Chapter 3

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

"Sir Simon Tedder!" Inspector Trent--as the red-faced official was called--relaxed his stiffness, so far as to display astonishment. "The millionaire, who made his fortune out of jam and pickles; who has a house at Tarhaven?"

"Yes!" faltered Herries weakly, and sinking into a chair near the door, he covered his shameful face. Trent, seeing tears trickling between the nerveless fingers, felt convinced, with the assurance of the shortsighted, that his experiment had proved successful. The guilty man's self-control had given way at the sight of his victim. So thought a jack-in-office, who was unable to see farther than his nose by reason of natural and official limitations. But the truth was--and a medical man would have surmised it--that Herries, with his long tramp, his weakened frame, his despairing outlook, and the surprising sight of his relative lying dead by violence, suddenly became as unstrung as an hysterical woman. The tears relieved him, and had they not broken forth, he would have become insane at the mere thought of this terrible disaster falling upon him, after years and years of cruel misfortune. He felt, and very naturally, like a tormented rat in a trap, and could see no means of escape.

"Sir Simon Tedder," repeated Trent, with a gratified glance at the still white face of the dead, "the millionaire," he rolled the agreeable word on his tongue. "This will be an important affair!" and throwing out his chest, he swelled with triumph at the thought of the fame and praise which so notorious a case would bring him. "Why did you kill him, young man?"

Herries, ashamed of the momentary weakness, dropped his hands and dashed the moisture from his eyes.

"I--did--not--kill--him!" he declared with emphatic slowness.

Trent grew red and indignant at what he conceived to be a shameless denial.

"I have heard the landlord's story," he retorted, pompously.

"And have therefore made up your mind, without hearing the other side, that I am guilty," said Herries, bitterly. "Is it the custom of the English law to hear only the accuser?"

"I am now prepared to listen to the defence," announced Trent, hastily, and in spite of the strong evidence, and his own belief, he felt sorry for the wreck before him, although red-tapeism condemned the too purely human feeling.

Leaving a stolid policeman to guard the door of the death-chamber, pending the arrival of the doctor, Trent led his prisoner down the stairs, and into the stuffy back-parlour, which Sir Simon had occupied on the previous evening. Mrs. Narby glared at the unfortunate man, whom she accused of having ruined her inn, and Pope's weak, silly face, alive with morbid curiosity, could be seen over the brawny maternal shoulder. Herries shuddered. In spite of many misfortunes, he had always been popular in his Bohemian world, and it was both new and unpleasant for him to see venomous looks cast upon him. Last night he had been merely an object of contemptuous interest; now he was like a tiger prisoned behind bars, at which everyone looked with dread and hatred.

As the short autumnal evening, rendered even more immediate by the still prevailing foes, was rapidly closing in, Trent lighted the cheap lamp which swung over the round table. The light and the oily smell came simultaneously, as both door and window were closed, and the room was crowded with frowsy furniture. The atmosphere was sickly and malodorous, and Herries never entered a stuffy apartment in after years without recalling that hopeless evening, when his misfortunes culminated in nothing less than a Waterloo.

The Inspector seated himself at the round table in a magisterial manner, and produced a portentous pocket-book. He permitted Herries to sit down in an antique arm-chair, slippery with horse-hair, and marvellously uncomfortable with an antimacassar of Berlin wool-work. Having moistened a pencil with his tongue he proceeded to ask what questions occurred to his not over-clever brain.

"What is your name?"

"Angus Herries."

"Your occupation?"

"I am a doctor, a ship's doctor, and I came last night from Pierside, where the Arctic sealer 'Nansen' is lying."

"Why did you come to this almost unknown inn?"

"I walked from Pierside, intending to seek a friend at Tarhaven. My strength gave way, and I stayed here to eat and sleep."

Trent took down these answers thoughtfully, then looked in what he fondly thought was a piercing manner at the suspected man.

"You told me that you did not know the deceased?"

"I did. That is perfectly true. Until you showed me the corpse, I was quite ignorant that Sir Simon had been killed. I did not even know that he was in this house."

"You knew Sir Simon Tedder then?"

"Yes!" Herries hesitated, then looked boldly at the officer, "I have nothing to conceal," he declared loudly, "Sir Simon is my uncle."

Trent looked at the shabby prisoner with great surprise; the reply amazed him, as coming from such a tramp.

