An Eye for an Eye

A good murder mystery is always welcome to a certain class of London daily journals, but more especially in the season when Parliament is “up,” the Courts are closed for the Vacation, and the well of sensations runs low. This season is termed, in journalistic parlance, “the gooseberry season,” on account of the annual appearance of the big gooseberry, that mythical monster of our youth, the sea-serpent, and the starting of the usual silly correspondence upon “Why should we live?” or some equally interesting controversial subject.

We were all held in blank astonishment at this latest development of the extraordinary affair. It had so many remarkable phases that, even to Boyd, one of the shrewdest officers of the Criminal Investigation Department, it was bewildering.

To me, however, the disappearance of that dead woman with the fair, pure face was the strangest of all that tangle of astounding facts. That face had impressed me. Its every feature had been riveted indelibly upon my memory, for it was a face which, in life, I should have fallen down and worshipped as an idol, for there was about it a purity and charm which must have been highly attractive, a vivacity in those eyes which, even in death, had held me spell-bound.

“I don’t see that we can do any more just now,” Boyd remarked in a business-like tone to his subordinate.

“You’ve seen the three cards which were beneath the plates on the dining-table?” I asked.

“Yes,” he responded. “There’s some hidden meaning connected with them, but what it’s impossible at present to guess. In order to prosecute our inquiries we must preserve secrecy. Nothing must be published yet. Indeed, Patterson, you’ll apply to the Coroner at once to take steps to withhold the real state of affairs from the public. If the assassins find that no hue and cry is aroused we may have a far better chance of tracing them, for they may betray themselves.”

“It’s a pity,” observed Dick, deeply disappointed. “A first-class sensation of this sort don’t occur every day. Why, it’s worth four columns if a line.”

“Be patient,” Patterson urged. “You shall have an opportunity of publishing it before long, and I’ll see that you are a long way ahead of your contemporaries.”

“Don’t let the news agencies have a word. They always try and get in front of us,” said Cleugh, whose particular antagonists were the Central News and the Press Association, which possess facilities for the collection of news and its transmission by wire to the various newspapers that form one of the most marvellous organisations in unknown London.

“Leave it to me,” said the inspector. “As soon as it’s wise to let the public know anything I’ll give you permission to publish. The Comet shall be first in the field with it.”

“Very well,” answered Dick, satisfied with Patterson’s answer. That officer had been prominent a few years before in the investigations relative to those mysterious assassinations of women in Whitechapel, and was very friendly with “the Comet man,” as Cleugh was termed in the journal which he represented.

Many were the suggestions we put forth as to how the bodies of the victims could have thus been changed, but no theory we could advance seemed likely to have any foundation in fact.

The mystery was certainly one of the strangest that had ever puzzled the crime investigators of London. The cause of its discovery was a most remarkable incident, and at every turn as the investigation proceeded mystery seemed to follow upon mystery, until the whole affair presented so many curious features that a solution of the problem seemed utterly impossible.

I bent beside the body of the woman who, reclining in the armchair with one arm fallen by her side, presented the appearance of one asleep. Her presence there was a profound enigma. A thought, however, occurred to me at that moment. The dining-table below had been laid for three. Perhaps she was the third person.

For the greater part of an hour we remained in that house of grim shadows discussing the various phases of the astounding affair, until at last, about eleven, we all left, two constables in uniform being stationed within. So secretly had this search been carried out that the neighbours, though, perhaps, puzzled by Patterson’s inquiries, entertained no suspicion of any tragic occurrence. In Kensington Road all the shops facing Upper Phillimore Place were closed save the tobacconist’s and the frequent public-houses, the foot passengers were few, and at that hour the stream of taxis with homeward-bound theatre-goers had not yet commenced. Market garden carts from Hounslow or Feltham, piled high with vegetables, rumbled slowly past on their journey to Covent Garden, and a few empty motor-buses rattled along towards Hyde Park, but beyond all was quiet, for that great artery of Western London goes early to rest.

At the police-station we took leave of Patterson and Boyd, and entering a motor-bus at Kensington Church, arrived at our chambers shortly before midnight.

