The Motor Pirate Part 29

On this latter point I must mention the conclusion arrived at by _The Speaker_. This sober-minded and extremely British review declared that his animating motive was "the strong rock of equity, or abstract justice," inasmuch as, by princ.i.p.ally directing his attention to motorists, he was avenging _The Speaker's_ quarrel with a cla.s.s which this journal held in particular abhorrence. Naturally, both Evie and myself smiled at the thought that the Motor Pirate was a conservative gentleman, anxious only to restore to the highways of England something of their pristine calm. For myself, I inclined to the belief that he was a remarkable specimen of the megalomaniac, whose exploits were prompted much more by the desire for notoriety than by any altruistic motive, or even by any sordid consideration regarding the plunder which he secured.

Certainly had he been a mere criminal, impelled by the desire for the easy acquisition of wealth, he could have pursued his career for a much longer period than he actually did. As for my wife, with a woman's natural tendency to read a romance into any and every development of human activity, she held fast to the opinion that the Pirate's extraordinary career was the outcome of an overmastering pa.s.sion for herself. The probability is, that in his brain all these motives operated at different times. The natural love of plunder, inherent in the criminal mind, is as often as not accompanied by a morbid delight in awakening the wonder of the public by the performance of startling deeds and, in the same temperament, it is not unusual to discover the romantic nature developed to a considerable degree. But, from the data at our command, I fancy it would have been impossible even for the experienced psychologist to decide which, so to speak, was the master impulse.

Perhaps, however, the few facts concerning him, which came into our possession afterwards, tend to clear up these points to some degree.

Certainly they left me with a clearer light upon his individuality.

To these facts I am indebted to Inspector Forrest, who, some six months after our famous ride together in pursuit of the pirate, managed to find time to pay a flying visit to our Norfolk home, where we had continued to dwell in peaceful seclusion.

It was at dinner, on the night of his arrival, that Forrest first hinted that he had picked up some details of Mannering's life-history, and of course nothing would content Evie but a promise that we should hear what he had discovered. So, directly the meal was finished, we adjourned for our coffee and cigars to my sanctum, where, in front of a comfortable fire, Forrest made no difficulty about satisfying our curiosity.

"You see," he began, when his cigar was once well alight, "I was every bit as curious as Mrs. Sutgrove."

"Or myself," I interrupted.

"Or Mr. Sutgrove," said the detective, smiling, "for there is precious little difference between the s.e.xes so far as curiosity is concerned, in spite of the generally accepted opinion on the matter. But being curious, I naturally made the most minute search when I searched his place at St. Alban's. I didn't find much there, it is true, but I did secure a clue which ultimately led me to some lodgings which he had occupied some three or four years previously, and there, by the merest good luck, I discovered that when he had departed he had left behind him a worn-out travelling-bag, and in that bag was a bundle of papers which supplied me with sufficient information to reconstruct his history to some extent, though I should not like to swear to the absolute accuracy of every detail of his biography as I see it."

"Was there nothing at all found at St. Alban's then?" asked Evie.

"I fancy you must have seen in the papers a pretty full account of all that the police discovered there?" said the detective.

"Yes," replied Evie. "We read a lot of stories, but they varied to such an extent that we really did not know what to believe."

Forrest smiled. "Now I come to think of it, the reporters did give their imaginations free reins, but you can take it from me that, with the exception of the plunder he ama.s.sed after his return from that Continental trip, and the apparatus for the production of the liquid hydrogen, there was very little in his house of interest to me or you.

There was his bank-book, and some correspondence with a learned professor at the Royal Inst.i.tution. I followed up both clues. At the R.

I. I discovered nothing. Mannering had merely posed as a wealthy amateur in chemistry, and of course he met with every a.s.sistance when he had asked for help in following up his researches into the behaviour of liquid gases. At his bank also, very little was known about him. When he had come to St. Alban's he had opened an account by a payment into it of six or seven thousand pounds in Bank of England notes. He had drawn steadily upon the account until it was nearly exhausted, and, in point of fact, there was only a few pounds to his credit from the time when he commenced his career on the road, until a week or two after his return from Amsterdam, when he paid in two thousand pounds in gold, and a fortnight later swelled his balance with a similar amount."

