My Strangest Case Part 18

This set me thinking. She spoke gravely, and I knew that she meant what she said. But underlying it there was a suggestion that, for some reason or another, she had not been altogether favourably impressed by her visitors. Whether I was right in my suppositions I could not tell then, but I knew that I should in all probability be permitted a better opportunity of judging later on. We crossed the little bridge, and pa.s.sed along the high road for upwards of a mile, until we found ourselves standing at the entrance to one of the prettiest little country residences it has even been my lot to find. A drive, some thirty yards or so in length, led up to the house and was shaded by overhanging trees. The house itself was of two stories and was covered by creepers.

The garden was scrupulously neat, and I fancied that I could detect its mistress's hand in it. Shady walks led from it in various directions, and at the end of one of these I could discern a tall, restless figure, pacing up and down.

"There is my uncle," said the girl, referring to the figure I have just described. "That is his sole occupation. He likes it because it is the only part of the garden in which he can move about without a guide. How empty and hard his life must seem to him, now, Mr. Fairfax?"

"It must indeed," I replied. "To my thinking blindness is one of the worst ills that can happen to a man. It must be particularly hard to one who has led such a vigorous life as your uncle has done."

I could almost have declared that she shuddered at my words. Did she know more about her uncle and his past life than she liked to think about? I remembered one or two expressions he had let fall in his excitement when he had been talking to me, and how I had commented upon them as being strange words to come from the lips of a missionary. I had often wondered whether the story he had told me about their life in China, and Hayle's connection with it, had been a true one. The tenaciousness with which a Chinaman clings to the religion of his forefathers is proverbial, and I could not remember having ever heard that a Mandarin, or an official of high rank, had been converted to the Christian Faith. Even if he had, it struck me as being highly improbable that he would have been the possessor of such princely treasure, and even supposing that to be true, that he would, at his death, leave it to such a man as Kit.w.a.ter. No, I fancied if we could only get at the truth of the story, we should find that it was a good deal more picturesque, not to use a harsher term, than we imagined. For a moment I had almost been tempted to believe that the stones were Hayle's property, and that these two men were conducting their crusade with the intention of robbing him of them. Yet, on maturer reflection, this did not fit in.

There was the fact that they had certainly been mutilated as they described, and also their hatred of Hayle to be weighed in one balance, while Hayle's manifest fear of them could be set in the other.

"If I am not mistaken that is your step, Mr. Fairfax," said the blind man, stopping suddenly in his walk, and turning his sightless face in my direction. "It's wonderful how the loss of one's sight sharpens one's ears. I suppose you met Margaret on the road."

"I met Miss Kit.w.a.ter in the churchyard," I replied.

"A very good meeting-place," he chuckled sardonically. "It's where most of us meet each other sooner or later. Upon my word, I think the dead are luckier than the living. In any case they are more fortunate than poor devils like Codd and myself. But I am keeping you standing, won't you sit down somewhere and tell me your news? I have been almost counting the minutes for your arrival. I know you would not be here to-day unless you had something important to communicate to me. You have found Hayle?"

He asked the question with feverish eagerness, as if he hoped within a few hours to be clutching at the other's throat. I could see that his niece noticed it too, and that she recoiled a little from him in consequence. I thereupon set to work and told them of all that had happened since I had last seen them, described my lucky meeting with Hayle at Charing Cross, my chase after him across London, the trick he had played me at Foxwell's Hotel, and my consequent fruitless journey to Southampton.

"And he managed to escape you after all," said Kit.w.a.ter. "That man would outwit the Master of all Liars Himself. He is out of England by this time, and we shall lose him."

"He has not escaped me," I replied quietly. "I know where he is, and I have got a man on his track."

"Then where is he?" asked Kit.w.a.ter. "If you know where he is, you ought to be with him yourself instead of down here. You are paid to conduct the case. How do you know that your man may not bungle it, and that we may not lose him again?"

His tone was so rude and his manner so aggressive, that his niece was about to protest. I made a sign to her, however, not to do so.

"I don't think you need be afraid, Mr. Kit.w.a.ter," I said more soothingly than I felt. "My man is a very clever and reliable fellow, and you may be sure that, having once set eyes on Mr. Hayle, he will not lose sight of him again. I shall leave for Paris to-morrow morning, and shall immediately let you know the result of my search. Will that suit you?"

"It will suit me when I get hold of Hayle," he replied. "Until then I shall know no peace. Surely you must understand that?"

Then, imagining perhaps, that he had gone too far, he began to fawn upon me, and what was worse praised my methods of elucidating a mystery. I cannot say which I disliked the more. Indeed, had it not been that I had promised Miss Kit.w.a.ter to take up the case, and that I did not want to disappoint her, I believe I should have abandoned it there and then, out of sheer disgust. A little later our hostess proposed that we should adjourn to the house, as it was neatly lunch-time. We did so, and I was shown to a pretty bedroom to wash my hands. It was a charming apartment, redolent of the country, smelling of lavender, and after London, as fresh as a glimpse of a new life. I looked about me, took in the cleanliness of everything, and contrasted it with my own dingy apartments at Rickford's Hotel, where the view from the window was not of meadows and breezy uplands, but of red roofs, chimney-pots, and constantly revolving cowls. I could picture the view from this window in the early morning, with the dew upon the gra.s.s, and the blackbirds whistling in the shrubbery. I am not a vain man, I think, but at this juncture I stood before the looking-gla.s.s and surveyed myself. For the first time in my life I could have wished that I had been better-looking. At last I turned angrily away.

"What a duffer I am to be sure!" I said to myself. "If I begin to get notions like this in my head there is no knowing where I may end. As if any girl would ever think twice about me!"