“There’s something infernally uncanny in the whole business,” said the Mystery-monger as we sat smoking, prior to turning in. It was our habit to smoke and gossip for half an hour before going to bed, no matter what the time. Our talk was generally of “shop” events in our world of journalism, the chatter of Fleet Street intermingled with reminiscences of the day’s doings. Dick was sitting in the armchair reflectively sucking his eternal briar, while I sat at my table pondering over a letter I had found there on my return. It was from Mary Blain, for whom I had once long ago entertained a very strong affection, but who had since gone out of my life, leaving only a shadowy recollection of a midsummer madness, of clandestine meetings, of idle, careless days spent in company with a smart, eminently pretty, girl in blue serge skirt, cotton blouse and sailor hat. All was of the past. She had played me false. I was poor, and she had thrown me over for a man richer than myself. For nearly three years I had heard little of her; indeed, I confess that she had almost passed from my memory until that evening when I had sat awaiting Dick, and now on my return I opened that letter to discover it in her well-known, bold hand – the hand of an educated woman.

The letter, which had had some wanderings, as its envelope showed, and was dated from her father’s house up the river, merely expressed a hope that I was in good health, and satisfaction at hearing news of me through a mutual friend. Such a letter struck me as rather strange. I could only account for it by the fact that she desired to resume our acquaintanceship, and that this was a woman’s diplomatic way of opening negotiations. All women are born diplomatists, and woman’s wit and powers of perception are far more acute than man’s.

The letter brought back to me vividly the memory of that sweet, merry face beneath the sailor hat, the wealth of dark hair, the laughing eyes so dark and brilliant, the small white hands, and their wrists confined by their golden bangles. Yes, Mary Blain was uncommonly good-looking. Her face was one in ten thousand. But she was utterly heartless. I recollected how, when with her mother she had spent a summer at Eastbourne, what a sensation her remarkable beauty caused at Sunday parade on the Esplanade. She was lovely without consciousness of it, utterly ingenuous, and as ignorant of the world’s wickedness as a child. The daughter of a wealthy City man who combined company-promoting with wine-importing, she had from childhood been nursed in the lap of luxury, and being the only child, was the idol of her parents. Their country house at Harwell, near Didcot, was in my father’s parish, and from the time when her nurse used to bring her to the Rectory until that well-remembered evening when in the leafy by-lane I had for the last time turned my back upon her with a hasty word of denunciation, we had been closest friends. She had played me false. My hopes had been wrecked on Life’s strange and trackless sea, and now whenever I thought of her it was only in bitterness. I have more than a suspicion that old Mr Blain did not approve of our close acquaintanceship, knowing that I was a mere journalist with an almost untaxable income; nevertheless, she had continued to meet me, and many were the happy hours we spent together wandering through that charming country that skirts the upper reaches of the Thames.

In order to see her I used frequently to run down from London to my home on Saturdays and remain till Mondays. With her mother she sat in her seat in front of the Rectory pew, and as she walked down the aisle her face would be illumined by a glad light of welcome. How restful were those Sundays after the wear and tear of London life! How peaceful the days in that sleepy little village hidden away in a leafy hollow three miles from the Great Western line! After we had parted, however, I did not go home for six months. Then, on inquiry, I found that the Blains had sold their place, presumably because they were in want of money, for it was said that they had taken a smaller house facing the Thames, near Laleham, that village a little beyond Shepperton, where in the churchyard lies Matthew Arnold. From all accounts old Blain had lost heavily in speculation and had been compelled to sell his carriages and horses, dispose of many of his pictures, and even part with some of the Louis Seize furniture at Shenley Court, where they had lived. This was, of course, indicative of a very severe reverse of fortune.

Since those hours of Mary’s love and her subsequent falseness, my life had been a queer series of ups and downs, as it must ever be in journalistic London. Many dreary days of changeful care had come and gone since then.

I sat silent, thinking, with her letter still open in my hand.

“Why are you so confoundedly glum, old man?” Dick asked. “What’s your screed about? Duns in the offing?”

“No. It’s nothing,” I answered evasively, smiling.

