The Red Symbol

“‘Ah, I have heard that you English treat your prisoners as honored guests. We prefer our own methods.’”

CHAPTER XXIV

BACK TO ENGLAND

We started for England the next night, second class, and travelled right through, as I stood the journey better than any of us expected. After we crossed the frontier, I doubt if any of our fellow travellers, or any one else, for the matter of that, had the least suspicion that I was a prisoner being taken back to stand my trial on the gravest of all charges, and not merely an invalid, assiduously tended by my two companions. I didn’t even realize the fact myself at the time, – or at least I only realized it now and then.

“Well, Mr. Wynn, you’ve looked your last on Russia, and jolly glad I should be if I were you,” Freeman remarked cheerfully when we were in the train again, on the way to Konigsberg.

“Looked my last, – what do you mean?” Even as I spoke I remembered why he was in charge of me, and laughed.

“Oh, I suppose you think you’re going to hang me on this preposterous murder charge.”

He was upset that I should imagine him guilty of such a breach of what he called professional etiquette, as, it seemed, any reference to my present position would have been.

“I meant that, if you wanted to go back, you wouldn’t be allowed to. They’ve fired you out, and won’t have you again at any price,” he explained stiffly.

“Oh, won’t they? I guess they will if I want to go. Look here, Freeman, I bet you twenty dollars, say five pounds English, that I’ll be back in Russia within six months from this date, – that is, if I think fit, – and that they’ll admit me all right. You’d have to trust me, for I can’t deposit the stakes at present; I will when we get back to England. Is it a deal?”

His answer was enigmatic, and I took it as complimentary.

“Well, you are a cough-drop!” he exclaimed. “No, I can’t take the bet, – ’twouldn’t be professional; though I’d like to know, without prejudice, as the lawyers say, why on earth you should want to go back. I should have thought you’d had quite enough of it.”

I could not tell him the real reason, – that, if I lived, I should never rest till I had at least learned the fate of Anne Pendennis.

“There’s a fascination about it,” I explained. “They’re back in the middle ages there; and you never know what’s going to happen next, to yourself or any one else.”

“Well, I’m – blessed! You’d go back just for that!”

“Why, certainly,” I assented.

There were several things I’d have liked to ask him, but I did not choose to; for I guessed he would not have answered me. One was whether he had traced the old Russian whose coming had been the beginning of all the trouble, so far as I was concerned, anyway; and how he knew that a woman – a red-haired woman as he had said – had been in Cassavetti’s rooms the night he was murdered.

If that woman were Anne – as in my heart I knew she must have been, though I wouldn’t allow myself to acknowledge it – he must have discovered further evidence that cleared her, or he would certainly have been prosecuting a search for her, instead of arresting me.

However, I hoped to get some light on the mystery either when my case came before the magistrate, or between then and the trial, supposing I was committed for trial.

It was when we were nearing Dover, about three o’clock on a heavenly summer morning, that I began to understand my position. We were all on deck, – I lying at full length on a bench, with plenty of cushions about me, and a rug over me.

“Well, we’re nearly in,” Freeman remarked cheerfully. “Another five minutes will do it. Feel pretty fit?”

“Splendid,” I answered, swinging my feet off the bench, and sitting up.

“That’s all right. Here, take Harris’s arm – so. I sha’n’t worry about your left arm; this will do the trick.”

“This” meant that a handcuff was snapped round my right wrist, and its fellow, connected with it by a chain, round Harris’s left.

I shivered involuntarily at the touch of the steel, at the sensation of being a prisoner in reality, – fettered!

“I say, that isn’t necessary,” I remonstrated, rather unsteadily. “You must know that I shall make no attempt to escape.”

“Yes, I know that, but we must do things decently and in order,” he answered soothingly, as one would speak to a fractious child. “That’s quite comfortable, isn’t it? You’d have had to lean on one of us anyhow, being an invalid. There, the rug over your shoulder – so; not a soul will notice it, and we’d go ashore last; we’ve a compartment reserved on the train, of course.”

I dare say he was right, and that none of the many passengers noticed anything amiss; but I felt as if every one must be staring at me, – a handcuffed felon. The “bracelet” didn’t hurt me at all, like those that had been forced on my swollen wrists in the Russian prison, and that had added considerably to the tortures I endured; but somehow it seemed morally harder to bear, – as a slight but deliberate insult from one who has been a friend hurts more than any amount of injury inflicted by an avowed enemy.

