The Silent Shore

"The gate of the garden of Occleve House!" Stuart exclaimed, quivering with excitement.

"Yes," the Señor answered, "the gate of the garden of Occleve House."

"My God!" the other said.

"Yes, it was that gate. And now I had to be careful. I was determined to see where he had gone to through that gate, what he was doing in that garden; but how to do it? If I looked through the railings he would see me, he would know he was discovered-he might even then be able to escape me! If I had had my pistol with me, I would have stood by the gate and looked at him through it, and then, if necessary, would have shot him dead. But I had it not; I had thought of no need for it when I left the hotel that night. I did not know what was before me when I went out. But I knew I must do something at once, and so, seeing that the street was empty and no creature stirring, I advanced near to the gate, stretched myself flat upon the pavé, and with my head upon the ground looked under the lowest part of the railings and saw-"

"What?" Stuart asked, interrupting him again in his excitement.

"A changed man, one different from him I had followed. Still a young man with a brown moustache, but a young man whose habit was that of a gentleman. He was dressed now in a dark, well-made suit, and with his hands he was rolling up the peasant dress I had seen him wear. Then he stooped over what seemed to be a hole, or declivity, near the wall and dropped the suit into it, and arranged the weeds and long grass above it, and then slowly he went to the house, and, taking again a key from his pocket, entered the door."

"What man could thus have had the entrance to the back of the house?" Stuart asked. "I am bewildered with horrible thoughts!"

"I also was bewildered, but I am now no longer so. I knew the man's face; now-to-day-I know for certain who he was. Within the last few days it flashed upon me, yet I doubted; but my doubts are satisfied. I only learned of his existence ten days ago, or I should have suspected him before."

"Who was it?" Stuart said. "Tell me at once."

"Wait yet a moment, and listen to me. As I saw that man enter the house, a house that I, a stranger, could see was the mansion of some person of importance, it came to me, to my mind, that this was the owner, the master of that house, who had killed my friend. His reason for doing so I could not guess-it might have been for the love of a woman, or for hate, or about money-but that it was so I was confident. And I said to myself, 'So! you cannot escape me! I know your house, to-morrow I shall know your name, and, if in two or three days the police have not got you in their power-I will wait that while, for it is better they should take you than I-then I will kill you.' And I went away thinking thus; there was no need to watch more. I held him, for he could not escape I thought, in my hand."

"But it was not the owner of the house," Stuart said, "it was not Lord Penlyn who killed him. He was away at an hotel at the time."

"Yes, he was-though still it would be possible for him then to have entered his own house-but his was not the face of the man I had seen. I learnt that, to my amazement, when for the first time I stood before him. But, listen again! In the morning, at a restaurant, I found in a Directory, of which I had learnt the use, that that house was Occleve House, and that Lord Penlyn was the owner of it. And then my surprise was great, for only an hour or so before I had found that Occleve was the right name of Walter Cundall."

"You had learnt that?"

"When I lifted Walter in my arms in the Park, I felt against his breast a book half out of his pocket. The murderer had missed that! I took that book, for even in my haste and grief, I thought that in it might be something that would give me a clue. But what were really in it of importance were a certificate of his mother's marriage, another of his own birth, and a letter, years old, from her to him. They told me all, and, moreover they proved to me, as I then thought, that his murderer lived in the very house and bore the very name that by right seemed to be his.

"They were the certificates he showed to them on the morning he disclosed himself," Stuart said, "and he had not removed them from his pocket-book when he was killed!"

"Yes! that he showed to them; you have said it! It was to two of them that he showed those papers. And one was the friend of the other, he lived with and upon him, he dares not meet me face to face, he evades me! he, he is the murderer. He, Philip Smerdon!"

Stuart sprung to his feet.

"Philip Smerdon!" he exclaimed. "No, no! it cannot be!"