"It is impossible," he said, sharply. "Sir Simon was wealthy and much respected. He would not allow his nephew to go about in rags."

Herries looked sullen.

"My uncle and I quarrelled."

"Oh," said the Inspector in a peculiar tone.

"Do you take that admission as a sign of guilt?" inquired Herries, ironically.

"I take it to mean that you had bad feelings towards the deceased."

The prisoner shook his head.

"You are wrong, I had no bad feelings."

"And yet you quarrelled?"

"Violently!"

"Take care. What you say may be used against--" Herries rose with an angry gesture.

"An innocent man such as I am does not need to be careful of his words," he cried. "My life history is miserable enough certainly, but there is no page of which I need be ashamed."

"For an educated man to be in such a plight--."

The prisoner again interrupted.

"Do you know what Jonah's Luck is?

"I know that the person you mention was swallowed by a whale," said Trent with dignity. "I am not entirely a heathen."

In spite of his misery Herries could not help smiling.

"I give you the whale," he said sarcastically. "In spite of my sojourn in the Arctic regions, I have escaped the gullet of that animal. I allude to the prophet's luck. Everything went wrong with him, as it has done with me. Do you know what it is, Inspector, to be unlucky--to try your hardest to earn bread and a roof in the face of circumstances too hard to conquer? Have you ever found doors shut against you? Has your family ever regarded you as a hopeless black sheep, because you had not the money to wash your wool white? I have been hungry, starving, almost without clothes, certainly without fire on freezing days. Life has crushed me into the mire, and every struggle I made to rise, was met with a fresh blow."

"Such miseries as these," said Dogberry, sapiently, "lead men to commit crimes."

"In my case, no," cried Herries, striking the table heavily. "I can look any man in the face, as I look into yours now, and can say that I am honest, in thought, word, and deed."

His clear blue eyes looked into those of the Inspector, and it was the official who first gave way. Turning over the leaves of his pocket-book, to disguise the impression which Herries' frankness had made on him, he took refuge in irritation, a sure sign that he had no feasible reply to make.

"This isn't what we are here to talk about," he said testily. "I wish to know what defence you have to make, to the charge brought against you by the landlord?"

"What defence?--that I am innocent."

"On what grounds?"

"On the grounds that I never expected to find Sir Simon here, that I did not know he was in the house, that I have no grudge against him."

"How do I know that?" asked Trent, cunningly.

"Because I tell you that such is the case," said Herries haughtily, "and if you will listen to a short account of my life, you may be able to conquer the prejudice against me, which the couple who keep this miserable inn have instilled into your breast."

"I am not prejudiced," snapped Trent, nettled, "say what you have to say, and let us end this business as speedily as possible."

"I am only too anxious to do so," said Herries coldly and folding his arms, still standing. "I am the son of Sir Simon Tedder's only sister. He was a hard man, always, and when she married against his will, he would never help her. My mother and father both died when I was in my teens. They left enough money for me to gain an education and secure a doctor's degree. I practised on shore with bad success, and so went to sea. I have been away from England for about two years, and since then I have never set eyes on my uncle, until you showed me his corpse just now."

"When did you see him last?"

"Two years ago. I was doing badly, and called upon him to learn if he would help me. He might have done so, but that I was in love with his daughter, Maud. I had met her at the house of some friends in Edinburgh, and saw her frequently. We loved, and when I saw my uncle I told him this. He became angry, and turned me out of the house. By his order Maud sent back my letters, and since then I have had nothing to do with either of them. Why then, I ask you, should I kill my uncle, seeing that I cannot benefit in any way by such a crime? I landed here two days ago, unknown and friendless. As I said, I was on my way to Tarhaven, to see a friend, when I put up at this accursed inn last night."

"Who is your friend?"

"Dr. James Browne of Elgar Avenue, Tarhaven. We were fellow students."

"I know him," said the Inspector, taking down the name. "Can he vouch for your respectability?"

Herries smiled bitterly.

"Respectability and myself parted company long ago," said he with a shrug, "but Browne knows all that I am telling you now, even to the courting of my cousin Maud."

"What did he think of your quarrelling with your uncle?"

"He approved of my leaving the house. As to the quarrel, Browne knows that I have a fiery temper."

"Oh," interrupted Trent in his peculiar tone, and thinking that he had chanced upon something suspicious. "So you have a fiery temper?"

