The Case Of The Lamp That Went Out Part 18

Muller walked a little behind him, while Mrs. Bernauer was at his side.

As in days long past, they walked hand in hand.

With eyes full of pity Muller watched them, and he heard Thorne give his old nurse orders for the care of his wife. She was to take Mrs. Thorne to Graz to her father, then to return herself to Vienna and take care of the house as usual, until his attorney could settle up his affairs and sell the property. For Thorne said that neither he nor his wife would ever want to set foot in the house again. He spoke calmly, he thought of everything--he thought even of the possibility that he might have to pay the death penalty for his deed.

For who could tell how the authorities would judge this murder?

It had indeed been a murder by merest chance only. Thorne told his old nurse all about it. When she had given him the signal he had hurried down into the garden, and walking quietly along the path, he had found his wife at the garden gate in conversation with a man who was a stranger to him. That part of their talk which he overheard told him that the man was a blackmailer, and that he was making money on the fact that he had caught Theobald Leining cheating at cards.

This chance had put the officer into Winkler's power. The clerk knew that he could get nothing from the guilty man himself, so he had turned to the latter's sister, who was rich, and had threatened to bring about a disgraceful scandal if she did not pay for his silence. For more than a year he had been getting money from her by means of these threats.

All this was clear from the conversation. The man spoke in tones of impertinence, or sneering obsequiousness, the woman s voice showed contempt and hatred.

Thorne's blood began to boil. His fingers tightened about the revolver which he had brought with him to be ready for any emergency, and he stepped designedly upon a twig which broke under his feet with a noise.

He wanted to frighten his wife and send her back to the house. This was what did occur. But the blackmailer was alarmed as well and fled hastily from the garden when he realised that he was not alone with his victim.

Thorne followed the man's disappearing figure, calling him to halt. He did not call loudly for he too wanted to avoid a scandal. His intention was to force the man to follow him into the house, to get his written confession of blackmail--then to finish him off with a large sum once for all and kick him out of the place.

In this manner Herbert Thorne thought to free himself and his wife from the persecutions of the rascal. His heart was filled with hatred towards the man. For since Mrs. Bernauer had told him what she had discovered, he knew that it was because of this wretch that his once so happy wife was losing her strength, her health and her peace of mind.

He followed the fleeing man and called to him several times to halt.

Finally Winkler half turned and called out over his shoulder: "You'd better leave me alone! Do you want all Vienna to know that your brother-in-law ought to be in jail?"

These words robbed Thorne of all control. He pressed the trigger under his finger and the bullet struck the man before him, who had turned to continue his flight, full in the back. "And that is how I became a murderer." With these words Herbert Thorne concluded his narrative. He appeared quite calm now. He was really calmer, for the strain of the deed, which was justified in his eyes, was not so great upon his conscience as had been the strain of the secret of it.

In his own eyes he had only killed a beast who chanced to bear the form of a man. But of course in the eyes of the world this was a murder like any other, and the man who had committed it knew that he was under the ban of the law, that it was only a chance that the arm of justice had not yet reached out for him. And now this arm had reached out for him, although it was no longer necessary. For Herbert Thorne was not the man to allow another to suffer in his stead.

As soon as he knew that another had been arrested and was under suspicion of the murder, he knew that there was nothing more for him but open confession. But he wished to avoid a scandal even now. If he died by his own hand, then the first cause of all this trouble, his brother-in-law's rascality, could still be hidden.

But now his care was all in vain and Herbert Thorne knew that he must submit to the inevitable. Side by side with his old friend he sat on the deck of the boat that took them back to the Riva dei Schiavoni. Muller sat at some distance from them. The pale sad-faced woman, and the pale sad-faced man had much to say to each other that a stranger might not hear.

When the little boat reached the landing stage, there were but a few steps more to the door of the Hotel Danieli. From a balcony on the first floor a young woman stood looking down onto the ca.n.a.l. She too was pale and her eyes were heavy with anxiety. She had been pale and anxious even then, the day when she left the beautiful old house in the quiet street, to start on this pleasure trip to Venice.

It had been no pleasure trip to her. She had seen the change in her husband, a change that struck deep into his very being and altered him in everything except in his love and tender care for her. "Oh, why is it? what is the matter?" she asked her self a thousand times a day.