They were both as kind and considerate as ever during the last stage of our journey. From Dover to Charing Cross, Harris, I know, sat in a most cramped and uncomfortable position all the way, so that I should rest as easily as possible; but in some subtle manner our relationship had changed. I had, of course, been their prisoner all along, but the fact only came home to me now.

From Charing Cross we went in a cab to the prison, through the sunny streets, so quiet at this early hour.

“Cheer up,” counselled Freeman, as I shook hands with him and Harris, from whom I was now, of course, unshackled. “You’ll come before the magistrate to-morrow or next day; depends on what the doctor says. He’ll see you directly. You’ll want to communicate with your friends at once, of course, and start arranging about your defence. I can send a wire, or telephone to any one on my way home if you like.”

He really was an astonishing good sort, though he had been implacable on the handcuff question.

I thanked him, and gave him Jim Cayley’s name and address and telephone number.

“All right; I’ll let Mr. Cayley know as soon as possible,” he said, jotting the details in his note-book. “What about Lord Southbourne?”

“I’ll send word to him later.”

I felt distinctly guilty with respect to Southbourne. I ought, of course, to have communicated with him – or rather have got Freeman to do so – as soon as I began to pull round; but somehow I’d put off the unpleasant duty. I had disobeyed his express instructions, as poor Carson had done; and the disobedience had brought its own punishment to me, as to Carson, though in a different way; but Southbourne would account that as nothing. He would probably ignore me; or if he did not do that, his interest would be strictly impersonal, – limited to the amount of effective copy I could turn out as a result of my experiences.

Therefore I was considerably surprised when, some hours afterwards, instead of Jim Cayley, whom I was expecting every moment, Lord Southbourne himself was brought up to the cell, – one of those kept for prisoners on remand, a small bare room, but comfortable enough, and representing the acme of luxury in comparison with the crowded den in which I had been thrown in Petersburg.

Lord Southbourne’s heavy, clean-shaven face was impassive as ever, and he greeted me with a casual nod.

“Hello, Wynn, you’ve been in the wars, eh? I’ve seen Freeman. He says you were just about at the last gasp when he got hold of you, and is pluming himself no end on having brought you through so well.”

“So he ought!” I conceded cordially. “He’s a jolly good sort, and it would have been all up with me in another few hours. Though how on earth he could fix on me as Cassavetti’s murderer, I can’t imagine. It’s a fool business, anyhow.”

“H’m – yes, I suppose so,” drawled Southbourne, in that exasperatingly deliberate way of his. “But I think you must blame – or thank – me for that!”

CHAPTER XXV

SOUTHBOURNE’S SUSPICIONS

“You! What had you to do with it?” I ejaculated.

“Well, Freeman was hunting on a cold scent; yearning to arrest some one, as they always do in a murder case. He’d thought of you, of course. Considering that you were on the spot at the time, I wonder he didn’t arrest you right off; but he had formed his own theory, as detectives always do, and in nine cases out of ten they’re utterly wrong!”

“Do you know what the theory was?” I asked.

“Yes. He believed that the murder was committed by a woman; simply because a woman must have helped to ransack the rooms during Cassavetti’s absence.”

“How did he know that?”

“How did you know it?” he counter-queried.

“Because he told me at the time that a woman had been in the rooms, but he wouldn’t say any more, except that she was red-haired, or fair-haired, and well dressed. I wondered how he knew that, but he wouldn’t tell me.”

“He has never told me,” Southbourne said complacently. “Though I guessed it, all the same, and he couldn’t deny it, when I asked him. She dropped hairpins about, or a hairpin rather, – women always do when they’re agitated, – an expensive gilt hairpin. That’s how he knew she was certainly fair-haired, and probably well dressed.”

I remembered how, more than once, I had picked up and restored to Anne a hairpin that had fallen from her glorious hair. Jim and Mary Cayley had often chaffed her about the way she shed her hairpins around.

“What sort of hairpins?” I asked.

“A curved thing. He showed it me when I bowled him out about them. I know the sort. My wife wears them, – patent things, warranted not to fall out, so they always do. They cost half a crown a packet in that quality.”