"That was the proceeds of the Brighton mail robbery," I remarked.

Forrest nodded. "That was his only really big coup. As for his other plunder, he probably disposed of the proceeds of all his early cruises on the Continent, at the same time that he sold the diamonds. That which he obtained afterwards was found intact in the safe in his bedroom.

Heavens! What an opportunity I missed by not taking out a search-warrant for his house. When we paid our midnight visit, there must have been ample evidence behind the steel door to have convicted him."

The detective was silent for awhile, and bit savagely at his cigar.

"He was not a wealthy man, then," I remarked.

"No," replied Forrest. "There was no trace of his owning any property anywhere, and his expenditure on the gas plant and on his motors--we found that the various parts had been made to specification at a variety of works in England and abroad--had eaten heavily into his capital, so that at the time of the commencement of his career he must have been very nearly penniless. Whether he built the motor with the idea of utilizing it for the purpose he ultimately put it to, of course I cannot say, but I have a shrewd suspicion that he really did design it for the purpose, since from what I have learned of him the predatory instinct must have been pretty strongly developed in him."

The detective paused for a minute, and, flicking the ash off his cigar, gazed meditatively into the fire.

"You shall judge for yourselves," he continued. "Unfortunately, I cannot begin right at the beginning, for I do not know where he was born, nor who his parents were. I can only guess at these facts from the knowledge that, as a boy, he was at school in the south of England, and that then his name was Ram Krishna Roy."

"What?" I asked, in amazement. "A Hindu?"

"An Eurasian, I should fancy," replied Forrest. "He had been sent to school in England by one of those petty Indian princes, who still exercise sovereignty under British suzerainty."

"How did you discover that?" asked Evie.

"It was like this, Mrs. Sutgrove," replied Forrest. "Amongst the papers I spoke about as being in the old portmanteau, were a number of letters written in characters I could not understand. I could see they were oriental, and that was as much as I could make of them, so I took them to a noted oriental scholar who translated them for me. The language was Urdu, and the writer was a munshi, who was obviously communicating with an old pupil. There were so many references to scenes with which the person to whom the letters were addressed, as well as the writer, was familiar, that it was quite clear that the former must have been brought up amidst purely native surroundings. There were one or two more obscure allusions which led me to conclude that the boy's mother must have been a white woman, and from what we saw of him there can be no doubt but that he was white on one side."

"n.o.body would have taken him to be aught but an Englishman," murmured Evie.

"No," said Forrest. "I was intensely surprised when I discovered these proofs of his ident.i.ty and at first I thought they could not apply to him, but before I come to the connecting link, let me mention one curious thing in the letters, which may do something to explain the curious influence which Mannering exerted over Mrs. Sutgrove."

"He hypnotized me, I am sure," declared Evie, decidedly.

"Very possibly," replied the detective. "In nearly every letter was to be found an admonition to the effect--I cannot give you a verbatim translation--that the writer hoped his old pupil would not forget that to him was entrusted the secret power of Siva, which would, by practice, enable him to mould all men to his will."

"If he had possessed that," I interrupted, "there would have been no necessity for him to have practised piracy on the high-road."

"True," said Forrest. "But it is quite possible that Mrs. Sutgrove's conjecture is correct, and that even at that early age Mannering had learnt something about hypnotism from his native instructor, for I am very certain that of these semi-occult sciences, the East has much more precise knowledge than is realized by the Western world."

"Very likely," said my wife, shuddering slightly at the remembrance. "He certainly had a most singular power over me."

"He probably increased his knowledge when he returned to his native land, which, I gathered, must have taken place when he was about seventeen. Then there is a break for nearly ten years in his history."

"I don't quite see how you connect Ram Krishna Roy with Mannering," I interpolated.

"I'm coming to that," replied Forrest. "With these letters was another in its original envelope addressed in the same hand to Julian Mannering at San Francisco. It was the most interesting letter of the lot. It was full of reproaches addressed to the dear pupil, who had cut himself off from the asceticism of the East, and devoted himself to the gross materialism of Western civilization. It concluded by the expression of an intention to once more attempt to persuade him to return by a personal appeal. On the back of the letter was a note in Mannering's handwriting. 'Old Chatterji kept his promise. I had quite a long conversation with him in the ballroom last night. Everybody thought I was drunk or mad to be talking Hindustani, apparently to empty air.