"Yes," admitted Herries, not dreaming of what such an admission might mean to him. "But only when it is aroused by injustice and insults. Last night it was not so roused. I went to bed shortly before eight o'clock, ignorant, as I have said several times, that my uncle was in the house. Had I known that, I would have gone on to Tarhaven, weary though I was, rather than have slept under the same roof with a man who insulted my mother and myself shamefully."

Trent shook his head.

"All very fine. But the key of Sir Simon's room was found on the floor of your bedroom. The razor, with which his throat was cut, was in your possession, and there is blood on the sleeve of your shirt."

The young man hastily stripped off his coat, and held the right hand sleeve of his shirt under the lamp, close to Trent's eyes.

"There are the smears," he said quietly, "and you will see that they are made by fingers dipped in blood having been drawn down the sleeve. Could I have done that myself? Also, when I found the razor on my quilt when I awoke, I called up the landlord to ask him what it meant. I knew nothing of the crime at the time, neither did Narby, as he will tell you. Were I guilty, would I have acted in so foolish a manner?"

"Oh yes, you would," said Trent, dictatorially, "criminals are very artful, as I have often found."

It was apparently impossible to convince a man so bent upon finding proofs of guilt where none existed, so Herries abandoned persuasion and turned away with a shrug.

"I have nothing more to say!"

"Yes, you have," insisted Trent, stupidly. "Why did you conceal that Sir Simon expected you last night?"

"He did not. He never knew that I was here, or even in England, as we had not corresponded since he turned me out of his house at Tarhaven two years ago. The maid Elspeth said that Sir Simon expected a gentleman. I was not the man."

"You were the only stranger who came last night," said Trent digging his pencil thoughtfully into the book.

"No. The expected visitor must have come last night, and have slept here. Mr. Narby will tell you that Mrs. Narby saw him pass through the tap-room at eight this morning."

"Did he not stop to pay the bill?"

"Mrs. Narby thought that the man was Sir Simon." The Inspector rose quickly.

"What?" he asked in an amazed tone.

"I am only telling you what Narby told me, before either of us knew that a murder had taken place," said Herries tartly. "He declared that his wife had seen the gentleman, who occupied this parlour last night,--and he was Sir Simon, as we know--pass through the tap-room at eight as he had arranged."

"As he had arranged?"

"Yes. He paid for the rooms, and a meal last night, so I was told."

"But if he was killed, he couldn't have passed out."

"Not unless he was a spirit," said Herries, with a shrug, "but the man whom Mrs. Narby took to be Sir Simon, certainly, according to her story, had a fur coat on, that belonged to my uncle, the same in which he arrived here last night."

Trent wrinkled his brow perplexedly. What Herries said quite upset his calculations, and he found himself face to face with a criminal mystery, such as had never before come into his official life. The accused man, saw his advantage and followed it up.

"Why should not this unknown man have murdered my uncle," he said quickly, "and have entered my bedroom to implicate me in the crime?"

"Why should he have done that?"

"I cannot say. But my bedroom door was not locked, and I was fast asleep, being quite worn out. The assassin left the razor and the key; he drew his bloody fingers down the shirt sleeve of my right arm, which probably lay outside the quilt. These are his marks," and Herries again shook his stained sleeve in the officer's face.

By this time Trent was more himself, and aggressively official.

"It is not for you to teach me my duty," he said, his self-love wounded. "The people who keep this inn must be examined before I can come to any conclusion."

"You might also examine Mr. Gowrie," suggested Herries quickly, "that is, if you can find him."

"Who is Mr. Gowrie?"

"An old tutor of mine, whom I found in the tap-room last night. He went away--to London, I believe--at seven."

"Upon my word, Mr. Herries," said the Inspector sarcastically, "for a man, who merely _chanced_ on this inn," he emphasised the word, "you seem to have met, not only with relatives, but with friends."

"I met my uncle on his death-bed, and Gowrie in the tap-room," said Herries, heatedly. "It is strange, I admit, since I came here so very unexpectedly."

"Extremely strange," said Trent, scoffingly. "I don't believe in coincidences myself. Every word you say seems to connect you more and more with the crime. This Gowrie may have been your accomplice."

"If so, he has left me in the lurch," said Herries, sitting down wearily, and with all the fire gone out of him. "There seems to be a kind of fatality haunting my steps. Jonah's luck, I expect."

Trent tried to keep up his official dignity, as he went to open the door to call Mrs. Narby. But on passing Herries, the young man looked so dejected, that he clapped him on the shoulder.

