Ричард Марш
The Crime and the Criminal

CHAPTER XXXIV
MR. HOLMAN AT HOME

But they looked for her in vain. They did not find her. And the following night Mr. Holman was in the bosom of his family.

Mr. Holman's home was in a street off Leicester Square. His family consisted of his wife. Of her he was wont to make a confidant, as he did on the present occasion.

Mr. Holman had come up by an afternoon train from Lewes. Mrs. Holman had prepared a meat tea for him on his arrival. He had commenced his attack upon the viands before she began to question him.

"So they're going to hang him?"

"It would seem as though they were."

Mrs. Holman detected something in her husband's tone.

"What do you mean? Aren't they going to hang him?"

"Did I say they weren't going to hang him? Didn't I say it seems as though they were. Don't you understand Queen's English?"

Mrs. Holman was silent for a second or two.

"Surely they're not getting up a petition to let him off?"

"I've heard nothing at all about it, if they are. But perhaps you've heard more than me. You do sometimes, don't you?"

"You don't mean to say that you don't believe he did it. I thought you were sure that he was guilty."

"I've been sure of a good many things in my time, and been sorry for it afterwards. I'm not the only leather-headed fool there is about, as perhaps you know."

Mrs. Holman was skilled in the inflections of her husband's voice. She perceived that it would be wiser, temporarily, to keep her curiosity in her pocket, and to allow him to finish his meal in peace, which she did and obtained her reward.

When the lady's lord and master had eaten and drunk to his heart's content he wiped his lips and he looked at his wife.

"What do you think he says?"

"I haven't the least idea."

"He says that the woman who was found is not the woman who was with him in the train."

"A man like him would say anything."

"How clever you women are. You know everything. As it happens, it seems to me that he's just the sort of man who would not say anything, and I ought to be a pretty good judge of that kind of thing if any one is." Mr. Holman was regarding the two portraits which he had submitted to Mr. Tennant for inspection. "I don't half like it. I can swear that this is a good likeness of the woman that was found. He says that it's not the least like the woman who was with him in the train.

"Fiddlededee!"

"Of course it's fiddlededee. And if he was hung, and it came out afterwards that what he said was true, it would look like fiddlededee, wouldn't it? I should feel as if I'd murdered him."

"Matthew!"

"Somehow the tale which he tells sounds true, and the queer part of it is that he says that the woman whom he travelled with in the train from Brighton was actually present in the court during the trial."

"It isn't possible."

"Oh, dear no! Of course not. If you say so, it couldn't be. It seems funny though that the governor should be of a different opinion."

"What governor?"

"What governor! The governor of Lewes gaol-stupid! Considering how clever you set yourself up to be, it's queer what a lot of explanation you seem to want. The governor noticed this woman of whom Tennant speaks, and something about her goings-on struck him as being queer. I've been looking for her in Lewes all this blessed day. She's not there. But I'll find her if she's anywhere. I'm not going to have a man hung for a woman that's alive if I can help it. I'm going to make my report in the morning, and if I'm not told off to hunt her up I'll be surprised."

A ring was heard.

"Go and see what idiot that is ringing the bell. If it's any one to see me let me know who it is before you show him in."

Mrs. Holman went to see what idiot it was. She returned and reported.

"It's that American who has lost his daughter, Mr. Haines his name is."

"Confound Mr. Haines! What's he come humbugging about? Show him in. I'll make short work of Mr. Haines."

Mr. Haines was shown in, tall and thin, Yankee writ large all over him. Uninvited, he seated himself. He crossed his legs. He balanced his hat upon his knees. He looked at Mr. Holman without speaking a word. Mr. Holman, without any show of deference, looked back at him, nor was his manner when he spoke marked by a superfluity of courtesy.

For some moments the silence remained unbroken-a fact which seemed to arouse the detective's irascibility.

"Is that all you have to say? If so, perhaps you will excuse me. My time happens to be of value."

Mr. Haines opened his lips.

"That creature has buncoed me again."

"What creature?"

"Private detective Stewart Trevannion."

"When a man calls himself a private detective, nine times out of ten yon may safely write him down a scoundrel. The tenth time, perhaps, he is something worse."

"A scoundrel. That's what he is. And next time we chance to meet I'll write the thing on him in good bold letters in my very plainest hand. He raised another fifty out of me. He undertook to place me in communication with my girl if I let him have it. He has placed me in communication neither with my girl nor with himself since he raised that fifty."

Mr. Holman leaned against the side of the table on which he had just been having tea. He regarded his visitor with something like a twinkle in his eye.

"Governor, do you mind my speaking a little plainly?"

"I do not."

"Take my tip, book a berth in the next boat, and go back where you came from. You'll be more at home like over there."

