South Wind Part 45

The discovery put a fresh and ominous complexion on the affair. When a man means to bolt, he does not leave portable jewelry--an enameled pair of links--behind him. And even if, in the hurry and scurry of departure, he does overlook such elegant trifles, he never forgets to take his money; least of all a man like Muhlen.

A lengthy deposition was signed by the hotel proprietor. It set forth, in reference to Muhlen's general habits, that this gentleman had hitherto not attended to his account; he had not been urgently pressed for a settlement. One did not like to incommode foreign visitors with bills; it annoyed them so much that they sometimes migrated to other hotels and made debts there, debts which in certain unexpected cases were liquidated in full while the former and equally legitimate ones remained unpaid--which was disheartening. In regard to his recent mode of life, the doc.u.ment contained the suggestive fact that Muhlen had not taken his midday meal at the hotel for some time past. He was strangely fond of going out in the late mornings, the proprietor averred; it might be, to bathe; he returned at about five in the afternoon after lunching, presumably, in some small restaurant by the sh.o.r.e.

This declaration, signed by a respected citizen, soon leaked into publicity. Taken in conjunction with the discovery of his money it was an eye-opener to the whole community, and to n.o.body more than to the judge himself. Signor Malipizzo argued, with his usual penetration, that Muhlen had intended to return to his quarters as he had always done of late. The ANIMUS REVERTENDI was abundantly proven by the sleeve-links and loose cash. He had not returned. Ergo, something untoward had happened. Untoward things may be divided, for the sake of convenience, into two main cla.s.ses, sections, or categories:

1. Accidents.

2. Foul play.

Which was it?

Signor Malipizzo dismissed as untenable the hypothesis of a clandestine withdrawal from local creditors. By way of clearing up the last vestige of doubt, however, and also for the sake of appearances (seeing that a wise magistrate is supposed to take nothing for granted) he called for depositions for the sailors and fishermen. It was a superfluous piece of work, a pure formality; he knew beforehand what they would say. They always said the same thing. They said it. Interrogated on oath they declared, one and all, that no person answering to the description of Muhlen had appeared on the beach for a long time; not for the last eight months and twelve days, to be quite accurate; much less had such a one engaged a vessel. The jovial but conservative sea-folk never varied their utterance on those many solemn occasions when a foreigner, for the purpose of evaporating, paid in advance for the hire of a boat, or was supposed to have done so. Albeit even ignorant people attached no significance to this statement, it went for what it was worth as c.u.mulative evidence.

The sight of that loose cash would have been quite enough for a man of Signor Malipizzo's discernment. Muhlen had not bolted. Nor was he the kind of man to lose his life by an accident. Not he! Muhlen was careful of his skin. Ergo, his disappearance was due to something which came under the second cla.s.s, section, or category. He had been done away with.

The magistrate, thinking of those summer holidays, began to be really vexed; so did Mr. Parker, who soon learned the result of these enquiries and regretted that his mourning retirement prevented him from issuing forth and telling everybody what he thought of this new disgraceful scandal. His English blood revolted at the idea of a harmless tourist, a prominent member of the Alpha and Omega Club, being callously murdered. Would these people never get civilized? He was glad to hear, at all events, that the judge was doing something.

Signor Malipizzo was doing a good deal. He meant to sift the thing to the bottom. His energy, hitherto simulated, was now set genuinely at work to discover indications of the murderer--indications of his missing friend. But Nepenthe is not a good place for finding corpses. The island is full of fathomless rents and fissures. A good many foreigners, especially such as were known to carry loose gold in their pockets, had been suspected of falling into them without leaving a trace behind. Yet a thorough search was inst.i.tuted, for he knew that criminals were not always as clever as they thought themselves; some insignificant relic might turn up--a shred of clothing or so forth. Such things were occasionally picked up on Nepenthe; n.o.body knew to whom they belonged. The Cave of Mercury, on being searched, yielded nothing but a trouser b.u.t.ton, apparently of English manufacture. Enquiries were also made as to when the ill-starred gentleman had last been seen, and where. Finally, the judge drew up a list, a fairly long list, of all the suspicious characters on the place with a view to placing them under lock and key, in expectation of further developments. Such was the customary procedure; one must a.s.sume the worst. If innocent, they might of course regain their liberty in a year or two.