"It is, I say! It is he. Of all others, who but he could have done this deed? Who but he who crept back to Occleve House having in his pocket the keys whereby to enter it, who but he who shuns me because it has been told him that I knew the assassin's face! And on the very night that he is back in London, sleeping in that house, are not the clothes that might have led to his identification removed?"

Stuart paused a moment, deep in thought, and then he said: "It cannot be! On the day before the murder, in the morning, he left London for Occleve Chase. He must have been there when it was committed."

"Bah!" Guffanta said, with a shrug of his shoulders, "he did not leave London, he only made a pretence of doing so. All that day he, in his disguise, must have been engaged in tracking my poor friend, and at night he killed him." Then he paused a moment, and when he next spoke he asked a question.

"Where was he going when he left Occleve House this afternoon in the cab, and with his luggage?"

"He was going to join his father, he said," Stuart answered. "His father is ill and has been ordered abroad for his health, and, having recovered some money from his ruined business, he is going on the Continent, and Smerdon is going with him."

"And to what part of the Continent are they going?"

"I do not know, though he said something about the French coast, and afterwards, the Tyrol. Why do you ask?

"Why do I ask? Why? Because I must go also! I have to stand face to face with him, and be able to convince myself that either I have made some strange mistake, or that I am right."

"And-if you are right?"

"Then I have to take him to the nearest prison, or, if he resists, to kill him."

"You will do that?"

"I will do anything necessary to prevent him ever escaping me again."

They talked on into the night, and Señor Guffanta extracted from the other a promise that he would lend him any assistance in his power, and that, above all, he would say nothing to Lord Penlyn that, by being retold to Smerdon, should, if he were actually the murderer, help him to still longer escape.

"I promise you," Stuart said, "and the more willingly because I myself would give him up to justice if I were sure he is the man. But that, of course, I cannot be; it is you alone who can identify this cruel murderer. But, in one thing I am sure you are wrong."

"In what thing?"

"In thinking that Lord Penlyn is in the slightest way an accomplice, or suspects Smerdon at all. If he did so suspect him, I believe that he would himself cause him to be arrested, even though they are such friends."

"What motive would Smerdon have to kill Walter except to remove him from the other's path? Do you think he would have done it without consulting Lord Penlyn?"

"I am certain that if he did do it, as you think-"

"As I am as convinced as that we are sitting here!"

"Well, then I am certain that Lord Penlyn knows nothing of it. He is hasty and impetuous, but he is the soul of honour."

"Perhaps," Guffanta said; "it may be so. But it is not with him that I have to deal. It is with the man who struck the blow. And it is him I go to seek."

"How will you find him?"

"Through you. You will find out for me where he is gone with his father-if this is not a lie invented to aid his further escape-and you will let me know everything. Is it not so?"

"Yes," Stuart said; "I myself swore that I would find the murderer if I could; but, as I cannot do that, I will endeavour to help you to do so. How shall I communicate with you?"

"Write, or come to the 'Hôtel Lepanto.' And when you once tell me where that man is, there I shall soon be afterwards. Even though he should go to the end of the world, I will follow him."

Then Señor Guffanta went back to his hotel, and told Diaz Zarates that he should soon be leaving his house.

"I have to make a little tour upon the Continent, and I may go at any moment."

"On a tour of pleasure, Señor?" the landlord asked.

"No! on a voyage of importance!"

And three days afterwards he went. A letter had come to him from Stuart saying:

"S. has really gone with his father. He has left London for Paris on the way to Switzerland. They are to pass the summer at some mountain resort, but the place is not yet decided on. At first they will be at Berne. If you meet, for God's sake be careful, and make no mistake."

"Yes!" Señor Guffanta muttered to himself as he packed his portmanteau, and prepared to catch the night mail to Paris. "Yes, I will be careful, very careful! And I will make no mistake!"

CHAPTER XIX

The summer began to wane, and as August drew to a close the world of London at large forgot the murder of Walter Cundall.