“Then don’t look so down in the mouth,” he urged. “Have a peg, and pull yourself together.” He had been in India, and consequently termed a whisky-and-soda a “peg.” The origin of that expression is a little abstruse, but is supposed to refer pointedly to the pegs in one’s coffin.

I thrust the letter into my pocket, helped myself to a drink, and lit a cigarette.

“It’s a really first-class sensation,” Dick said, again referring to the curious affair. “Pity I can’t publish something of it to-morrow. It’s a good thing chucked away.”

“Yes,” I replied. “But Patterson has some object in imposing secrecy on us.”

“Of course,” he answered thoughtfully.

There was a pause. We both smoked on. Not a sound penetrated there save the solemn ticking of the clock and the distant strains of a piano in some man’s rooms across the square.

“Do you know, Frank,” my companion said after some reflection, and looking at me with a rather curious expression – “do you know that I have some strange misgivings?”

“Misgivings!” I echoed. “Of what?”

“Well,” he said, “did anything strike you as strange in Patterson’s manner?”

“To tell the truth,” I answered, “something did. His attitude was unusual – quite unusual, to-night.”

“He’s a funny Johnnie. That story of the snake on the pavement – isn’t it rather too strange to be believed?”

“At first sight it appears extraordinary, but remember that in the laboratory upstairs we found other snakes. The occupier of the house evidently went in for the reptiles as pets.”

“I quite agree with you there,” he said. “But there are certain circumstances in the case which have aroused my suspicion, old chap. Of all the curious cases I’ve ever investigated while I’ve been on the Comet, this is the most astounding from every point of view, and I, for one, shan’t rest until we’ve fully solved the problem.”

“In that you’ll have my heartiest assistance,” I said. “All the time I can spare away from the office I’ll devote to helping you.”

“Good,” Dick exclaimed heartily, refilling his pipe. “Between us we ought to find out something, for you and I can get at the bottom of things as soon as most people.”

“The two strangest features of this case,” I pointed out, “are first the telephonic message, and secondly, the disappearance of the first woman we found.”

“And those cards!”

“And that penny wrapped so carefully in paper!” I added. “Yes, there are fully a dozen extraordinary features connected with the affair. The whole business is an absolute puzzle.”

“Tell me, old chap,” Dick said, after a pause, “what causes you to suspect Patterson?”

“I don’t suspect him,” I answered quickly. “No. I merely think that he has not told the exact truth of the first discovery of the crime, that’s all.”

“Exactly my own opinion,” responded Dick. “He’s concealing some very important fact from us – for what purpose we can’t yet tell. There’s more in this than we surmise. Of that I feel absolutely confident.”

“The snake story is a little too good,” I said, rather surprised that his suspicions should have been aroused, for I had not related to him my conversation with Patterson and his very lame excuse for not making a report of the discovery at the police-station. What had aroused Dick’s suspicions I was extremely puzzled to know. But he was a shrewd, clever fellow, whose greatest delight was the investigation of crime and the obtaining of those “revelations” which middle-class London so eagerly devours.

“A very happy invention of an ingenious mind, my dear fellow,” exclaimed the Mystery-monger. “Depend upon it, Patterson, being already aware that there were snakes in that house, invented the story, knowing that when the place was searched it would appear quite circumstantial.”

“Then you think that he’s not in absolute ignorance of who lived there?” I exclaimed, surprised at my friend’s startling theory.

Dick nodded.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if it be proved that he knew all along who the dead man is.”

“Why?”

“Well, I noticed that he never once looked at that man’s face. It was he who covered it with a handkerchief, as though the sight of the white countenance appalled him.”

“Come come,” I said, “proceed. You’ll say that he’s the guilty one next.”

“Ah! no, my dear fellow,” he hastened to reassure me. “You quite misunderstand my meaning. I hold the theory that in life these people were friends of Patterson’s, that’s all.”

“What makes you suspect such a thing?”

“Well, I watched our friend very closely this evening, and that’s the conclusion I’ve arrived at.”

“You really think that he is concealing facts which might throw light on the affair?” I exclaimed, much surprised.