It stands to reason that a good many people had noticed Muhlen on the morning of his disappearance. One cannot walk about Nepenthe at that hour of the day without being seen, and Muhlen was sufficiently conspicuous. But everyone knew what was in store for him if he admitted such a fact, to wit, an application of paragraph 43 of the 92nd section of the Code of Criminal Procedure, according to which any and every witness of this kind is liable to be segregated from his family and kept under arrest for an indefinite length of time, pending the instruction of a trial which might take half a century. n.o.body, therefore, was fool enough to admit having encountered him--n.o.body save a half-witted youth who fatuously confided to a policeman that the had met the gentleman somewhere in the neighbourhood of the bibliographer's villa about the hour of midday. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances Signor Malipizzo would have been delighted to lay sacrilegious hands on Mr.

Eames, whose Olympic aloofness had always annoyed him and against whom a case could now be got up, on the strength of these indications.

Somewhere in the neighbourhood of the villa--that was quite sufficient to warrant an arrest.

The boy in question happened to be a relation of his arch-enemy, the parish priest. Better still. Chuckling at the happy coincidence, he forgot all about Mr. Eames, and gave orders for the other to be conveyed to the guard-house, searched, and interrogated, arguing plausibly that a person of his mental instability would be sure to give himself away by some stupid remark.

Things turned out better than he had dared to hope. Under the prisoner's clothing was discovered a gold coin of foreign nationality attached, by a piece of string, round his neck. For all one knew, it might have been Muhlen's. The interrogating carbineer who is invested, during such preliminary enquiries, with quasi-judicial functions--being permitted to a.s.sume the role of prosecuting or defending counsel, or to remain sternly unbiased, as he feels inclined--desired to learn how he had come by this jewel.

He received it long ago from his mother, he said, as a talisman against the moonsickness which had tormented him in childhood. Replying, in stammering and dazed fas.h.i.+on, to further questions, he gave it to be understood that n.o.body had ever set eyes on the coin in question; he was afraid of showing it, lest someone should take it from him by force. He loved the coin. He got it from his mother.

"Ah!" said the friendly policeman. "And your mother, now--could she perhaps tell us when she gave it to you?"

"My mother is in Paradise."

"Dead, is she? H'm. That looks queer, my young friend. Very fishy. You should be more careful in little things like that. She ought to have been kept alive, you know. Anybody can say they had gold coins given them by dead mothers, don't you see? Rather a thin trick. Can't you suggest something better? Cheer up, boy! You needn't tremble all over.

Look, I am writing it down, and you must put your name to it afterwards. Think--little. A living uncle, for instance--if he came into Court and testified that he had given you the coin, why, it might make all the difference and get you out of a nasty sc.r.a.pe. Surely you've got an uncle or something? How about His Reverence the PARROCO? Couldn't he swear--?"

"My mother is in Paradise."

"In Paradise, is she? That's where you ought to be, my son. Just sign this declaration, please. Then perhaps you will meet your mother sooner than you expect. Can't read or write? Well, put your cross to it and may the Madonna help you! For I can't. I've done my best to be impartial, but G.o.d alone can steer a fool. He makes a specialty of it, they tell me. If so, you've got a sporting chance...."

Overjoyed with this incriminating deposition, His Wors.h.i.+p gave orders for the prisoner's formal arrest. Aloud he remarked:

"What have I always said? Beware of wimple folks. They are the deep ones. Their naivete is nothing but a disguise. Here we have a case in point. This boy, from all accounts, is the pure type of the callous murderer. He stutters. He makes uncalled-for gurglings of a b.e.s.t.i.a.l nature. He has pendulous ears, and certain other stigmata of degeneration which are familiar to all conversant with criminal anthropology. Of course he denies everything. But mark my words! After six or seven months, when the prison diet begins to take effect, he will confess. I know the species; it is all too common. Meanwhile we must congratulate ourselves on having tracked down the culprit so soon."

To condemn for homicide the cousin of a Catholic priest warmed the c.o.c.kles of his free-thinking heart. In fact, on second thoughts, it was better than if he had caught the real murderer who might have turned out to be an atheist, which would have been bad enough--or possibly a freemason, which would have been really awkward. The news spread rapidly over the island, and caused wild rejoicings among the anti-clericals.

The rejoicings were of brief duration.

Torquemada, as usual, was in fighting trim. Like all G.o.d-fearing ascetics, he was a man-eater at heart. He made up his mind long ago to eat the judge, whom he considered an offence to Heaven and earth--the official mouthpiece of the devil. Up to the present he had bided his time, waiting for a good opportunity. The time was now ripe.

