her identity.

“Sidney.”

Gimblet crumpled it up and flung it into a waste-paper basket.

“A pity to squander five shillings,” he murmured, “in telling me what I already knew.”

Then he hastened hungrily to the dining-room.

After a hearty meal he felt considerably better, and when he presently pushed back his chair and strolled over to the open window he was ready and eager for more work. His mind, which had been busy during the meal with attempts to devise a plan that should bring him to closer quarters with the person he most desired to meet, that should cause the phantom figure of Mr. West of the black beard to materialise and become a solid form discernible to the naked eye and capable of wearing handcuffs, had not yet furnished him with a method by which this desirable object might be attained.

“Surely,” he said to himself, “I must be able to trace Madame Querterot’s meetings with this man. It is impossible that she can have been on such terms of intimacy with him without some one knowing it.”

He looked at his watch, helped himself to a sweet from a box which stood on the shelf, and decided to go down to Pimlico and see if he could not find out something more from Julie. It was half-past nine, but she was not likely to have gone to bed yet, and he wanted a specimen of her mother’s handwriting.

He went out and took a taxi to Warwick Square, where he dismissed it, and pursued his way on foot.

It was quite dark by now, with the soft blue darkness of summer, for the weather had turned warm again and the sun had gone down in a clear sky. There were plenty of people about, as it was Saturday night; many a small coin was being carried snug in its earner’s pocket that would no longer be lying there in a couple of hours’ time, and the tills of the publicans were already flooded with the rise of the weekly tide.

As he drew near the little shop in the gloomy, sordid little street, the door of it opened suddenly and a man came out and walked rapidly away. After a few steps he paused; and, turning, gazed for a moment longingly back at the window – from which a pale light shone forth, so that the pavement beneath it was bathed in a gentle radiance – before he swung round once more and made off up the street. It happened that, as he stood for that instant, hesitating perhaps whether or no to return and make a final appeal to the girl he worshipped, the light of the street lamp fell full upon his white, haggard face; and Gimblet, with a start, experienced the surprise of his life, as he realised that he and Bert had met before.

Everything was clear to him now, and, with a sigh of something between relief and regret, he abandoned his proposed visit to Julie and went about the ordering of more important business.

…

An hour later, Albert Tremmels, clerk to Messrs. Ennidge and Pring, house agents, was arrested in his lodgings for the murders of Mrs. Vanderstein and Madame Querterot, and for the attempted murder of Miss Turner.

CHAPTER XXIV

Bert offered no resistance to the officers of the law. Indeed, after the first moment, he showed a kind of relief at his arrest, and went with his captors almost gladly.

“I knew you’d get me sooner or later,” he said, although warned that his words would be used against him, “and it’s best to get it over. Julie won’t ever forgive me, let alone have anything to do with me, so what have I got to live for? I can’t go on like this; no one could. Still, mind you, I’m not so much to blame as you think, and it’s my belief any one of you chaps would have done the same as I did, in my place.”

Bert had always been ready to justify himself.

He was willing enough to confess, to the police, to the prison chaplain, to anyone. He showed, indeed, considerable satisfaction, not to say pride, in the interest his story excited, and was not a little annoyed with Gimblet when he found there was practically nothing he could tell the detective of which he was not already aware. Bert did not dilate so much on his love for Julie, the one real thing about him and the innocent incentive of all his crimes.

It is perhaps best not to give the exact words in which he poured forth the history of the dark deeds in which he had been concerned, but to offer to the reader a résumé of his tale in so far as it was corroborated by the evidence.