It forgot it because it had so many other things to think about, because it had its garden parties and fêtes, and Henley and Goodwood; and because, after that, the exodus set in, and the Continent, Scotland, and Cowes, as well as all the other seaside resorts, claimed its attention. It is true one incident had come to light which had given a fillip to the dying curiosity of the world and society, but even that had scarcely tended to rouse fresh interest in the crime. This incident was the discovery that Lord Penlyn was the heir to all of the dead man's vast wealth. The news had come out gradually through different channels, and it had set people talking; but even then-at this advanced state of the London season-it had scarcely aroused more than a passing flutter of excitement. And society explained even this fact to its own satisfaction-perhaps because it had, by now, found so many other things of more immediate, and of fresher, interest. Cundall had been, it said, a man of superbly generous impulses, one who seemed to delight in doing acts of munificence that other men would never dream of; what more natural a thing for him to do than to leave his great wealth to the very man who had won the woman he had sought for his wife? Was it not at once a splendid piece of magnanimity, a glorious example of how one might heap coals of fire on those who thwarted us-was it not a truly noble way of retaliating upon the woman he loved, but who had no love for him? She would, through his bequest to her husband that was to be, become enormously rich, but she could never enjoy the vastness of those riches without remembering whence they came; every incident in her life would serve to remind her of him.

So, instead of seeing any cause for suspicion in the will of Walter Cundall, the world only saw in it a magnificently generous action, a splendidly noble retaliation. For it never took the trouble to learn the date of the will, but supposed that it had been made on the day after he had discovered that Ida Raughton had promised herself to another.

To those more directly interested in the murder and in the discovery of the assassin, the passing summer seemed to bring but little promise of success. Lord Penlyn knew that Señor Guffanta had left London, but beyond that he did not know what had become of him, nor whether it was the business of Don Rodriguez, or pleasure, or the search for the murderer that had taken him away. Stuart, who still believed him innocent of the slightest participation or knowledge of the crime, yet did not feel inclined to give him the least information as to the Señor's movements, fearing that, if Smerdon was the man-of which, as yet, he by no means felt positive-he might learn that he was being pursued; and so contented himself with saying as little as possible. As to Dobson, he had now come to the conclusion that the "Signor," as he always called him, was an arrant humbug, and really knew no more about the murder than he did himself. And as the detective had already received a handsome sum of money from Lord Penlyn for his services, such as they were, and as he had at the present moment what he called "one or two other good little jobs on," he gradually devoted himself to these matters, and the murder of Mr. Cundall ceased to entirely occupy his efforts. Though, as he was a man who did his duty to the best of his ability, he still kept one of his subordinates looking about and making inquiries in various places where he thought information might be obtained. But the information, as he confessed, was very long in coming.

From Señor Guffanta Stuart had heard more than once during his absence, which had now extended to three weeks, but the letters he received contained nothing but accounts of his failure to come upon the suspected man. In Paris, the Señor wrote, he had been absolutely unable to find any person of the name of Smerdon, though he had tried everything in his power to do so. He had pored daily over Galignani and other papers that contained the lists of strangers who arrived in the French capital, he had personally inspected the visitors' books in every hotel likely to be patronised by English people of good social position; but all to no effect. Then, determined, if his man was there, not to miss him, he had applied to the particular bureau of police at the Préfecture, where are kept, according to French law, the lists furnished weekly by every hotel-keeper and lodging-house keeper of their guests and tenants, both old and new; and these, being shown him, he had carefully searched, and still he had failed. He was induced to think, he wrote Stuart, that Smerdon, either alone or with his family (if he really had them with him) must have changed his route, or his destination, at the last moment. Or, perhaps they had travelled by Brussels and the Rhine to Switzerland, or passed through Paris from one station to the other without stopping, or they might have gone by the way of Rheims and Delle from Calais to Basle. Could Mr. Stuart, he asked, obtain any further information from Lord Penlyn as to the whereabouts of the man whose face he wished to see, for if he could not, he did not know where to look for him.