“Yes,” he answered, “I feel certain of it – absolutely certain.”

Chapter Six

What I Saw in the Park

For a long time, sitting by the open window and looking out upon the starry night, we discussed the grim affair in all its details. The piano had stopped its tinkling, a dead silence had fallen upon the old-world square, one of the relics of bygone London, and the clock upon the hall had struck one o’clock with that solemnity which does not fail to impress even the most dissipated resident of Gray’s. As a bachelor abode Gray’s Inn is as comfortable and convenient a spot as there is in London, for there is always a quiet, restful air within; the grey, smoke-stained houses open on airy squares, and until a couple of years ago, quite a large colony of rooks made their home in the great old trees. It is an oasis of peace and repose in the very centre of that gigantic fevered city, where the whirl of daily life is unceasing, where in the east and south toiling millions struggle fiercely for their bread, while in the west is greater wealth and extravagance than in all the world besides.

“I think,” said Dick at last, after he had put forth one or two theories, “that if we manage to get to the bottom of this affair we shall discover some very startling facts.”

“That’s absolutely certain,” I answered. “The disappearance of the fair girl, and the substitution of the other, is in itself a fact absolutely unique in the annals of crime. Whoever effected that change must have been indeed a bold person.”

“Didn’t the people next door see any taxi drive up, or notice anything being brought up to the house?”

“No. That’s the strangest part of it,” I responded. “Nothing was seen of any cab or conveyance, although, of course, there must have been one.”

“And that inquiry by telephone was a remarkable incident,” Dick went on. “You say that the inquirer was popping about to various call-rooms ringing up his confederates. That shows that there were two or three in the secret. It hardly seems feasible that the man who rang up from the Minories was the same as the one with whom you spoke at Putney.”

“No; but the arrangement to meet in St. James’s Park to-morrow is extraordinary, to say the least.”

“Ah, my dear fellow,” observed my friend, with a smile, “I very much fear that that appointment won’t be kept. Men such as they evidently are will hardly risk a meeting. On reflection, the individual, whoever he is, will see that he has given himself away, and his natural caution will prevent him from going near St. James’s Park.”

“Well, I only hope he does meet me,” I observed.

“So do I. But to my mind such a circumstance is entirely out of the question. You see he went to call-boxes in order to avoid detection.”

“The curious thing is, that if it were the same man who rang up each time he must have travelled from one place to another in an amazingly rapid manner.”

“There might be two persons,” he suggested.

“Of course there might,” I answered. “But I think not. The girl at the exchange evidently recognised the voice of the persistent inquirer.”

“I’m glad I came down – very glad,” he said. “I went over to see Lily, but she’s gone to Ipswich with her aunt, an old lady who feared to travel alone. It appears she wrote to me this morning, but the letter has missed the post, I suppose. It will come to-morrow morning.”

“You had your journey to Peckham for nothing, then?”

“Yes,” he answered. “She ought to have sent me a wire. Just like a woman.”

I knew Lily Lowry, the pretty friend of Dick Cleugh, very well indeed. I did not know that he actually loved her. There was undoubtedly a mutual friendship between them, but nevertheless he often would go for a month and see nothing of her. The daughter of a struggling shopkeeper near the Elephant and Castle, she had been compelled to seek her own living, and was at present assistant at a large cheap draper’s in Rye Lane, Peckham. Setting the convenances at naught, as became a London girl of the present decade, she had many times visited our dingy abode. I had always suspected that the love was on her side, for she was always giving him various little things – embroidered pouches, handkerchiefs and those semi-useful articles with which girls delight the men they love.

But Dick did not seem in the least concerned at not having seen her. He was annoyed that he had had a journey on the Chatham and Dover for nothing, and thought a great deed more of the mystery of Phillimore Place than of Lily’s well-being. He was a pessimist in every sense of the word. Once he had told me the story of his first love, a strange tragedy of his life that had occurred in his days at Jesus. It was this, I always suspected, that had evoked from him the real ardent affection which a man should have for a woman who is to be his companion through life. Man loves but once, it is true, but the love of youth is in the generality of cases a mere heart-beating caused by a fantasy begotten of inexperience. The woman we love at sixteen – too often some kind-hearted housewife, whose soft speech we mistake for affection – we flout when we are twenty. The woman who was angelic in our eyes when in our teens, is old, fat and ugly when, four years later, the glamour has fallen from our eyes and we begin to find a foothold in the world. Wisdom comes with the moustache.

