The Heart of a Woman Part 36

"It is my stick," replied Luke.

He had not flinched, yet there were many scores of pairs of eyes fixed upon him, when that green baize covering was removed. But not one of those who gazed so steadily upon him could boast that he or she had seen the slightest tremor of the lids or the merest quiver of the mouth. The voice sounded perfectly clear, the cheeks, though pale, had a.s.sumed no grayish hue.

"Very well. That will do," said the coroner quietly.

What more was there to say? The dagger-stick, stained and rusty, told the most graphic tale there was to tell. Yet Luke de Mountford stepped quietly away from the table looking neither self-conscious nor dazed.

He went back to his seat, beside Mr. Dobson, and leaning toward him answered some whispered questions which the solicitor was putting to him. He folded his arms before him and after awhile allowed his head to fall forward a little, closing his eyes as he did so. He seemed a little tired, but otherwise unperturbed, even though the hall porter now was recalled and was busy identifying the stick which lay across the coroner's table with the one which he himself had handed to Mr. de Mountford's visitor at nine o'clock the night before last.

And the police too added its share to this work that was going on of enmes.h.i.+ng a criminal. There was the constable who had found the stick inside the railings of Green Park and had taken it straight away to his chiefs at Scotland Yard before the stains on it had been further disturbed; and there was finally Doctor Blair, the district medical officer, also recalled, who examined the dagger which fitted into that snake-wood stick.

He had been shown it yesterday it seems and found how accurately it fitted the wound in the murdered man's throat. To this he swore now in open court, for the _coup de theatre_, the production of the dagger-stick, had been kept back until now, in order that it should work its fullest and most dramatic effect.

Colonel Harris, sitting near his daughter, would have given worlds to know what she thought. He himself did not know what to think. His simple, unsophisticated mind was in a maze. The question of Luke's possible guilt had suddenly loomed up before him, dissipating the former blind impulse of partisans.h.i.+p and loyalty. Mr. Dobson too looked puzzled, the old family solicitor who had seen Luke and his brothers and sister grow up, who a few hours, nay minutes, ago would have sworn to his client's innocence before the entire world, he too now was face to face with a hideous feeling of doubt.

Not one other person in the room either, believe me, who was not convinced of Luke's guilt. Louisa knew that well enough as her aching eyes wandered over the sea of faces, meeting hollow compa.s.sion, morbid curiosity, at best a certain sympathetic horror, in the glances round.

She knew that every one here, the officials, the jury, the police, the public, believed that Luke struck his cousin in the dark; she knew that Mr. Dobson had begun to doubt; and that her father had begun to fear.

And she, with all the fervour of unconquered Love, prayed in her heart that she might understand. She prayed to Love to open the eyes of her mind, for it was her reason which did not understand, which yearned to understand.

Her heart cared nothing, cared for nothing except for the man she loved and the bitter, bitter sorrow which he endured alone, shut away from all, even from her.

There was general stir in the court room, the coroner had risen, also the jury. The journalists were holding agitated parlance with the boy messengers. Louisa--like one who had received a sharp blow on the head--wondered what all this stir meant.

Was it all over? Had Luke irretrievably lost himself in that secret orchard of his, into which he was obviously determined that even she should not enter?

Then she found out that the stir only meant the luncheon hour. All these people were going to eat and to chatter. Heavens above! how they would chatter!

Her father said something about getting a cab, and trying to find a decent hotel in which to have luncheon. But she scarcely heard. She had just seen Luke disappearing through the crowd in company with Mr.

Dobson, and he had not even glanced back to look at her.

Every one whispered round her. Lady Ducies' nodding feathers worried her almost to distraction. She allowed her father to lead her away, and to make way for her through the crowd.

Presently she found herself sitting near him in a cab. He was silent and would not look at her. He had begun to think that Luke had killed his cousin; once she heard him repeating the word, "d.a.m.nable!" twice under his breath. Thus she knew that his loyalty was on the point of giving way.

It seems that they had luncheon somewhere together. She did not take the trouble to inquire where she was: an old-fas.h.i.+oned hotel somewhere in Kensington, with table-cloths that looked as if they had been used for several previous luncheons, and foreign waiters who wore weird-looking shoes and trousers frayed at the edges.

To please her father she ate a little, though she thought that eating must choke her. But it was wearisome to argue, and he--poor dear--looked so miserable.

Time was precious and luncheon interminably slow: it was past two o'clock when Louisa saw Luke again in the court room.

CHAPTER XXVIII

WHICH TELLS OF AN UNEXPECTED TURN OF EVENTS

It seems that coroner and jury had not spent quite so much time over luncheon as the more or less interested spectators. When the crowd began to file back again into the seats, the coroner had already examined and dismissed one witness and was questioning another.

