The Crime and the Criminal Part 43

Now that boat is burned!

My first impulse, when I discovered that we were neighbours, was to fly before he made the same discovery on his own account. Had he chosen, he might have made my position absolutely untenable. While this mood was on me, I did my little best to conceal the fact. When I went out, I took care not to pa.s.s his house, lest he should see me from the windows. And the funny part of it was that the first time I did pa.s.s his house, he saw me.

The papers were full of the Three Bridges tragedy. The hue-and-cry was hot against the man who had travelled in that blood-stained carriage.

What amazed me was his continued silence. It showed not only abject cowardice, but drivelling idiocy to boot. Anything was better--for him!--than keeping still. It was the Friday night. I had some letters to post. I had a headache. I felt that I must have some fresh air, or a change of air if fresh air was not obtainable; so I took them myself to the pillar-box at the end of the road. Doing so involved pa.s.sing Tommy's residence. But it was dark; there was more than the suspicion of fog--the risk seemed small.

I went on the opposite side of the street. The fog was so thick that, when I had despatched the letters, it seemed absurd to take precautions.

"I'll stroll back past Tommy's. Why should I be afraid of him?"

I strolled. The fog appeared to be thicker every moment. The houses in the street, externally, were as like as two peas. I really found it difficult to find out exactly whereabouts I was. I was thinking of Tommy, and of how eagerly he was being hunted, and of what a sensation I might make by sending his address to Scotland Yard--when there he was in front of me!

Right close in front of me!

He was standing at the bottom of a flight of steps--his own steps--hatless, his hands in his trousers' pockets, as if, like me, he had come out to get a change of air. Suddenly he became conscious of my presence. He turned my way, and stared. The encounter was more than I had bargained for. It made me feel a trifle awkward. But the effect which it had on him was most astounding. The look which came upon his face actually frightened me--it's a fact! I had not thought that a human countenance could have been capable of an expression of such awful horror. To look at him--and I had to look!--made me go all cold.

As I advanced, he went--automatically, I am sure--backwards up the steps, never removing his eyes from off me, the awful something that was on his face intensifying every second. At the bottom of the steps I paused--I had to; something made me. I don't know what he thought; but, as he saw me standing there, he made a convulsive movement backwards, went into the house, and banged the door.

I am cool enough as a rule. It takes something to put me off my balance. But I was off my balance then. The whole thing was so unlooked for, and seemed so strange; it unnerved me. When Tommy had gone I found that I was trembling.

But the incident was not by any means concluded.

When I had gone a few steps further on, I all but cannoned into what seemed to be a crowd of men, who, of malice prepense, were blocking up the pavement. What with the fog and my state of fl.u.s.ter, I did not perceive what they were till I was right upon them.

They were policemen.

My nerves were in such a condition of tension that, when I realised that fact, it was all I could do to prevent myself from screaming.

"I beg your pardon," I mumbled. "I did not see you."

"It's all right, miss," said a voice. "Pa.s.s on."

I pa.s.sed on. But I had not pa.s.sed on another dozen yards when, it seemed to me, by a sort of inspiration, I guessed what might have brought them there. What _might_ have brought them there? What had?

Be the consequences what they might, I felt that I must stay and see what was about to happen. Turning, I went back a little way; and, keeping as much in the shadow as I could, I stood and watched.

A man, who was dressed in ordinary private clothes, went on in front.

The policemen divided in two sections. Two of them followed closely on this man's heels. The rest went out into the road.

Just as I expected, the man in plain clothes pa.s.sed up Tommy's steps.

He hammered with the knocker at Tommy's door. The door was opened. He went in. The two policemen went in with him.

I knew that, even while I was standing watching there, Tommy was being arrested for the murder of me!

The confusion of my ideas filled me with panic terror. He had seen me not a minute back. He had only to tell the policemen so. They would come and find me there. There would be an end to all my dreams.

I rushed home. For the first time in my life I could not sleep. Indeed, I scarcely tried to sleep. All night I lay in agony. A thousand thoughts came crowding on my brain. I lost my self-control. I was half stupefied with fear. I wished that there were a hundred miles between my house and Tommy's. More than once, even in the middle of the night, I nearly made a bolt of it. I was so oppressed by the consciousness that he had only to send these policemen five doors along the street, and there was I.

But I did not lose every fragment of common sense. I did not become an utter fool. When the morning came, I was still there to see it out.

Next day I never moved outside the door. I bought all the evening papers. They were selling them in the streets all day. Tommy filled them all. "Arrest of the Three Bridges Murderer!" "Examination before the Magistrates!" They were shouting the words in the streets all day.

It seemed that they had taken him to East Grinstead, wherever that might be, early in the morning, and brought him before the magistrates directly they got him there. To me the whole business was amazing. Why had he not told them at once that he had seen me, and put the police on my track? I was close at hand. They could scarcely have failed to find me. So far as he was concerned, there would have been an end of the affair upon the spot.

But Tommy's ways always were beyond my finding out.

What the newspapers called his examination was of the most perfunctory kind. The police simply said that they had arrested him, and he was remanded for a week.

And on Thursday Mr. Townsend was coming to dine.

CHAPTER XXV.

MR. TOWNSEND'S DOUBLE.

That Thursday was wet. It drizzled all day long. I was not feeling well. I had had trouble with one of my maids--caught her tampering with a lock, and sent her packing on the spot. Altogether I was feeling run down.

The best of us women get the blues at times!

Things were worrying me, as things will if one is not feeling quite the thing. I was almost disposed to tell myself that I had made a mistake in coming to England. After all, I should have done better by remaining on the other side. Here there were so many things which were against me--in England there is no mercy for the woman that repenteth. And getting myself mixed up in this business was scarcely a promising beginning.

The arrival of my friend, the gentleman, acted as a pick-me-up. It did a poor, nerveless creature good to gaze on so vivid a representative of sunshine and of strength. I was leaning back upon a couch when he came in--somehow his knocking at the door had set all my pulses twittering.

It was with an effort I looked up and met his eyes.

He looked so well in evening dress--it was the first time I had seen him in it. When one has lived for years with savages one notices such little things.

"It is good of you to come to cheer me. I am so much in want of being cheered."

He laughed, retaining my hand for a minute in his.

"The want is common to us both. I am in want of being cheered as much as you--we will cheer each other." He sat down on a little easy-chair, which he drew in front of me. "I have only just returned from Devonshire, which is like coming from the sunshine into the night."

"Have you been there alone?"

"I have been staying with a friend--Sir Haselton Jardine."

Sir Haselton Jardine? Where, quite recently, had I heard that name? Of course! It was the name of the famous counsel. I had seen it stated in that day's paper that he was to be retained by the Crown to prosecute Tommy.

I wondered if that item of news had come Mr. Townsend's way.

"Sir Haselton Jardine? Is that the lawyer?"

"Yes. I suppose he's the greatest barrister at the Bar just now."

"Didn't I see that he was going to have something to do with this murder there's all the stir about?"

I had to let it out--I could not help it. So far as any effect which the allusion had upon my visitor was concerned I need not have tried.