Albert Tremmel’s father was a West End dairyman who had the misfortune to marry above him, as the saying is. He had a small shop in Hanover Street and carried on a profitable business, but his wife despised it from the first, and refused to allow their only child to assist her husband when he became old enough to do so. She wished him to be a clerk, and, as she had a way of getting what she wanted, young Bert at the age of eighteen had entered, in that capacity, the office of Messrs. Ennidge and Pring, house and estate agents. He was then, as later, a cadaverous, unpleasant-looking youth, with a surly, combative temper and a strongly marked tendency to look on most people as his natural enemies. This in itself did not bring him friends, and he made matters worse as often as he could by adopting a dictatorial manner of speech and the habit of pointing out to comparative strangers his opinion that they erred in thinking they knew their own business. He would also mention their duty as another thing they were ignorant of. This line of conversation he varied by assuring them that if it were true, as they would have him believe, that they knew both better in any case than he did, it was still more to be regretted that they should mismanage the one and fail to do the other.

Boys of his own age frankly refused to have anything to do with him, and he found his most congenial surroundings at a Socialistic Club, where all the members shared his disapproval of the world in general, and descanted as much as they pleased on the shameful conduct and character of those who were not of their own way of thinking. Here all ranks and parts of the community were equally denounced, and if one could hardly find words strong enough to censure the attitude of the rich who wished to retain control of their own wealth, neither could one sufficiently display one’s anger and disgust at the behaviour of the poor who showed themselves so regardless of the socialistic movement as to take benefits from the capitalist classes. Fond as these young men were of employing the words “give” and “take,” the meaning generally conveyed by their joint use was peculiarly repugnant to them. Take, in their view, should always come first in any case, and a thing taken lost half its value in their eyes if it came as a gift. They would have abolished both generosity and gratitude from a world that can ill afford the loss of those virtues.

Bert drank in every tenet of this creed, and revelled in the discussions and execrations as much as he delighted in the wishy-washy sentimentalism. He was an unhealthy, discontented, miserable boy, his hand against every one; and his club was the only place where he felt himself more or less at his ease.

There was, however, one spot which he liked better to be in, and that was the household of the Querterots.

He had gone to school with Julie Querterot, for it so happened that Bert’s father was a Lancashire man and a Roman Catholic. It is true that when he died, as he did when Bert was only thirteen, the boy’s mother immediately removed him to another school and saw to it that he imbibed her hatred of Rome; but he did not take any more kindly to her own church, and when she herself died five or six years later he was going pretty much his own way, which was a way devoid of religious belief of any kind. In spite of this, he never lost touch with his little schoolfellow; and, as the Querterots dealt at Tremmels’ shop and the children were always together, the two families became acquainted, and a certain friendship even sprang up between Madame Querterot and Mrs. Tremmels. These ladies drank tea together, and smiled over the devotion of Bert for little Julie. This was in the days when prosperity reigned in both houses.

It was different after Mrs. Tremmels’ death, when Bert discovered that the business, of which he had never been allowed to learn the details, was on the verge of bankruptcy, Mrs. Tremmels having conducted it since her husband’s death with an eye more to her own aggrandisement than to profit. She had opened two large branches and started milk carts drawn by Shetland ponies; and, having no capital, had borrowed money to do it. Custom under her management had fallen off; the branches had had to be closed; the smart ponies sold; and, at the time of her death, she could no longer find the interest on the borrowed money and the mortgagees were at the point of foreclosing.

Bert, who spent half his evenings in advocating the redistribution of wealth, did not at all enter into the spirit of the thing when he found himself quietly set on one side while his own wealth, that is to say, the competency to which he had always believed himself heir, was redistributed without anyone consulting him. He took it very ill indeed, and said things about his dead mother which would have brought him his dismissal from the office if they had come to the ears of either Mr. Ennidge or Mr. Pring. He had been in their employment about a year when she died, and had done fairly well in it, for he was not a bad worker, nor even without intelligence of a kind. Still, he only kept his post by the skin of his teeth, for he had been in the office more than long enough for Mr. Pring to take a violent dislike to him, and if it had not been for the extremely kind heart of Mr. Ennidge, who argued that he could not dismiss the youth to whom Fortune had already dealt so severe a blow, Bert would have been sacked a dozen times a week. He had, however, no idea of this, and considered himself indispensable and miserably underpaid.