"Not till I have looked upon her grave if she is dead, or on her face if she is living."

"Ah, then, I shouldn't be surprised if you were to stay this side some time. You'll settle here."

"Aren't the resources of civilisation sufficient to enable me to find my girl?"

"The resources of civilisation aren't interested. You drove her away, it's for you to fetch her back again. What it strikes me is that she don't want to come, and she don't mean to, either."

"She is dead."

"How are you going to prove it?"

"I want you to help me."

"How am I going to help you any more than I have done? I'm a public servant. I receive instructions from my superiors, and I have to obey them. How am I going to devote myself to you? I don't know what good I should do if I could. Thousands of girls are missing; they leave home because they're sick of it, and they set up on their own hook. How do you think you're going to find 'em if they don't mean to be found? It may be easy in the stories, but it isn't out of them."

Rising from his chair, Mr. Haines paced slowly across the room. Mr. Holman watched him. He noticed his air of extreme depression.

"You do as I say, take my tip, and go back by the next ship. You'll be able to look for her as well there as over here-yes, and better. You say she knows what address will find you. You'll hear from her safe enough when she's had about enough of it.

"Not me."

"How can you tell that."

"Because she's dead."

Mr. Holman moved from the table with a gesture of impatience. Not impossibly he would have terminated the interview then and there. He looked as if language of even unusual strength was trembling on his lips. He was prevented, however, from giving it utterance by the unannounced entrance of a second visitor.

The visitor was in the shape of a girl-a young girl. She was pretty, with a prettiness which more than suggested the theatre. She had an amazing array of short, fair hair. It shrined her face like a sort of coronal. The big hat was perched on the top of her hair. There was a hint of kohl about her pretty eyes. And though her plump cheeks were clean enough and tempting enough just then, one could have sworn that they had long been familiar with rouge.

She came into the room with a complete absence of ceremony, as if she was perfectly at home.

"Well, uncle, so you're back again."

Mr. Holman looked her up and down without saying a word. Planting herself right in front of him she clasped her hands behind her back-impudently demure. "You can look at me."

"So you have dyed your hair."

"I have."

"And cut it off."

"And cut it off."

"And fluffed it?"

"Fluffed it? Crimped it, I suppose you mean. My dear uncle, if anybody offered to double your salary on condition that you dyed your hair, you'd dye it all the colours of the rainbow." Mr. Holman turned away. "Aren't you going to kiss me? You'd not only dye, you'd give your hair to kiss me if you weren't my uncle. How nice it is to have relations!"

Mrs. Holman appeared at the door.

"Never mind him, Hetty. He's come back in a bad temper."

"Of course he's come back in a bad temper. Did you ever know him when he hadn't come back in a bad temper? He's the worst-tempered man I ever knew, and that's saying something."

Mr. Holman seated himself in an arm-chair by the fire. The young lady sat on one of the arms. She smoothed her uncle's hair.

"Dear uncle, how well you're looking."

Mr. Holman shook his head, as if to remove it from the reach of her embrace.

"Don't touch me."

"And what a nice, kind look you've got in your eyes."

"Hetty, I'm ashamed of you."

"Oh, no, you're not. You're not half such a goose as you pretend to be."

"I tell you that I am."

"You're what? A goose. Dear uncle, I would never let any one call you a goose except yourself. Won't you kiss me?"

The fair young face stooped down. The man's weather-beaten face looked up. The lips met.

The kiss was interrupted by a series of exclamations which came from the back of the room. So unexpected and so startling a series of exclamations that Mr. Holman rose from his chair with such suddenness as almost to overturn his niece.

"What's up now?" he asked.

A good deal seemed to be up, at any rate with Mr. Haines. That gentleman was standing on the other side of the table staring at something which he was holding in his hand, giving vent to a variety of observations which were scarcely parliamentary.

"It's Loo! Blamed if it ain't! It's my girl! It's Loo!"

Throwing down what he was holding, he rushed at the detective like some wild animal.

"Damn you!" he yelled. "It's Loo!"

CHAPTER XXXV
THE WOMAN OF THE PORTRAIT

The detective easily avoided the man's blind rush, the result of which was that Mr. Haines all but cannoned into Mr. Holman's niece.

Miss Hetty Johnson, however-the young lady's name was Johnson-seemed in no way disconcerted.

"That's right. Knock me down and trample on me. I don't mind. I've done nothing to nobody. But it's all the same as if I had."

Brought back by the young lady's words to a sense of reality, Mr. Haines spluttered out an apology.

"I beg your pardon. It was an accident." Then he raved at Mr. Holman. "You-you devil! You've been having me, tricking me, doing me. You cursed slippery British hound, I feel like killing you!"