"Cheer up," he said in rather a shamefaced manner, "the evidence is very black against you, I admit; but you may be able to clear yourself yet."

"Find out the man who passed through the tap-room this morning at eight, and my character will be cleared," said Herries.

Rather ashamed of his momentary yielding. Trent opened the door.

"I will thank you not to teach me my duty, sir," he said in a dignified manner, and Herries shrugged his shoulders. It was terrible to think that his liberty and life, should be in the power of so obvious an idiot.

In the presence of Herries, the Inspector examined Mrs. Narby, who from being voluble, now became tongue-tied. Mrs. Narby's youth had brought her into frequent contact with the Whitechapel police, and she knew the value of silence. Everything had to be clawed out of her by persistent questioning, and all her answers went to prove that Herries was assuredly the guilty person. As her vernacular was vile and harsh, it will be as well to give the gist of her evidence in decent English.

Sir Simon Tedder, she said, had arrived about half-past six on the previous night, just before Herries came. He said that he wanted a parlour and a bedroom, as he was expecting a gentleman to call about eight o'clock. But the expected visitor never arrived and Sir Simon--he had not given any name, nor had Mrs. Narby asked him for one--seemed much annoyed. At ten o'clock he had retired to bed, after paying the score, and announced that he would depart, without breakfast, at eight in the morning. Mrs. Narby confessed that she saw him--as she believed--pass through the tap-room in his fur coat about that hour. He said nothing to her, and she said nothing to him, being well-pleased with the liberal sum he had paid her. She thought that having come to the inn secretly, he wished to preserve his incognito, so let him pass out without a word. But at ten o'clock--that is two hours later--the real Sir Simon had been found dead in his bed. Without doubt, the man who escaped through the tap-room could not have been the millionaire.

"But surely," said Trent, who was taking copious notes, "you must have guessed that the man who went away was not Sir Simon."

Mrs. Narby placed her stout arms akimbo and raged.

"I never know'd es 'is naime wos Sir Simon, or anythink else," said she shrilly. "An' th' gent es parsed through th' tap-room wos tall an' stout, same es this Sir Simon y' torks of. He wore the same fur coat es Sir Simon wore wen he come inter this very parlour overnight, so 'ow wos I t' know es the gent es slung 'is 'ook at eight this mornin' wasn't th' same es come et harlf-past six in th' evenin'."

"Are you sure it was the same fur coat?"

"Yuss," said Mrs. Narby, stoutly, "there ain't no fur coat lef' in' th' bedroom of th' gent es lies a deader. I looked fur it," added the landlady defiantly, "es I sawr th' value, an' wanted summat fur my bein' ruined by 'im," and she pointed towards Herries.

"I never killed him," muttered Herries, wearily. It seemed scarcely worth while to contradict those who seemed certain that he was guilty.

"Ho, but y' did," cried Mrs. Narby, shriller than ever. "Y' wos a pore tramp with no money, and thet gent--Sir Simon es y' calls 'im--hed 'eaps an' 'eaps."

Trent looked up quickly.

"How do you know that?"

"I took in 'is tea," said Mrs. Narby, nodding vigorously, "an' Pope, me son, took in th' toast which the gent ate. He wos settin' at thet there table, with a 'eap of notes an' gold beside 'im, and a big morrocker pocket-book, int' which he shovelled the money wen he saw Pope an' me come in. Look fur the blue pocket-book, Mr. Policeman, an' if it's gorn, it's that there cove," she again pointed to Herries, who again shook his head, "as 'ave it."

"You can search me," said the accused man, opening his arms.

Trent took him at his word, and ran his hand down the young man's sides. But nothing could be found. He then marched him and the landlady upstairs and into the bedroom. Herries, with his hands in his pockets, sat wearily by the window, while Trent examined the room, aided by Mrs. Narby. The lady was extremely active. She pulled the clothes from the bed, removed the wardrobe from against the wall, and wrenched up the carpet, but all to no purpose. Then while Trent looked up the chimney, Mrs. Narby, with surprising activity, scrambled under the bed. She emerged in a minute or so, with a smothered exclamation, covered with grime and fluff, and held in her large hand a blue pocket-book of morocco.

"The money!" cried Trent, darting towards her.

Mrs. Narby shook out the pocket-book triumphantly,--

"Empty," she cried vindictively, "he's the thief an' assassing!" and she flung the book at Herries' head.