He certainly was not paid a great deal, though more than he was worth to Mr. Pring, at all events, and Madame Querterot ceased abruptly to invite him to her house. He continued, however, to visit it from time to time, and a couple more years went by without further event. Then came the sudden and tragic failure of the Querterots. Eugène Querterot shot himself; and in the fallen state of their fortunes the two impoverished women he left behind him were glad of any friend who stood by them. The sudden dropping off of their old acquaintances created a new bond of sympathy between them and the young man, and when they moved to Pimlico and he was the only person who ever went to see them, he received a much warmer welcome, at all events from the mother, than he had lately grown to expect.

Gradually he went more and more often, until he formed the habit of dropping in at least every other evening. He had always been fond of Julie, and perhaps of no one else in the world, since he had shown little affection for his parents; now, as he saw her with increasing frequency, his feelings for her became more intense, till every day he seemed to see in her new and more entrancing perfections, and even his enthusiasms for Socialism faded under the continual protest of her aversion to it. He admitted to himself with a kind of thrill of self-defiance that Julie was so clever, so sensible, so wonderfully reasonable and clear-sighted, that her opinion on any subject could not be despised, and it became more and more plain to him that if she thought badly of Socialism that doctrine would find difficulty in retaining his complete loyalty. To be short, by the time she reached her eighteenth birthday Bert was head over ears in love with the girl, and had scarcely a thought in which she did not predominate. Madame Querterot watched it all from beneath her heavy eyelids. She said nothing, but the idea that here was one who in time might be useful to her crept into her brain and took deep root there as the weeks went by.

Julie was pious and devout. It was about this time that she began to speak about entering a religious sisterhood, but the storm of reproach and upbraiding that this desire provoked in her mother caused her to relinquish the idea for the time being, and, more particularly, not to talk of it any more. The only visible effect of the suggestion was that Madame Querterot welcomed Bert more effusively than usual, and now often invited him to stay to supper.

It may be judged how readily he accepted, and these evenings were certainly the happiest hours in his life. He used to come early and help Julie to lay the table, and sometimes even to prepare the meal; and if her sleeve chanced to brush against his shoulder as she stooped over the fire or reached up to a shelf he would be reduced to a state of speechless ecstasy, which Madame Querterot found a pleasant change from the usual aggressive torrent of his talk.

In spite of her quiet and demure ways, Julie had a girlish fondness for dress and finery, and the offerings that from time to time Bert laid at her feet, of gloves and trinkets, were a great source of innocent pleasure to her. There was a time when he sallied forth from his lodgings armed with the savings of months, and the intention of buying a ring, which he should present to her accompanied by a speech he prepared for the occasion, in which the secret of his heart was to be imparted, together with the request that the ring should be a token of their engagement. But his courage failed him at the jeweller’s counter; he felt suddenly a conviction, amounting to a certainty, that Julie would refuse; and, rather than risk knowing the worst, he abandoned his project and spent his hoardings on a brooch which he himself did not really admire, and which Julie, when she received it, thought hideous. The only person who was pleased was the jeweller, who had had the thing in his shop two years and simply loathed the sight of it.

It was soon after this that the great plan, of which Madame Querterot had had the elements incubating in her mind for a long while, was hatched, and presented itself to her in a complete and material form. She knew from the first that she could not carry it out alone; and, casting over in her thoughts for the help she required, saw in Bert a tool made ready to her hand. When she broached her idea to him she had her design prepared, down to every detail.

It was on the night when he had treated the two women to the theatre, as has been related in an early page of this narrative. Madame Querterot began by telling the young man that she would never allow her daughter to marry one so poor as himself, and added quickly that she knew of a way by which he could attain both money and the assistance of her influence exerted on his behalf with Julie. Having excited his curiosity and his hopes she bound him to secrecy and disclosed her purpose to him.