I knew the sort, too, and knew also that my former suspicion was now a certainty. Anne had been to Cassavetti’s rooms that night; though nothing would ever induce me to believe she was his murderess.

“Well, I fail to see how that clue could have led him to me,” I said, forcing a laugh. I didn’t mean to let Southbourne, or any one else, guess that I knew who that hairpin had belonged to.

“It didn’t; it led him nowhere; though I believe he spent several days going round the West End hairdressers’ shops. There’s only one of them, a shop in the Haymarket, keeps that particular kind of hairpin, and they snubbed him; they weren’t going to give away their clients’ names. And there was nothing in the rooms to give him a clue. All Cassavetti’s private papers had been carried off, as you know. Then there was the old Russian you told about at the inquest. He seems to have vanished off the face of the earth; for nothing has been seen or heard of him. So, as I said, Freeman was on a cold scent, and thought of you again. He came to me, ostensibly on other business. I’d just got the wire from Petersburg – Nolan of The Thunderer sent it – saying you’d walked out of your hotel three nights before, and hadn’t been seen or heard of since. It struck me that the quickest way to trace you, if you were still above ground, was to set Freeman on your track straight away. So I told him at once of your disappearance; and he started cross-questioning me, with the result, – well – he went off eventually with the fixed idea that you were more implicated in the murder than had appeared possible at the time, and that your disappearance was in some way connected with it. Wait a bit, – let me finish! The next I heard was that he was off to St. Petersburg with an extradition warrant; and, from what he told me just now, he was just in time. Yes, it was the quickest way; they’d never have released you on any other consideration!”

“No, I guess they wouldn’t,” I responded. “You’ve certainly done me a good turn, Lord Southbourne, – saved my life, in fact. But what about this murder charge? Is it a farce, or what? You don’t believe I murdered the man, do you?”

“I? Good heavens, no! If I had I shouldn’t have troubled to set Freeman on you,” he answered languidly. I’ve met some baffling individuals, but never one more baffling than Southbourne.

“As far as we are concerned it is a farce, – though he doesn’t think it one. He imagines he’s got a case after his own heart. To snatch a man out of the jaws of death, nurse him back to life, and hand him over to be hanged; that’s his idea of a neat piece of business. But it will be all right, of course. I doubt if you’ll even be sent for trial; but if you are, no jury would convict you. Anyhow, I’ve sent for Sir George Lucas, – he ought to be here directly, – and I’ve given him carte blanche, at my expense, of course; so if a defence is needed you’d have the best that’s to be got.”

I began to stammer my thanks and protestations. I should never have dreamed of engaging the famous lawyer, who, if the matter did not prove as insignificant as Southbourne seemed to anticipate, and I had to stand my trial, would, in his turn, secure an equally famous K. C., – a luxury far beyond my own means.

But Southbourne checked me at the outset.

“That’s all right,” he said in his lazy way. “I can’t afford to lose a good man, – when there’s a chance of saving him. I hadn’t the chance with Carson; he was a good man, too, though he was a fool, – as you are! But, after all, it’s the fools who rush in where angels fear to tread; therefore they’re a lot more valuable in modern journalism than any angel could be, when they survive their folly, as you have so far! and now I want to know just what you were up to from the time you left your hotel till you were handed over by the Russian authorities; that is, if you feel equal to it. If not, another time will do, of course.”

I told him just as much – or as little – as I had already told Freeman. He watched me intently all the time from under his heavy lids, and nodded as I came to the end of my brief recital.

“You’ll be able to do a good series; even if you’re committed for trial you’ll have plenty of time, for the case can’t come on till September. ‘The Red Terror in Russia’ will do for the title; we’ll publish it in August, and you must pile it on thick about the prison. It’s always a bit difficult to rake up sufficient horrors to satisfy the public in the holidays; what gluttons they are! But, look here, didn’t I tell you not to meddle with this sort of thing?”

I had been expecting this all along, and was ready for it now.

“You did. But, as you’ve just said, ‘Fools rush in,’ etcetera. And I’m quite willing to acknowledge that there’s a lot more of fool than angel in me.”

“You’re not fool enough to disobey orders without some strong motive,” he retorted. “So now, – why did you go to that meeting?”