Could it be possible that he had discovered the secret which tortured her, the only secret she had ever had from him, the secret she had longed to confess to him a hundred times but had lacked courage to do it.

For she had sinned deeply against her husband, she knew. Her fear and her confusion had driven her deeper and deeper into the waters of deceit until it was impossible for her to find the words that would have brought help and comfort from the man whom she loved more than anything else in the world. In the very earliest stages of Winkler's persecution she had lost her head completely and instead of confessing to her husband and asking for his aid and protection, she had p.a.w.ned the rich jewels which had been his wedding present to get the money demanded by the blackmailer. In her ignorance she had thought that this one sum would satisfy him.

But he came again and again, demanding money which she saved from her pin money, from her household allowance, thus taking what she had intended to use to redeem her jewels. The pledge was lost, and her jewels gone forever. From now on, Mrs. Thorne lived in a terror which sapped her strength and drank her life blood drop by drop. Any hour might bring discovery, a discovery which she feared would shake her husband's love for her. The poor weak little woman grew pale and ill.

She wrote finally to her step-brother, but he could think of no way out; he wrote only that if the matter came to a scandal there would be nothing for him to do but to kill himself. This was one reason more for her silence, and Mrs. Thome faded to a wan shadow of her former sunny self.

As she looked down from the balcony, she was like a woman suffering from a deathly illness. A new terror had come to her heart because her husband had gone away so early without telling her why or whither he had gone. When she saw him coming towards the door of the hotel, pale and drooping, and when she saw Mrs. Bernauer beside him, her heart seemed to stand still. She crept back from the window and stood in the middle of the room as Herbert Thorne and his former nurse entered.

"What has happened?" This was all she could say as she looked into the distraught face of the housekeeper, into her husband's sad eyes.

He led her to a chair, then knelt beside her and told her all.

"Outside the door stands the man who will take me back to Vienna--and you, my dearest, you must go to your father." He concluded his story with these words.

She bent down over him and kissed him. "'No, I am going with you," she said softly, strangely calm; "why should I leave you now? Is it not I who am the cause of this dreadful thing?"

And then she made her confession, much too late. And she went with him, back to the city of their home. It seemed to them both quite natural that she should do so.

When the Northern Express rolled out of Venice that afternoon, three people sat together in a compartment, the curtains of which were drawn close. They were the unhappy couple and their faithful servant. And outside in the corridor of the railway carriage, a small, slight man walked up and down--up and down. He had pressed a gold coin into the conductor's hand, with the words: "The party in there do not wish to be disturbed; the lady is ill."

Herbert Thorne's trial took place several weeks later. Every possible extenuating circ.u.mstance was brought to bear upon his sentence. Five years only was to be the term of his imprisonment, his punishment for the crime of a single moment of anger.

His wife waited for him in patient love. She did not go to Graz, but continued to live in the old mansion with the mansard roof. Her father was with her. The brother Theobald, the cause of all this suffering to those who had shielded him at the expense of their own happiness, had at last done the only good deed of his life--had put an end to his useless existence with his own hand.

Father and daughter waited patiently for the return of the man who had sinned and suffered for their sake. They spoke of him only in terms of the tenderest affection and respect.

And indeed, seldom has any condemned murderer met with the respect of the entire community as Herbert Thorne did. The tone of the newspapers, and public opinion, evinced by hundreds of letters from friends, acquaintances, and from strangers, was a great boon to the solitary man in his cell, and to the three loving hearts in the old house. And at the end of two years the clemency of the Monarch ended his term of imprisonment, and Herbert Thorne was set free, a step which met with the approval of the entire city.

He returned to the home where love and affection awaited him, ready to make him forget what he had suffered. But the silver threads in his dark hair and a certain quiet seriousness in his manner, and in the hearts of all the dwellers in the old mansion, showed that the occurrence of that fatal 27th of September had thrown a shadow over them all which was not to be shaken off.

Joseph Muller brought many other cases to a successful solution. But for years after this particular case had been won, he was followed, as by a shadow, by a man who watched over him, and who, whenever danger threatened, stood over the frail detective as if to take the blow upon himself. He is a clever a.s.sistant, too, and no one who had seen Johann Knoll the day that he was put into the cell on suspicion of murder would have believed that the idle tramp could become again such a useful member of society. These are the victories that Joseph Muller considers his greatest.