He looked as he said he felt. His tall figure was drawn upright, his long arms were stretched out in front of him, his fists were clenched as in a paroxysm of rage.

Mr. Holman stared at him with stolid imperturbability.

"Perhaps, when you've quite finished, you'll tell us what's wrong."

"You know. Don't you try to play it any more off on to me, or the presence of a woman shan't save you."

"What's the matter with the man?" asked Mrs. Holman.

"Don't you hear me asking him?" chimed in her lord. "But it doesn't seem as if he cared to tell us."

As if one was not sufficient, Mr. Haines began shaking both his fists at the detective.

"You said you knew nothing about her; you told me you could not help me; you advised me to go back by the next ship. I could not make it out. Now I do catch on. You had her portrait all the time."

"Whose portrait?"

"Loo's!"

"Who's Loo?"

"My girl!"

The words came from Mr. Haines with a roar.

The detective looked at him as if he was beginning to suspect that, after all, there might be some method in his madness.

"See here, Mr. Haines, I don't know if you are or are not mad, but just try to behave as if you weren't. I've no notion what you're talking about. I tell you I know no more about your girl than I know about the man in the moon."

"You tell me that, and expect me to believe it, when you have her portrait?"

"I have her portrait! Where?"

"Here!" Striding forward, he snatched up one of the two portraits which were lying on the table. As he did so, he perceived the second. "Why, here's another! There are two! You have two portraits of my girl, and you tell me that you know nothing of her."

Although the detective's face remained impassive, a speck of light seemed all at once to come into his eyes. The pupils dilated. There was something in them which suggested that the whole man had become, upon a sudden, alert and eager.

"I would ask you, Mr. Haines, to consider carefully what you are saying. More may depend upon your words than you imagine. Do I understand you to say that you know the original of that photograph?"

"Know the original! Of course I do. It's my girl, my Loo!"

"Are you prepared to swear it?"

"I am, before God and man."

"May I ask if there is anything in particular in which the likeness consists?"

"Don't you think a father knows his daughter when he sees her in a picture? Don't talk back to me. I tell you it's my girl, my Loo! Where is she?"

"I will tell you everything in a moment, Mr. Haines. Look at those photographs closely. Don't you notice anything about them which is peculiar?"

Mr. Haines did as he was told. He peered closely at the portraits.

"She is looking pretty sick."

"Well she might do. Those photographs were taken after death?"

"After death?"

"Have you heard of the Three Bridges Tragedy?"

"The Three Bridges Tragedy? Yes."

"That is the portrait of the victim."

"The victim? So! She is dead. She was done to death. I knew it."

"The man who has been found guilty of the crime is now lying in gaol under sentence of death."

"They shan't hang him?"

"It looks uncommonly as if they would."

"I say they shan't. Not if I have to tear down the prison walls with my hands and nails to get at him. Do you think I've come all these thousands of miles to let them strangers pay the man that killed my girl? You bet I've not!"

Mr. Haines glanced at the detective as if he defied his contradiction.

The detective looked at him, in return, as if he doubted what to make of him.

While the two men were thus, as it were, taking each other's measure, Miss Hetty Johnson advanced to the table on which Mr. Haines had, perhaps unconsciously, replaced the photographs. She picked them up.

"Is this the poor girl who was murdered?" She glanced at them. As she did so she uttered a startled exclamation, "Why, it-it's Milly!" She turned to Mr. Holman all in a tremor of excitement. "Uncle, this is Milly!"

Her uncle turned to her with what almost amounted to a savage start.

"Who do you say it is? You don't mean to say that you know the original? Hanged if I don't believe everybody does except me. And here, all this time, we've been hunting the whole world to find out."

Miss Johnson was not at all affected by her uncle's display of temper. She repeated her previous assertion, and that with more emphasis than before.

"This is Milly Carroll who was with me at the theatre. I am sure of it. Aunt, you've heard me talk of Milly Carroll?"

"Often," said her aunt. "Now, Hetty, don't you let your fancy run away with you. It may be like her, and yet it mayn't be her. Remember the mischief you might do. You think before you speak."

"My dear aunt, there is not the slightest necessity for you to talk to me like that. I am sure that this is Milly Carroll. Heaps of girls at the theatre will tell you so if you ask them. It doesn't do her justice, and she looks as if she were dead, but it's her." She dropped her hand to her side, as if a startling reflection had all at once occurred to her. "I wonder if that explains it?"

"Explains what?"

"Her silence. I wondered why she had never replied to my last letter. All the time, perhaps, she was dead. And I was telling every one how unkind she was. To think of it!"

"Do you know where she lived?"

