The Crime and the Criminal Part 40

"Reginald Townsend--that's it."

She and her husband looked at each other--in that meaning sort of way.

"Fred, have we ever heard of Reginald Townsend?"

Ferdinand laughed. She held out her hands in front of her.

"Why, my dear, there have been times and seasons when we've heard of little else but Reginald Townsend."

"Perhaps your man is not my man. My man's tall."

"So's our man!"

"And dark."

"You couldn't paint our man blacker than he is."

"And very--very swagger, don't you know."

"Our man's the swaggerest man in town. It's impossible that there could be two Reginald Townsends. What do you know of him?"

"Oh, I only met him once. But he rather struck me."

"Take care that he doesn't strike you too much. He's not only the swaggerest, he's also the wickedest man in town. I could tell you tales of him which would shock your innocent ears. He's a terror, isn't he, Fred?"

"He has rather liberal ideas on the subject of the whole duty of man."

"I should rather think he has."

And Kate went off at score. I could see from what she said that my friend the gentleman was all my fancy painted him. When she gave me an opening, I slipped another word in edgeways.

"Is he received in respectable society?"

"That depends, my dearest child, upon what you call respectable society. He's the boon companion of dukes, marquises, and earls, and that kind of thing. He visits the best houses and the best people. But I was raised at Salem, Ma.s.s., and our ideas of respectable society were perhaps our own. I haven't found that they obtain to any considerable extent round here."

It was scandalously late when I left for home.

The same thing occupied my thoughts in the cab as on the night before--my friend the gentleman. Whatever could have made him do the thing which he had done? That is, if Kate's Reginald Townsend was mine--of which, by the way, I had no doubt. A man may be all that's bad; he may be worse than a murderer, but he takes particularly good care not, if he can help it, to be the thing itself. What could it be which, in the judgment of a man in his position, had compelled him to place himself within the shadow of the gallows?

The problem occupied my mind. The man had been placed by nature in such a fortunate position. It appeared that he had so much to lose--and he had lost it all! What for? I wondered. What was it which had constrained him to choose between the devil and the deep sea--and then to choose the devil?

As I thought of it, and how handsome he was, and how well bred, and how there was everything to please a woman's taste, and to gratify her eye, a wild notion germinated in my brain--which was watered by circ.u.mstances, and grew.

I dismissed the cab at the end of my road. The night, though dark, was fine. The horse was tired. I had no objection to saving the creature's legs by walking the rest of the way. I did not suppose that, at that hour of the night, or, rather, of the morning, there would be any one about.

In supposing that, however, I was wrong.

The street was a pretty long one. When I got about half way along it I perceived that a cab was stopping at a house in front of me. As I reached the cab a man got out of it in a fas.h.i.+on which, to say the least of it, was rather sudden. He plunged on to the pavement, rather than stepped on to it. As his feet touched solid ground, he turned towards me.

It was Tommy Tennant!

For a moment I was frightened half out of my wits. It was such an hour, he was without a hat, he looked wild and dishevelled, his appearance at such a place--within a stone's throw of my own house--at such a moment was so wholly unexpected, that it fairly took my breath away.

But if his appearance startled me, my appearance seemed to have an even more startling effect upon him. He gave one glance at me and tumbled in a heap on to the pavement.

The driver of the hansom leaned down towards me from his perch.

"It's all right, miss; he's only been enjoying of hisself. The cold stones will cool 'is head."

I said nothing; I hurried on.

CHAPTER XXIII.

MR. TOWNSEND COMES TO TEA.

I have not lived in the world so long as I have done, and seen so much of it, without realising how small a world, after all, it really is, and how full it is of coincidence; but I do think that this beats all the coincidences of which I ever heard.

To think that I should have pitched on the one street in London which Mr. Thomas Tennant has chosen for a residence! It seems that I have. I lay awake for an hour trying to account for his sudden appearance from that cab. At last I hit on something. I sat up in bed with quite a jump.

"Can it be possible that he lives in this street?"

Rest was out of the question till I had made sure. I got out of bed--it was nearer five than four--and I tiptoed my way downstairs. I routed out a directory, and I hunted up the street. Sure enough he did. There was his name, as large as life--"Thomas Tennant." He lived at No. 29.

My house was blank--it had been empty at the time the directory had gone to press--but I had taken No. 39.

"Well, this beats everything! To think that I have spent all this money, and come all this way, to plant myself five doors from Mr.

Tennant!"

He might be unwilling to have me for a neighbour, but I could a.s.sure him that I was equally unwilling to have him. I did not wish the first entry on the fresh leaf which I had turned to be a reminiscence, and especially a reminiscence of that particular friend.

I thought that was strange enough, but stranger things were yet to follow. What a queer little world this is!

Recognising that it was no use addling my brains by puzzling out conundrums at that time of the morning, so soon as, by reading it over and over again in the directory, I had made quite sure that my eyes had not misled me, and that Tommy did reside five doors away, I toddled up to bed again. "There is nothing like leather," says the proverb. I say there is nothing like sleep. Give me plenty of sleep and I am good for anything. As I have always been blessed with a clear conscience--if there is a vacuum where the conscience ought to be it must be clear--and, what is equally to be desired, a good digestion, I have ever found sleep come at my bidding. Once I have my toes well down between the sheets, my head on the pillow, and the blankets well up to my ears, I snooze. I know I did just then. And I never dreamed; none of Jack Haines's lively visions came my way.

I looked at my watch when I awoke. It was past eleven. I just turned over. I had a stretch. I believe that, when you wake in the morning, it does you good to have a stretch; it seems to help you to realise that there is a piece of you between your head and your heels. "What should I do?"

"I'll have some tea."

I had some tea. The girl brought me the letters and the papers. There was nothing in the letters, but in the papers there were ructions!

At first I could not make out what it was all about. Directly I opened the _Telegraph_ these were the words, in big, black letters, staring me in the face: "Murder on the Brighton Line." That was my friend, the gentleman! But at first, as I have said, the more I looked at it the more I couldn't make it out.

A platelayer--whatever that might be in connection with a railway line--going to his work in the morning had seen the body lying among the bushes--in that clump of bushes, I took it, where it had almost fallen on top of me. That was all right. Where I found the puzzle was in what directly followed. The girl had, of course, been murdered in the field, probably within a foot or two of where I had seen Townsend standing. The papers, or the people who inspired the papers, seemed to think that the murder had taken place in a train, and that then the body had been thrown on to the line. What could have made them think such a thing as that?

As I read on the whole thing flashed upon me; it was another coincidence!