However, that's the last of him. I've done with the East.'".

"You make him more a man of mystery than ever," I exclaimed.

"I can't help it," said Forrest. "Perhaps his old tutor really did appear to him. Perhaps Mannering was mad. Who knows? Both are dead.

However, he seems to have carried out his intention of not returning to India. Ram Krishna Roy disappeared from that time forth, and Julian Mannering took his place. He seems to have been doing nothing at San Francisco at the time, but a little later he appears to have accepted an appointment as engineer to a mine in Arizona. He left the berth suddenly a few months later, owing to some trouble about the wife of one of the miners. The miner was shot, and his comrades were so incensed that Mannering had to depart hot-foot. Then for awhile I can only guess at his occupation from some newspaper cuttings which he had preserved.

These point to his identification with the leader of a gang of desperadoes whose most notable exploit was the successful holding up of a train which had a considerable quant.i.ty of specie on board."

"I remember him describing the affair," said Evie, "though he represented himself as on the side of the attacked."

"The only a.s.sistance he gave to the plundered was to a.s.sist them to a better land by the aid of his gun. He escaped, though, and made his way to Australia, and once again he resumed the practice of his profession,--mining engineering. For three or four years he was engaged at a newly-opened mine in the northern territory of West Australia. But instinct was too strong for him. He must really have had a strong dash of the blood of some of those Indian hill-tribe freebooters in his veins, for he never seems to have been able to resist the prospect of plunder, and the likelihood of having to fight for it seems to have been an additional inducement. Thus, at the mine, under his charge, it was the custom to send, periodically, the gold extracted, under a strong escort, to the nearest town, some forty miles distant. For a long time these consignments were delivered with perfect safety. Then, after a particularly rich vein had been struck, it became necessary to forward a very large consignment of bullion. Contrary to the usual practice, only two men were sent in charge of it. Their dead bodies were afterwards discovered, and the gold was never recovered. No one seems to have had the least suspicion that the gentlemanly engineer at the mine was likely to have had something to do with the business, and when, shortly afterward, he resigned his post and took a pa.s.sage to Europe, he received the highest possible testimonials from his manager and directors. I have no doubt, myself, that he was the prime mover in the robbery, for his salary was a small one, and directly afterwards he spent six months in Paris, where his expenditure would have been lavish for a millionaire."

"That was where my father met him," remarked Evie. "I remember him expressing surprise at the simplicity of Mannering's life at St. Alban's in view of the luxury with which he had been surrounded when they had met previously."

"Just so," said the detective. "But his Paris career ended as it had commenced. He disappeared suddenly, without a word of farewell to any of his acquaintance, and had it not been for one bit of evidence, I should have had not the slightest idea as to what he had been doing with himself in the interval between that time and his arrival at St.

Alban's. You may remember that a scientific expedition was despatched by the Dutch government about six years ago to make some investigations in the interior of New Guinea?"

I shook my head.

"It started six months after Mannering disappeared from Paris, and from the time it left Batavia _en route_ for New Guinea not a word has ever been heard of it."

"You cannot mean to infer that Mannering had anything to do with that?"

I asked, incredulously.

"I infer nothing," replied Forrest. "But I do know that a pocketbook, which had belonged to a chemist attached to the exploring party, was one of the doc.u.ments I found in his bag. The book contained a number of notes upon the liquefaction of gases, and these may very likely have first interested Mannering in the subject. As I have since discovered from a search of the registers at Lloyds that there were quite a number of ships lost about the same time in those seas, I cannot help thinking that our friend had served an apprenticeship under the black flag at sea before taking to land piracy."

"At that rate he must have been the greatest criminal on earth," I declared.

"He was certainly the biggest I ever came across," replied Forrest, "and my only regret is that I was unable to secure him in order that he might have judicially paid the penalty for his crimes."

"It was a pity," I said, "though I fancy if we had trapped him he would have found some means of cheating the gallows and making a melodramatic exit from the world."