Not that he greatly loved his cousin. The family to which the unhappy youth belonged was of no credit or use to himself, and this particular member was worse than useless, being afflicted with an unpardonable vice--lack of judgment. His stupidity had already got him into a number of minor sc.r.a.pes. As a child he annoyed foreigners by ingenuous requests for money, stole flowers from neighbours' gardens because they were so irresistibly pretty, tied saucepans to their cats because they had such irresistibly long tails and made such irresistibly droll movements and noises in order to get rid of them, frightened old ladies by making faces at them; sometimes, by way of a change, he threw off a fit; later on, he had taken to smas.h.i.+ng crockery, mooning about the vineyards, forgetting errands entrusted to him, throwing stones at pa.s.sing carriages and making a general nuisance of himself. The PARROCO knew that he had been dismissed as incompetent by tradespeople to whom he was apprenticed, by farmers who had employed him as a labourer. He could not even repeat his Ave Maria without producing sinister crepitations from his gullet. And now he had crowned all by this surpa.s.sing act of imprudence. If he had only kept his mouth shut, like everybody else. But there! What could you expect from a fool?

A genuine murderer--it was most irreligious, of course. Still, some homicides were fairly justifiable, others almost meritorious; and a criminal of this kind showed, in every case, undeniable traces of manliness; one could not help respecting him in an oblique sort of fas.h.i.+on. But a fool! Torquemada, the zealous priest, the man of G.o.d, could never quite repress the promptings of his blood. He had all the fanatic's appreciation of violent methods; all the Southerner's fondness for a miscreant, and contempt for a simpleton. A mere fool--what's the use of him on earth? Had the culprit been any ordinary Christian, His Reverence would not have dreamt of interfering; gladly would he have let him spend the remainder of his day sin prison which everybody knew to be the best place for stupid people--it kept them out of mischief.

But this was not an ordinary Christian. He was a relation. A relation!

That meant that one must show fight for him, if only for the sake of public appearances.

He held a hurried council with his family and, half an hour later, a second one with the more influential members of the priesthood. It was decided, in both cases, that the occasion was favourable for a long-deferred contest between the Powers of Light and the powers of darkness, the Catholic Church and modernism, the Clergy of Nepenthe and the secular authority of law and order as personified by that judge in whom all evil, public and private, flowed together. A n.o.ble parting cheque which he had just received from Mr. van Koppen for some urgent repairs to the parish organ came in handy. It would enable him to face the adversary with good hopes of success. To his friends he said:

"An insult to my family! I shall not take it lying down. Let them see what a humble servant of G.o.d can do."

So saying, he girded his loins for the fray, walked in person to the post office and wrote out a lengthy telegram to the redoubtable Don Giustino Morena, the parliamentary representative of Nepenthe who, as readers of the newspapers were aware, happened to be taking a brief holiday among his own people in the South. It was a judiciously flattering dispatch. It prayed the famous lawyer-politician to undertake the defence of a relation, an orphan, a mere child, unjustly accused of murder and arbitrarily imprisoned, and to deign to accept a pitiful honorarium of five thousand francs--the largest sum which a parish priest, poor but jealous of the honour of his family, could sc.r.a.pe together. If the great man accepted the offer, he might arrive by the nest day's boat. There was a chance, thought the PARROCO, of his doing so. Don Giustino was an ardent Catholic; he might be favourably impressed by the modest pet.i.tion of a clergyman in his const.i.tuency. He had promised over and over again to visit his Nepenthean const.i.tuents.

He would now be killing two birds with one stone.

Five minutes, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, were wont to elapse ere an item of private news could percolate out of the post office and become public property. Such was the portentous import of this message that it did not percolate at all. It flashed, and produced forthwith a feeling of joyous elation at the prospect of lively events in the near future--of a battle between the Vatican and the Quirinal. Coming on the top of Muhlen's murder--which was a decided improvement upon his alleged flight--it caused the citizens to talk in excited and almost random fas.h.i.+on about what was coming next. Alone, the members of the Alpha and Omega Club, thanks to the benign influence of Parker's poison, received the successive waves of information with composure, and preserved from beginning to end their sense of proportion.

"Heard the news? Muhlen's bolted."

"I thought he would."

"They say he owes a good deal."

"Obviously. Else he wouldn't have bolted. Good riddance, anyhow."

"That's what I say. But he owes me a lot of whiskies, the blighter."

"You're lucky. Gone off with thirty francs of mine."

"d.a.m.n his eyes. I expect we're not the only ones."

"Not by a long chalk. Come and have a drink."

"Heard the news? Muhlen's murdered."

"Serve him b.l.o.o.d.y well right. The blackguard owes me two francs fifty.

I'll bet it was some money business."

"Not a bit of it. A little girl, you know. Got a knife in the stomach.

About eleven at night, from all accounts. They heard him squealing a mile off."

"I don't believe it. He was not that kind."

"Not that kind? What do you mean?"

"Not that kind."

"Not THAT kind? Really? Go on. You don't say so, by Jove! What makes you think it?"

"Think? I don't think. I happen to know. You pay for my peg and I'll tell you all about it...."