I was determined not to tell him. Anne might be dead, or in a Russian prison, which was worse than death; at any rate nearly two thousand miles of sea and land separated us, and I was powerless to aid her, – as powerless as I had been while I lay in the prison of Peter and Paul. But there was one thing I could still do; I could guard her name, her fame. It would have been a desecration to mention her to this man Southbourne. True, he had proved himself my good and generous friend; but I knew him for a man of sordid mind, a man devoid of ideals, a man who judged everything by one standard, – the amount of effective “copy” it would produce. He would regard her career, even the little of it that was known to me, as “excellent material” for a sensational serial, which he would commission one of his hacks to write. No, neither he nor any one else should ever learn aught of her from me; her name should never, if I could help it, be touched and smirched by “the world’s coarse thumb and finger.”

So I answered his question with a repetition of my first statement.

“I got wind of the meeting, and thought I’d see what it was like.”

“Although I had expressly warned you not to do anything of the kind?”

“Well, yes; but still you usually give one a free hand.”

“I didn’t this time. Was the woman at the meeting?”

“What woman?” I asked.

“The woman whose portrait I showed you, – the portrait Von Eckhardt found in Carson’s pocket. Why didn’t you tell me at the time that you knew her?”

“Simply because I don’t know her,” I answered, bracing up boldly for the lie.

“And yet she sat next to Cassavetti at the Savage Club dinner, an hour or two before he was murdered; and you talked to her rather confidentially, – under the portico.”

I tried bluff once more, though it doesn’t come easily to me. I looked him straight in the face and said deliberately:

“I don’t quite understand you, Lord Southbourne. That lady at the Hotel Cecil was Miss Anne Pendennis, a friend of my cousin, Mrs. Cayley. Do you know her?”

“Well – no.”

“Then who on earth made you think she was the original of that portrait?”

“Cayley the dramatist; he’s your cousin’s husband, isn’t he? I showed the portrait to him, and he recognized it at once.”

This was rather a facer, and I felt angry with Jim!

“Oh, Jim!” I said carelessly. “He’s almost as blind as a mole, and he’s no judge of likenesses. Why he always declares that Gertie Millar’s the living image of Edna May, and he can’t tell a portrait of one from the other without looking at the name (this was quite true, and we had often chipped Jim about it). There was a superficial likeness of course; I saw it myself at the time.”

“You didn’t mention it.”

“Why, no, I didn’t think it necessary.”

“And the initials?”

“A mere coincidence. They stand for Anna Petrovna. Von Eckhardt told me that. I saw him in Berlin. She’s a well-known Nihilist, and the police are after her in Russia. So you see, if you or any others are imagining there’s any connection between her and Miss Pendennis, you’re quite wrong.”

“H’m,” he said enigmatically, and I was immensely relieved that a warder opened the door at that moment and showed in Sir George Lucas.

“Oh, here you are, Lucas,” said Southbourne, rising and shaking hands with him. “This is your client, Mr. Wynn. I’ll be off now. See you again before long, but I’ll give you a bit of advice, with Sir George’s permission. Never prevaricate to your lawyer; tell him everything right out. That’s all.”

“Thanks; I guess that’s excellent advice, and I’ll take it,” I said.

CHAPTER XXVI

WHAT JIM CAYLEY KNEW

I did take Lord Southbourne’s advice, partly; for in giving Sir George Lucas a minute account of my movements on the night of the murder, I did not prevaricate, but I made two reservations, neither of which, so far as I could see, affected my own case in the least.

I made no mention of the conversation I had with the old Russian in my own flat; or of the incident of the boat. If I kept silence on those two points, I argued to myself, it was improbable that Anne’s name would be dragged into the matter. For whatever those meddling idiots, Southbourne or Jim Cayley (I’d have it out with Jim as soon as I saw him!), might suspect, they at least did not know for a certainty of her identity as Anna Petrovna, of her presence in Cassavetti’s rooms that night, or of her expedition on the river.

Sir George cross-examined me closely as to my relation with Cassavetti; we always spoke of him by that name, rather than by his own, which was so much less familiar; and on that point I could, of course, answer him frankly enough. Our acquaintanceship had been of the most casual kind; he had been to my rooms several times, but had never invited me to his. I had only been in them thrice; the first time when I unlocked the door with the pass-key with which the old Russian had tried to unlock my door, and then I hadn’t really gone inside, only looked round, and called; and the other occasions were when I broke open the door and found him murdered, and returned in company with the police.