“It is yourself who gave me the good idea,” she assured him. “It is your socialistic teaching, is it not, to take from the rich? they have more than is reasonable, those others!”

They were walking up and down before the little house in Pimlico where the Querterots lived in these days of poverty; Julie had left them and gone to bed; the glimmer of a candle came from behind a blind in the room upstairs.

“Of course they have,” Bert grunted. “But it’s no use your thinking you can take their money from them without further legislation. What price the police?”

“Ah, the police,” sighed Madame Querterot, “if only they would not meddle in what is not their affair! But, look you, there are cases which are exceptional. There are cases which ought to receive immediate attention, which cry out for treatment of the most drastic. If the law is slow – and I grant you that the law has great need of alteration – when a matter is exceptionally urgent, I say, the good citizen must take it in his own hands to see justice done. And if while we render a service to humanity we do so with profit to ourselves, it is clear that the ends of justice are doubly served.”

Bert could not help agreeing with these excellent precepts. Indeed, Madame Querterot’s air of supernatural wisdom would have impressed the most sceptical.

“It is not enough to talk, one must demonstrate one’s faith in a theory. By the means I shall propose you can prove how well Socialism will work in practice; for here will the poor, as represented by us, be made richer, and yet the rich person who will have changed our fortunes need scarcely feel any deprivation. You remember my talking to you at supper-time about a lady, a very wealthy lady, one of my clientele?”

“Yes,” said Bert. “A Jewess, wasn’t it?”

“It is true. A Jewess! And have not the Jews for centuries ground the bones of the poor? Who more fitted to be the first to contribute some of their ill-gotten gains in return? Should they not be obliged to restore some of that money which they never earned?”

“I daresay,” assented Bert; “but I wish you’d hurry up and let’s see what you’re getting at, that’s all.”

“Eh bien! This woman, this Jewess, is enormously rich, as I tell you. And what does she do with her money? My friend, she covers herself with diamonds! It is those diamonds which I propose to myself to deprive her of.”

“What, steal them?” Bert’s tone was troubled, although in his heart he had known from the first whither her talk drifted.

“Steal! What a word.” Impossible to convey the contempt of Madame Querterot’s tone. “Is it right then, that she should be permitted to have so much when others starve? Is it right that she should flaunt her jewels in the face of the hungry poor?”

Madame Querterot, who had a good memory, went on to quote phrase after phrase she had at various times heard fall from Bert’s own lips. She poured his favourite catchwords into his ears, and strengthened them with arguments of her own. She painted the robbery she designed in such glowing colours that you would have thought, to hear her, that it was a sacrifice she was going to make for the good of humanity. She passed imperceptibly to picturing the delight of Julie when she should be presented with one of the less easily identified jewels, to the readiness with which, at the advice and with the glad consent of her mother, she would accept the heart and hand of the prosperous and enriched Albert, to the happiness of the young couple ensconced in their charming house, surrounded by motors, gramophones, champagne; in fine, all the luxuries due to a girl of Julie’s perfections. Madame Querterot did not stop till she came to her own prospective joys, her grandchildren climbing on her knee. It was enough for the blushing and intoxicated Bert. He surrendered, agreed to all she proposed, put himself entirely under her directions, and these his prospective mother-in-law willingly proceeded to give him.

She explained to him first at some length the character of Mrs. Vanderstein, and the means by which she hoped to play upon her weakness.

“There is,” said she, “a young Prince – the Prince Felipe of Targona – now in London and staying at Fianti’s Hotel in Grosvenor Street, which is situated just opposite to the house of this Jewess. It so happened to-day, as I was in the midst of my massaging, that she jumped up and ran to the window to see this young man pass, and I also looked out. Now by some chance the Prince, as he drove by, happened to lift his head and look straight into Mrs. Vanderstein’s face. It was a most lucky occurrence, and I could not have hoped for anything so providential to arrive. One would say, indeed, that it is an omen for me, a mandate to carry out my plan. Mrs. Vanderstein was delighted at this encounter of the eyes, and did not disguise her pleasure. Well, see how simple is now my part. I have in the shop some tortoise-shell combs, purchased at a ridiculous price by that poor Eugène when we first started in business here in London. They are very beautiful, of the finest workmanship, exquisitely and intricately carved, but of a pattern antiquated and démodé. We have never been able to sell them.