In answer to this, Stuart wrote back that no letter had come from Smerdon since the day he left Occleve House, the day on which the Señor had seen the murderer in the cab, but that he had little doubt that the former was now in Switzerland. "Why," he wrote, "since you are determined to make yourself sure about Smerdon's identity with the man you saw kill our friend, do you not go on into Switzerland? There you could have but little difficulty in finding him, for printed lists of the visitors to almost every resort, small or large, are published daily or weekly. Any bookseller would procure you the Fremdenblatts and Listes des Étrangers, and if you could only find his name at one spot, you would be sure to catch him up at last. When a traveller leaves an hotel in Switzerland, the train, or boat, or diligence is a sure indication of what district he is changing to, and any intelligent porter or servant will in all probability be able to remember any person you can describe fairly accurately."

To this a letter came back from Guffanta, saying that he acknowledged the reason of Mr. Stuart's remarks, and that he would waste no more time in Paris but would at once set out for Switzerland. "Only," he wrote, in his usual grave and studied style, "you must pardon me for what I am now going to say, and for what I am going to ask. It is for money. I have exhausted my store, which was not great when I arrived in England, and which has only been increased by a small draft on Don Rodriguez's London banker. I have enough to take me to Switzerland I find, but not enough to carry me into the heart of the country. Will you please send me some to the Poste Restante, at Basle? I will repay it some day, and be sure that I shall eventually gain the object we both desire in our hearts."

For answer to this, Stuart put a fifty-pound note in a registered letter, and forwarded it to the address Guffanta had given him. Then, when it had been acknowledged by the latter, he heard no more from him for some time.

During this period Lord Penlyn had been absent from town. He had received from Sir Paul Raughton, at the time when the Señor was about to leave London, a letter telling him that Ida was much better, and that he thought that Penlyn might see her if he went down to Belmont. Sir Paul had faithfully delivered the message given him, and to Ida this, he said, had been the best medicine. At first she would scarcely believe it possible that her lover would ever again see her or speak of love to her; but, when she learnt that not only was he anxious to do this, but that it was he himself whom he considered in the wrong, and that, instead of extending his pardon to her, he was anxious to sue for hers, the colour came back to her cheek and the smile to her eyes and lips.

"Oh, papa!" she said, as she sat up one day in her boudoir and nestled close to him, "oh, papa, how could I ever think so ill of him, of him who is everything that is good and noble? How wicked I have been! How wicked and unjust!"

"Of course!" Sir Paul exclaimed, "that is just the kind of thing a woman always does say. She quarrels with the man she loves, and then, just because he wants to make up the quarrel as much as she does, she thinks she has been in the wrong. And after all, mind you, Ida, although I don't believe that Penlyn had any more to do with the murder than I had-"

"No, papa!" speaking firmly.

"Still he does not come out of the affair with flying colours. He never moved hand nor foot to find out who really had done it, and he kept the secret of poor Cundall being his brother from me. He oughtn't to have done that!"

Sir Paul did feel himself aggrieved at this. He thought that, as Ida's father, he should have been told everything bearing upon the connection between the two men, and he considered that there had been some intention to deceive him on the part of Penlyn. In his joy at the prospect of his daughter's renewed happiness he was very willing to forgive Penlyn, but still he could not help mentioning his errors, as he considered them.

"Remember the letter from his brother, papa! It contained his solemn injunctions-rendered doubly solemn by the awful fate that overtook him on the very night he wrote them! How could he confide the secret to any one after that?"

Her father made no answer to this question, not knowing what to say. After all, he acknowledged that had he been made the custodian of such a secret, had he had such solemn injunctions laid on him as Cundall had laid on his brother, he would have tried to keep them equally well. Honestly, he could not tell himself that Penlyn should have broken the solemn command imposed upon him; the command issued by a man who, as he gave it, was standing at the gate of the grave.

So, when Penlyn paid his next visit to Belmont, there was a very different meeting between him and its inmates from the meetings that had gone before. Sir Paul took him by the hand, and told him that he was sincerely happy in knowing that once more he and Ida were thoroughly united, and then he went into her. Not a moment elapsed before she was folded to his heart and he had kissed her again and again, not a moment before she was beseeching him to forgive her for the injurious thoughts and suspicions she had let come into her mind.

