CHAPTER VII
A GUILTY INNOCENT
Tom Erichsen held out a steady hand for the Globe. His blood ran too cold for present tremors. The hackney-coachman had drawn a chair to the table, planted his elbows in the middle of the printed cotton cloth, and his hot, flushed face between his coarse, strong hands. Tom sat down at the other end. He found the paragraph, ran his eye from head-line to finish, and then read it slowly aloud:—
SHOCKING MURDER AT HAMPSTEAD
An atrocious murder was committed late last night, or early this morning, in the neighbourhood of Hampstead Heath. A mechanic, on his way to work at an early hour this morning, and having occasion to traverse the right-of-way connecting the Finchley Road with the upper portion of Haverstock Hill, noticed a stout staff upon the grass, near the second stile from the former thoroughfare. On picking it up, the staff, or rather cudgel, was found to be crusted with blood, and near it was discovered a drawn sword-stick, broken near the hilt. Continuing his alarming investigations, the mechanic made his crowning and most horrible discovery in a hollow tree close beside the stile, in which lay the body of a gentleman in full evening dress. He was quite dead; indeed, life had probably been extinct some hours. The corpse was covered with blood, and the head terribly disfigured, as if by repeated blows from some blunt instrument. There can be no doubt that the crime was committed with the cudgel above mentioned (at present the only clue to the assassin), nor that the sword-stick was vainly used in self-defence by the unfortunate gentleman. The police were summoned with commendable despatch, and the body removed to the Marylebone mortuary to await inquest.
Meanwhile, in the course of the morning, much information has been forthcoming, and we are sorry to state that the victim has been identified as Captain J. Montgomery Blaydes, late of his Majesty’s Coldstream Guards, but for some years past on the halfpay list. No letters or papers of any sort were discovered upon his person—
Here Tom stopped reading.
“Go on, sir.”
“I will. But that’s extraordinary!”
“Not it. He’s been robbed as well. That’s what I want to get at. That there stick’s no clue; we want the things he took.”
Tom moistened his lips and harked back:—
No letters or papers of any sort were discovered upon his person, and it is only through the marking of his linen that the identity of the deceased has been so promptly established. It now transpires that the hapless Captain had been lately residing in the village of West End (not a mile from the scene of the murder), and that he left his lodgings shortly after ten o’clock last night, in order to attend an evening party, in a hackney-coach. The police hope that the coachman will come forward—
“He has!” said Jim. “You may leave out that bit.”
“And you couldn’t describe the man?”
“Not too well. I could only swear he was neither short nor tall, and looked to be wearing a pair of nankeen trousers.” (Tom’s legs were underneath the table.) “No,” continued Jim, “I’m afraid they won’t lay hands on him through me. But they may through the things he took. Go on to that!”
“There was a diamond pin.”
“I seen it! What else?”
“All his money.”
“Ah! he paid like a gen’leman. Anything else?”
“A—gold—watch.”
The words would hardly come. Jim thumped the table with heavy fist.
“That’ll do!” he cried. “That’ll hang him, you mark my words! What sort of a watch?”
But this time the words would not come at all, for Jim’s wife stood in the doorway behind Jim’s chair, and her eyes and Tom’s—the terrified and the guilty—were locked together in a long, dread stare.
“What’s that about a watch?” she said in a sort of whisper, advancing unsteadily, and leaning a hand upon her husband’s shoulder. “Whose watch?”
“One belonging a murdered man,” replied Jim. “I’m asking what kind of a one. I say it ought to hang the chap what did it.”
“It will,” said she hoarsely in his ear. “It’s a repeater, and him that has it sits in front of you in that chair!”
There followed a silence so profound that Tom could hear the watch itself ticking in his pocket. The coachman then rose, and slowly leaned across the table, resting one hand upon it; the other was half-way to Tom’s throat when he started to his feet, and in so doing pressed his thigh against the table’s edge. Instantly there rang from his pocket a sweet and tiny ting! ting! ting! ting! ting!
It was the saving of him from Jim the coachman and his wife.
Both shrank back as Tom darted to an inner door, and so up the stairs which he had descended half-asleep.
Ere he reached the top there was a crash below; for an instant he thought the man had fallen in a fit; but a volley of oaths proved it only a slip, as Tom slammed and locked the door of the room in which he had slept away the day if not his life. His shoes were still where he had kicked them off. He slipped into them, and, exerting all his strength, pulled the large iron bedstead from its place and wedged it between wall and door. Then he crouched and listened. The man was for taking him single-handed; the woman evidently restraining him by main force.
“Let me go! Let me go, damn ye!” Tom heard him cry.