The past and present servants of the Grosvenor Square household would all have to pa.s.s before the coroner during the course of this long afternoon. It was only two o'clock and already the gas had to be lighted--two incandescent burners just above the coroner's table--hard, uncompromising lights, that threw a sickly green tinge on every face and cast deep black shadows under every eye.

It was this light no doubt that made Luke's face seem positively ghastly to Louisa: it looked almost like a death-mask, so deep and cavernous did the eyes appear, and so hollow the cheeks. He was sitting in his usual att.i.tude, with arms folded, between Mr. Dobson and one of the women in seedy black whose presence here had puzzled every one.

Old Parker, ex-butler to Lord Radclyffe, was giving evidence. He had a tale to tell, how Mr. de Mountford "went on awful" when he--the innocent, well-drilled servant--had thought it his duty to introduce Mr. Philip into his lords.h.i.+p's presence.

"Just think of it, your honour," he exclaimed, "his lords.h.i.+p's rightful heir."

Then he added with calm effrontery:

"Mr. Luke 'e give me the sack then and there! He was that wild!"

Just a paltry, silly, meaningless revenge. The death-mask on Luke's face relaxed for a moment when he looked on the fat creature standing before the jury, vainly trying to look pompous and self-righteous, and only succeeding in being a liar.

The evidence would have been of little worth, but for the corroboration from other servants of the Grosvenor Square household.

The present two--man and wife--wastrels and drunkards, counted for nothing: they had only entered Lord Radclyffe's service recently when all visitors had ceased from calling at the inhospitable house, and they had seen little or nothing of Luke; but the others--those whom Philip's arbitrary temper had driven out of the house--they had many a tale to tell of the dead man's arrogance, his contemptuous treatment of his younger kinsman, and the bitter words that often flew between the cousins, when doors closed and eavesdroppers were behind the key-holes.

These witnesses--an ex-housekeeper, a footman, a maid--were trying their best, poor things, to "do the right thing by Mr. Luke," little guessing how ill they succeeded. They had been dragged into this much against their will. As a cla.s.s they hated the police and its doings, even though the cook might occasionally show a preference for the local guardian of peace and order. As for the detective in plain clothes, the man who wore a peaked cap instead of the familiar helmet, him they hated and feared, especially since he seemed to mean mischief for Mr. Luke.

They gave their evidence unwillingly; every admission had to be dragged out of them, once they realized that the revelations of past quarrels between "the gentlemen" would not be to the detriment of the dead, only perhaps to the undoing of the living.

The hours wore on wearily. The atmosphere now surcharged with the heat from the gas brackets had become intolerably oppressive. Opoponax and white heliotrope waxed faint to the nostrils. Through the badly fitting window frame something of the outward fog had penetrated into the room. It hung about in the air, round the gas that burned yellow and dim through it, and obscured the far corners of the place, throwing a veil over the twelve mutes in uniform overcoats with threadbare velvet collars, over the eager and perspiring journalists whose fountain pens had sc.r.a.ped the paper incessantly for so long.

Hot, tired, and oppressed humanity made its warm breath felt in the close, ill-ventilated room. Smelling-salts would not dispel the unpleasantly mingling odours of damp clothes and muddy boots which rose from the plebeian crowd in the rear.

But n.o.body stirred; no one would have thought of leaving before the last act of this interesting play. The chief actor was not on the stage for the moment, but his presence was felt. It was magnetic in its appeal to excitement. Every question put by the coroner, every reply given by the witnesses, had, as it were, Luke de Mountford for its aim: every word tended toward him, his undoing, the enmes.h.i.+ng of his denials in the close web of circ.u.mstantial evidence.

Then a diversion occurred.

The man in the shabby clothes, who looked like a beetle, and who had marshalled his companions into the court room early in the day, was called upon by the usher to come forward. His strange, poorly-clad figure detached itself from the groups immediately round him, his long, loose limbs seeming to swing themselves forward.

His four companions--the three women and the other man--were seized apparently with great agitation and whispered eagerly among themselves. No one in the crowd could guess why these people had been called. They seemed so completely out of the picture which had its invisible frame in Grosvenor Square.

"Go on, Jim!" whispered one of the young women, "they can't do nothing to ye."

And the beetle-like creature shambled forward, with arms gangling beside him, a humble, apologetic look on his care-worn face. He might have been any age from thirty to sixty; time and a perpetual struggle for existence had wiped way all traces of actual age. The cheeks were hollow, and eyes, mouth, and moustache had a droop which added to the settled melancholy of the face.

He was obviously very nervous and looked across at his own friends, who strove to encourage him by signs and whispers.

He nearly dropped the Bible when it was handed to him, and no one could really hear the oath which he repeated mechanically at the usher's bidding.

At last he mustered up a sufficient amount of courage to state his name and address.

"James Baker," he said in answer to the coroner's question.

"Bricklayer by trade."

"And where do you live?"

"At 147 Clapham Junction Road, sir," replied the man, scarcely above a whisper.