"Hush, Ida hush, my darling!" he said, as he tried to soothe her; "it is not you who should ask for forgiveness, but I. Not because I kept my brother's secret from you, but because of the brutal way in which I cast you off, simply for your doubting me for one moment. Oh, Ida, my own, say that you forgive me."

"I have nothing to forgive," she said; "the fault was mine. I should never have doubted you."

And so once more they were united, united never more to part. And since everything was now known to Ida, her future husband was able to talk freely to her, to tell her other things that had transpired of late, and especially of, what seemed to him, the strange behaviour of the Señor, and the accusation he had brought against him of shielding the murderer in his house.

"Oh, Gervase!" Ida exclaimed, "why is it that every one should be so unjust to you? Was it not enough that I should have suspected you-though only for a moment in my grief and delirium-without this man doing so in another manner. It is monstrous, monstrous!"

"Your suspicions," he answered, "were natural enough. You had had your mind disturbed by that strange dream, and, when you heard of my relationship to Cundall, it was natural that your thoughts should take the turn they did. But I cannot understand Guffanta, nor what he means."

He had recognised many times during the estrangement between him and Ida that her temporary suspicion of him was natural enough, and that-being no heroine of romance, but only a straightforward English girl, with a strange delusion as to having seen the assassin in her dream-it was not strange she should have doubted him; but for Guffanta's accusation he could find no reason. Over and over again he had asked himself whom it could be that he suspected? and again and again he had failed to find an answer. On that fatal night there had been no one sleeping in Occleve House but the servants, no one who could have gained admission to it; yet the Señor had charged him with sheltering the man who had done the deed, both on that night and afterwards.

"Can he not be made to speak out openly?" Ida asked. "Can he not be made to say who the person was whose face he saw? Why do you not force him to do so?"

"I have seen nothing of him since the night he accused me of protecting the murderer, and he has left the hotel he was staying at."

"Where is he gone?" Ida asked.

"No one seems to know, though Stuart says he fancies he is still looking for the murderer. I pray God he may find him."

"And I too!" Ida said.

After this meeting, Penlyn acceded to the request of Sir Paul and his future wife that he should stay at Belmont for some time, and he took up his abode there with them. His valet came down from town, bringing with him all things necessary for a stay in the country, and then Ida passed happier days in the society of her lover than she had ever yet enjoyed. They spent their mornings together sitting under the firs upon the lawn, they drove together-for she was still too weak to ride in the afternoons; and in the evenings Sir Paul would join them. Their marriage had been postponed for two months in consequence of Ida's ill health, but they knew that by the end of October they would be happy, and so they bore the delay without repining. One thing alone chastened their happiness-the memory of the dead man, and the knowledge that his murderer had not been brought to justice.

"I swore upon his grave to avenge him," Penlyn said, "and I have done nothing, can do nothing. If any one ever avenges him it will be Señor Guffanta, and I sometimes doubt if he will be able to do so. It seems a poor termination to the vows I took."

"Perhaps it is but a natural one," Ida answered. "It is only in romances, and in some few cases of real life, that a murder planned as this one must have been is punished. Yet, so long as we live, we will pray that some day his wicked assassin may be discovered."

"Do you still think," Penlyn asked, "that the figure which you saw in your dream was known to you in actual life? Do you think that if the murderer is ever found you will remember that you have known him?"

"It was a dream," she answered, "only a dream! Yet it made a strange impression on me. You know that I also said that, if once I could remember to what man in actual life that figure bore a resemblance, I would have his every action of the past and present closely scrutinised; yet I, too, can do nothing. Even though I could identify some living person with that figure, what could I, a woman, do?"

"Nothing, darling," her lover answered her, "we can neither of us do anything. If Guffanta cannot find him, we must be content to leave his punishment to heaven."