Thereupon I descended to the drawing-room, which I found empty. It was a true woman's room, daintily furnished, with little knick-knacks here and there, a work-basket put neatly away for the Sabbath, and an open piano with one of Chopin's works upon the music-rest. Leading out of the drawing-room was a small conservatory, filled with plants. It was a pretty little place and I could not refrain from exploring it. I am pa.s.sionately fond of flowers, but my life at that time was not one that permitted me much leisure to indulge in my liking. As I stood now, however, in the charming place, among the rows of neatly-arranged pots, I experienced a sort of waking dream. I seemed to see myself standing in this very conservatory, hard at work upon my flowers, a pipe in my mouth and my favourite old felt hat upon my head. Crime and criminals were alike forgotten; I no longer lived in a dingy part of the Town, and what was better than all I had----

"Do you know I feel almost inclined to offer you the proverbial penny,"

said Miss Kit.w.a.ter's voice behind me, at the drawing-room door. "Is it permissible to ask what you were thinking about?"

I am not of course prepared to swear it, but I honestly believe for the first time for many years, I blushed.

"I was thinking how very pleasant a country life must be," I said, making the first excuse that came to me. "I almost wish that I could lead one."

"Then why don't you? Surely it would not be so very difficult?"

"I am rather afraid it would," I answered. "And yet I don't know why it should be."

"Perhaps Mrs. Fairfax would not care about it," she continued, as we returned to the drawing-room together.

"Good gracious!" I remarked. "There is no Mrs. Fairfax. I am the most confirmed of old bachelors. I wonder you could not see that. Is not the word _crustiness_ written plainly upon my forehead?"

"I am afraid I cannot see it," she answered. "I am not quite certain who it was, but I fancy it was my uncle who informed me that you were married."

"It was very kind of him," I said. "But it certainly is not the case. I fear my wife would have rather a lonely time of it if it were. I am obliged to be away from home so much, you see, and for so long at a time."

"Yours must be indeed a strange profession, Mr. Fairfax, if I may say so," she continued. "Some time ago I came across an account, in a magazine, of your life, and the many famous cases in which you had taken part."

"Ah! I remember the wretched thing," I said. "I am sorry that you should ever have seen it."

"And why should you be sorry?"

"Because it is a silly thing, and I have always regretted allowing the man to publish it. He certainly called upon me and asked me a lot of questions, after which he went away and wrote that article. Ever since then I have felt like a conceited a.s.s, who tried to make himself out more clever than he really was."

"I don't think you would do that," she said. "But, if you will let me say so, yours must be a very trying life, and also an extremely dangerous one. I am afraid you must look upon human nature from a very strange point of view!"

"Not more strange probably than you do," I answered.

"But you are continually seeing the saddest side of it. To you all the miseries that a life of crime entails, are visible. The greater part of your time is spent among desperate men who are without hope, and to whom even their own shadows are a constant menace. I wonder that you still manage to retain your kind heart."

"But how do you know that my heart is kind?" I inquired.

"If for no other reason, simply because you have taken up my uncle's case," she answered. "Do you think when he was so rude to you just now, that I could not see that you pitied him, and for that reason you forbore to take advantage of your power? I know you have a kind heart."

"And you find it difficult to a.s.similate that kind heart with the remorseless detective of Public Life?"

"I find it difficult to recognize in you the man who, on a certain notable occasion, went into a thieves' den in Chicago unaccompanied, and after a terrible struggle in which you nearly lost your life, succeeded in effecting the arrest of a notorious murderer."

At that moment the gong in the hall sounded for lunch, and I was by no means sorry for the interruption. We found Kit.w.a.ter and Codd awaiting our coming in the dining-room, and we thereupon sat down to the meal.

When we left the room again, we sat in the garden and smoked, and later in the afternoon, my hostess conducted me over her estate, showed me her vineries, introduced me to her two sleek Jerseys, who had their home in the meadow I had seen from the window; to her poultry, pigs, and the pigeons who came fluttering about her, confident that they would come to no harm. Meanwhile her uncle had resumed his restless pacing up and down the path on which I had first seen him, Codd had returned to his archaeological studies, and I was alone with Miss Kit.w.a.ter. We were standing alone together, I remember, at the gate that separated the garden from the meadowland. I knew as well as possible, indeed I had known it since we had met in the churchyard that morning, that she had something to say to me, something concerning which she had not quite made up her mind. What it was, however, I fancied I could hazard a very good guess, but I was determined not to forestall her, but to wait and let her broach it to me in her own way. This, I fancied, she was now about to do.

"Mr. Fairfax," she began, resting her clasped hands upon the bar of the gate as she spoke, "I want, if you will allow me, to have a serious talk with you. I could not have a better opportunity than the present, and, such as it is, I want to make the best of it."

"I am quite at your service, Miss Kit.w.a.ter," I replied, "and if I can be of any use to you I hope you will tell me. Pray let me know what I can do for you?"

"It is about my uncle and Mr. Codd that I want to speak to you," she said, sinking her voice a little, as if she were afraid they might hear.

"And what about them?"

"I want to be loyal to them, and yet I want to know what you think of the whole affair," she said, looking intently at me as she spoke.

"Believe me, I have good and sufficient reasons for my request."

"I am to tell exactly what I think about their pursuit of this man Hayle? And what chances of success I think they possess?" I said.

"I am not thinking so much of their success," she returned, "as of the real nature of their case."

"I believe I understand what is pa.s.sing in your mind," I said. "Indeed I should not be surprised if the suspicion you entertain is not the same as I have myself."

"You have been suspicious then?"

"I could scarcely fail to be," I replied.