So it was with Dick. He had lost the woman he had loved in his college days, yet, as far as I could judge, none other had ever taken her place in his heart.

Two o’clock had struck ere we turned in, and both of us were up at seven, our usual hour, for evening papers, issued as they are at noon, are prepared early in the morning. We were always at our respective offices at half-past seven.

My first thought was of the meeting I had arranged in St. James’s Park, and of my friend’s misgivings regarding it. Full of anxiety, I worked on till eleven o’clock, when Boyd was shown into my room, greeting me merrily. His appearance was in no way that of a police-officer, for he wore a shabby suit of tweed, a soiled collar, and an old silk hat much frayed at the brim, presenting the appearance of the typical beery Fleet Street lounger.

“I’ve come to see you, Mr Urwin, regarding this meeting in the park,” he said. “Do you intend going?”

“Of course,” I answered, surprised that he should ask such a question. “Why?”

“Well, because I think it would be best to leave it entirely to us. You might be indiscreet and queer the whole thing.”

“I don’t think you’ll find me guilty of any indiscretion,” I said, somewhat piqued.

“I don’t apprehend that,” he said. “But on seeing you at the spot appointed, the mysterious person who made the inquiry last night will at once get away, for he will know that the secret is out. We must, as you know, act with greatest caution in this affair, so as not to arouse the slightest suspicion that the keeping of this appointment is in the hands of the police.”

“Then what, in your opinion, is the best course to pursue?” I inquired.

“First, your friend Mr Cleugh must not go near the park. I’ve already written him a note to that effect. Secondly, you must act exactly as I direct. A single slip will mean that the individual will escape, and in this we must not court failure by any indiscreet move.”

“And how do you intend that I should act?” I asked, sitting back in my writing-chair and looking at the shrewd detective who was known throughout London as one of the cleverest unravellers of crime, and who had been successful in so many cases wherein human life had been involved.

“Well,” he said, hesitating, “truth to tell, I would rather that you didn’t go to the park at all.”

“Why?”

“Because you could not wait about in the vicinity of the spot indicated without betraying a sign that you were in expectation of some one,” he answered. “Remember, you are not a detective.”

“No,” I answered, “I’m not a detective, but I’ve had a few years’ training in investigations. I think I could disguise my anxiety sufficiently.”

I was extremely anxious to keep the appointment, and his suggestion that I should not go caused me disappointment and annoyance.

“But if you were seen waiting about, the man we want would certainly not make his appearance. He’d scent danger at once. We’ve evidently got to deal with a very cunning scoundrel.”

“I could conceal myself,” I declared. “I promise you I will act with greatest discretion.”

“Well,” he said at length, after some further demur, “I suppose, then, you must have your own way. Personally, I don’t think the man will be such a fool as to run his neck into a noose. There’s been some clever work in connexion with this matter, and men capable of such ingenuity must be veritable artists in crime and not given to the committal of any indiscretion. The voice in the telephone was a squeaky one, I think you said?”

“Yes, weak and thin, like an old man’s.”

Boyd glanced at his watch – a gold hunter with an inscription. It had been given him by public subscription in Hampstead in recognition of his bravery in capturing two armed burglars in Fitzjohn’s Avenue.

“It’s time we went,” he exclaimed; but as we rose Dick entered in hot haste. He had just received Boyd’s note and had run round to my office.

“I’ve been out making an inquiry,” he said, having greeted us and expressed disappointment at Boyd’s decision. “I thought, in order to satisfy myself, and so that I could use the information later on, I would go round to Professor Braithwaite at the Royal Institution and ask his opinion of the scientific apparatus found in the laboratory. I went down to Patterson, got permission to remove it from the house, and took the whole affair in a cab to the Royal Institution.”

“Well, what’s the result?” I inquired breathlessly.