“You saw nothing suspicious that first time?” he asked. “You are sure there was no one in the rooms then?”

“Well, I can’t be certain. I only just looked in; and then ran down again; I was in a desperate hurry, for I was late, as it was; I thought the whole thing a horrible bore, but I couldn’t leave the old man fainting on the stairs. Cassavetti certainly wasn’t in his rooms then, anyhow, and I shouldn’t think any one else was; for he told me afterwards, at dinner, that he came in before seven. He must have just missed the old man.”

“What became of the key?”

“I gave it back to the old man.”

“Although you thought it strange that such a person should be in possession of it?”

“Well, it wasn’t my affair, was it?” I remonstrated. “I didn’t give him the key in the first instance.”

“Now will you tell me, Mr. Wynn, why, when you left Lord Southbourne, you did not go straight home? That’s a point that may prove important.”

“I didn’t feel inclined to turn in just then, so I went for a stroll.”

“In the rain?”

“It wasn’t raining then; it was a lovely night for a little while, till the second storm came on, and my hat blew off.”

“And when you got in you heard no sound from Mr. Cassavetti’s rooms? They’re just over yours, aren’t they? Nothing at all, either during the night or next morning?”

“Nothing. I was out all the morning, and when I came in I fetched up the housekeeper to help me pack. It was he who remarked how quiet the place was. Besides, the poor chap had evidently been killed as soon as he got home.”

“Just so, but the rooms might have been ransacked after and not before the murder,” Sir George said dryly. “Though I don’t think that’s probable. Well, Mr. Wynn, you’ve told me everything?”

“Everything,” I answered promptly.

“Then we shall see what the other side have to say at the preliminary hearing.”

He chatted for a few minutes about my recent adventures in Russia; and then, to my relief, took himself off. I felt just about dead beat!

In the course of the day I got a wire from Jim Cayley, handed in at Morwen, a little place in Cornwall.

“Returning to town at once; be with you to-morrow.”

He turned up early next morning.

“Good heavens, Maurice, what’s all this about?” he demanded. “We’ve been wondering why we didn’t hear from you; and now – why, man, you’re an utter wreck!”

“No, I’m not. I’m getting round all right now,” I assured him. “I got into a bit of a scrimmage, and then into prison. They very nearly did for me there; but I guess I’ve as many lives as a cat.”

“But this murder charge? It’s in the papers this morning; look here.”

He held out a copy of The Courier, pointing to a column headed:

“The Westminster Murder.

arrest of a well-known journalist,”

and further down I saw among the cross-headings:

“Romantic Circumstances.”

“Half a minute; let’s have a look,” I exclaimed, snatching the paper, fearing lest under that particular cross-heading there might be some allusion to Anne, or the portrait. But there was not; the “romantic circumstances” were merely those under which the arrest was effected. Whoever had written it, – Southbourne himself probably, – had laid it on pretty thick about the special correspondents of The Courier obtaining “at the risk of their lives the exclusive information on which the public had learned to rely,” and a lot more rot of that kind, together with a highly complimentary précis of my career, and a hint that before long a full account of my thrilling experiences would be published exclusively in The Courier. Southbourne never lost a chance of advertisement.

The article ended with the announcement: “Sir George Lucas has undertaken the defence, and Mr. Wynn is, of course, prepared with a full answer to the charge.”

“Well, that seems all right, doesn’t it?” I asked coolly.

“All right?” spluttered Jim, who was more upset than I’d ever seen him. “You seem to regard being run in for murder as an everyday occurrence!”

“Well, it’s preferable to being in prison in Russia! If Freeman hadn’t taken it into his thick head to fix on me, I should have been dead and gone to glory by this time. Look here, Jim, there’s nothing to worry about, really. I asked Freeman to wire or ’phone to you yesterday when we arrived, thinking, of course, you’d be at Chelsea; then Southbourne turned up, and was awfully good. He’s arranged for my defence, so there’s nothing more to be done at present. The case will come before the magistrate to-morrow; so far as I’m concerned I’d rather it had come on to-day. I don’t suppose for an instant they’d send me for trial. The police can’t have anything but the flimsiest circumstantial evidence against me. I guess I needn’t assure you that I didn’t murder the man!”