“Now see, I shall take those combs, and present myself at Fianti’s with a petition that I may see the Princess of Targona, mother of Prince Felipe. For her I have a story that my husband was of Targona, and that the combs also come from that country. I shall offer them to Her Highness as a present from a humble and expatriated subject, and say that my late husband refused to part with them out of patriotism, and, when everything else he possessed had to be sold, clung always to the only objects he had left to remind him of his beloved Targona. It is quite probable that the Princess will be affected by this touching history. She may even make me a present; but that is by the way. What is really of importance is that I should be left alone in one of the apartments occupied by the Royal party for a few minutes. If I can manage that – and I think you may have confidence that I will do so – I shall obtain some pieces of the Prince’s notepaper on which his royal device or monogram is certainly engraved; at all events it will bear some distinguishing mark, and it will go hard if a few sheets of it do not find their way into my bag.

“The next step will be easy. I shall issue from the hotel at a moment when I have ascertained, by peeping from a window, that Mrs. Vanderstein is on her balcony, where at a certain hour she very often goes to water some flowers she has there. She will see me pass; and, as she is very curious about all that goes on at Fianti’s, she will remark on the incident. I shall tell her that I have been called by the Prince of Targona, who has fallen madly in love with her at first sight. You may think she will not believe this, but trust me to make it plausible; and she will be readier to credit such an idea than you imagine, for in the first place all beautiful women are ready to believe that their attractions are irresistible – and she is beautiful, this Jewess, not unlike what I was myself when I was younger – and in the second place, Mrs. Vanderstein is of a nature romantic to the point of ridicule, and is always, I am convinced, fabricating for herself stories of heroes and princes, with herself for the heroine of these fables.

“How do I know, you ask me? I tell you I know. I am a judge of character; I have an aptitude for that. Eh bien! I shall convince the Jewess that she is adored by a reigning Prince, with frenzy, with devotion, with passion; that he thinks of nothing but her; that he would put his hand in the fire for her sake, that he is ready to abdicate his throne, to give up the government of his country. In short, that he wishes to marry her, and that if she will not listen to his addresses he has nothing further to live for in this world. What is perhaps the weak point in my tale is the idea that Prince Felipe should have chosen to make a confidante of myself, but, believe me, my dear Bert, I shall make even that appear not unnatural, and, as a matter of fact, stranger things are done every day. All this will take time, I do not know how long – days, perhaps weeks. I must find out how long the Prince stays in London,” added Madame Querterot, more to herself than to her companion.

It was the one thing she had forgotten.

“I shall write her letters on the Royal notepaper, and as she will send the answers by my hand, I shall know their contents and be able to reply to them without arousing any suspicions on her part. In his impassioned epistles the Prince will beg for an interview; he will lament the obstacles that prevent his seeing her either at the hotel or in her own residence, and he will finally, I am sure, persuade her to meet him for the purpose of making his acquaintance, in a house which he will indicate.

“She will consent to all he proposes, or I am much mistaken. It is at this point, my dear Bert, that your assistance becomes so indispensable. You are a house agent’s clerk. I shall require a house; and it is you who must take it for me, in an assumed name, of course, and without the knowledge of your employers.”

“I don’t see how that can ever be done,” Bert objected.

They were still pacing slowly up and down the dingy street. A policeman at the corner of the road looked at them once or twice, decided they were harmless, and ceased his attentions. The light in Julie’s bedroom was long since extinguished.

Madame Querterot cleared her throat and began again.