“Never till I drop! Police! police! He sha’n’t murder my Jim too.”
“So help me, but I’ll strike ye if ye don’t let go!”
“Strike away. Police! police! police! If you go, I go too.”
Her cries were not loud; they were smothered in the struggle, which was still continued—now at the foot of the stairs, now on the stairs themselves, and at last on the landing outside the barricaded door. Meanwhile the bird had flown.
No sooner had Tom realised what was taking place below than he threw up the bedroom window. It overlooked a small and filthy backyard, into which Tom quietly dropped while the pair were still struggling on the stairs. To find his way through the house, through the kitchen itself, and out into the narrow street, was the work of very few moments. The last Tom heard was the belabouring of the locked, blocked door by honest Jim. Nor did his presence of mind desert him yet. He walked out of the narrow side-street, only running when he came to the main thoroughfare, and after a perilous hesitation as to whether he should strike into the City or over Blackfriars Bridge.
He chose the City, and having chosen, lost his head and ran for his life.
He darted across the street and plunged into the busy alleys filling the delta between the bridge and St. Paul’s. Here he slackened a little, for the stony, many-windowed ravines were so narrow and so crowded that it was impossible to continue running. But he threw up his heels the instant he emerged on Ludgate Hill, tearing helter-skelter in the middle of the road. He was nearly run over by a van coming out of Paternoster Row, and cursed to the skies by the driver. Faces stopped and turned upon the pavements. He knew the folly of it, and yet ran on with a fiend in either heel.
“Ba—nk—ba—nk—’ere you are, sir, ’ere you are!”
Tom was almost up to the omnibus before he realised that this was meant for him; instinctively he waved and nodded, and his mad pace was explained. The omnibus stopped; he jumped in gasping.
“Thought you was after me,” said the cad, with a grin.
Tom had no breath to reply. A rubicund old gentleman made a well-meant remark upon the eagerness of youth, and was favoured with a glassy stare. The newcomer sat panting in a corner, the perspiration trickling from his nose.
But his head was cooler; he saw the needlessness as well as the indiscretion of conspicuous flight. He had slipped through the only hands that were as yet against him; he had eluded the only eyes he need avoid that night. For the hackney-coachman might take his new tale straight to Scotland Yard, but it could hardly be given to the world before morning.
Tom’s heart leapt as he discovered the temporary strength of his position; next moment it sank, for the cad was collecting the fares, and his single asset was the watch. His bankrupt state had occurred to Tom as he ran for the omnibus, but not again; it was so small a thing compared with the charge now lying at his door. Yet he had just thought of it—his little fraud was so far deliberate—but he had neither the face nor the foolhardiness to sit there and confess his fault. And—situated like the wanted felon he now felt himself to be—it was wonderful and horrible how a felon’s resources came unbidden to his fingers’ ends. He began feeling in pocket after pocket, with a face that lengthened under the frown of the cad, the raised eyebrows of the rubicund gentleman, and the fixed attention of all.
“I’m afraid I—I don’t seem to have a coin in my pocket!”
“Oh, you ’aven’t, ’aven’t you?”
“No—I have not! I’m very sorry—I—”
“You may be! Never mind no tales; you can keep them for the beak, as’ll ’ave a word to say to you to-morrer mornin’!” And the cad winked at the other passengers, stopped the omnibus, and called a policeman from the curb.
Tom could have burst into tears. To be wrongly wanted for a crime so terrible, and justly taken for a thing so small! He looked forlornly at his fellow-passengers, with a wild idea that one might come to his rescue; the sole response was a withering frown from the ruddy old gentleman, who also commended the cad, and loudly trusted an example would be made of the case. The desperate Tom began ransacking his pockets in earnest for some overlooked coin, but he had done this so often of late that he felt the futility now. The perspiration froze upon his face; yet even with the policeman’s tall hat poked inside the omnibus, his twitching fingers continued their spasmodic, hopeless search.
“The flash young spark!” whispered the cad. “Just you frighten ’im, Sir Robert.”
“Now then, come along!” said the officer.
“Good God!” cried Tom.
“You’ll get all the more for swearing; now, out you come afore you’re made.”
“Not just yet,” returned the culprit, and handed the conductor one of two halfcrowns found that very moment in a scrap of crumpled paper. “I’m sorry I couldn’t find it before. Kindly give me change.”
“Where to?” growled the cad, as the constable stepped down.
Tom did not hear.
“Can’t you answer? Where to?”
“Oh, as far as you go!”
Tom’s eyes were on the crumpled scrap, and filled to overflowing by half-a-dozen ill-written words.