"When I last heard from her she was living at Brighton."

"Brighton? Then he did do it. What an artistic liar that man must be!"

"She left the stage for good. She was going to be married."

"Going to be married, was she? Then it's her. What was her future husband's name?"

"I never heard his name. We always took him for some big swell, she kept his name so close. She used to call him Reggie."

"Reggie? Oh! Not Tommy?"

"No, Reggie. I knew him very well by sight."

"What do you mean-you knew him very well by sight?"

"Well, I spoke to him two or three times, and, of course, he spoke to me. And I used often to see her with him. And then he was always at the theatre. He used to give her everything she wanted, and made no end of a fuss of her. The girls all envied her good luck."

"It looks as if they had cause to. What sort of party was this swell of hers to look at?"

"He was tall, and dark, and very handsome, and he had most beautiful hands, and one of the nicest-speaking voices I ever heard-and such a smile! And he dressed awfully well-he was an awful swell. Milly told me he was awfully rich, but I could see that without her telling me."

Mr. Holman had listened to the girl's description with some appearance of surprise.

"Of course you could. You girls can see anything. That's how it is so many of you come to grief-you think you see so much. You're sure you haven't made a mistake about this swell of hers? You're sure he wasn't short, and plump, and rosy?"

"He wasn't a scrap like that. He was exactly as I've told you. Short, and plump, and rosy? Indeed! I should think he wasn't."

"Would you recognise him if you saw him again?"

"Rather! I should think I should. I should know him anywhere. If you saw him once, you would never be likely to forget him, he was too good-looking."

"Was he indeed? You seem to have been more than half in love with him yourself. You girls always do fall in love with the right sort of men. Have you any of this young woman's writing?"

"I've some of her letters which she sent me."

Mr. Haines, advancing, laid his hand gently on Miss Johnson's arm.

"Will you let me see her letters-my girl's, my Loo's?"

"Of course I will. You can come round and look at them now if you like. There's time before I'm due at the theatre." The young girl looked up at the old man with a curious interest. "She was an American. She used to talk to me about a place called Colorado."

"She was raised in Colorado. And that is where she left me. So you were her friend-my girl's friend?"

"Well, we were pals."

"Pals? Yes. You were pals."

Mr. Haines looked at Miss Johnson inquiringly, searchingly, as if he was endeavouring to ascertain, by force of visual inspection, what sort of girl she was.

Mr. Holman interposed.

"When you two have done palavering, perhaps Miss Hetty Johnson will be good enough to tell me what was this young woman's address at Brighton-that is, if she happens to remember it."

"I remember it perfectly."

Miss Hetty proved that she did by unhesitatingly furnishing her uncle with the information required. Her uncle entered the address she gave him in his pocket-book. He looked at his watch.

"It's twenty minutes past seven. There's a train from Victoria to Brighton at 7.50. If I got a decent cab I ought to have time to catch it, and to spare. If I do catch it, I ought to be able to get all the information I want in time to catch the last train back to town. If I don't, I'll wire." This was to his wife. He turned to his niece. "You keep a still tongue in your head, if you can, and don't go chattering at the theatre. And don't let anything that was that young woman's pass out of your hands to any one-do you hear?"

"I hear. But, uncle, I don't, and I can't, believe that Milly's sweetheart had anything to do with killing her."

"No one asks you for what you believe. I've been asking you for what you know. And that's all I'm likely to ask you for. You mark what I say, and don't you give a scrap of her writing to any one. I'm off."

He was off, catching up the portraits from the table as he went.

As soon as her uncle had gone Miss Johnson turned to Mr. Haines.

"If you want to see those letters, you'll have to come now. I have to be at the theatre soon after eight."

The young girl and the old man went away together. Miss Johnson led the way through Coventry Street. Suddenly stopping, she caught Mr. Haines by the arm.

"Oh! There he is!"

"Who?"

"Milly's sweetheart."

"Where?"

Miss Johnson pointed to a tall man who was standing on the pavement talking to the driver of a hansom cab. Mr. Haines started. His companion felt that he was trembling. He spoke as if he were short of breath.

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure-certain."

Mr. Haines went forward without a word. Miss Johnson stood still and watched, fearing she knew not what.

But she need have feared nothing, for nothing happened.

By the time that Mr. Haines had reached the cab the man in question had seated himself inside. Mr. Haines had a good look at him before the cab moved off.

"It's he! Her aristocrat! I knew that he smelt of blood first time I saw him, but if I'd known that the blood was hers-"

He raised his hands above his head, as if by way of a wind-up to his unfinished sentence.

The passers-by stared at the old man talking to himself and gesticulating on the pavement, wondering, perhaps, if he was drunk or if he was merely mad.