The Thousandth Woman Page 2

  II

  SECOND SIGHT

  Southampton Water was an ornamental lake dotted with fairy lamps. Thestars above seemed only a far-away reflex of those below; but in theirturn they shimmered on the sleek silken arm of sleeping sea. It was amidsummer night, lagging a whole season behind its fellows. But alreadyit was so late that the English passengers on the _Kaiser Fritz_ hadabandoned all thought of catching the last train up to London.

  They tramped the deck in their noisy, shiny, shore-going boots; theymanned the rail in lazy inarticulate appreciation of the nocturne inblue stippled with green and red and countless yellow lights. Somedelivered themselves of the patriotic platitudes which become the homingtourist who has seen no foreign land to touch his own. But one who hadseen more than sights and cities, one who had been ten years buried inthe bush, one with such yarns to spin behind those outpost lights ofEngland, was not even on deck to hail them back into his ken. Achillesin his tent was no more conspicuous absentee than Cazalet in his cabinas the _Kaiser Fritz_ steamed sedately up Southampton Water.

  He had finished packing; the stateroom floor was impassable with thebaggage that Cazalet had wanted on the five-weeks' voyage. There wasscarcely room to sit down, but in what there was sat Cazalet like a soulin torment. All the vultures of the night before, of his dreadful dream,and of the poignant reminiscences to which his dream had led, mighthave been gnawing at his vitals as he sat there waiting to set foot oncemore in the land from which a bitter blow had driven him.

  Yet the bitterness might have been allayed by the consciousness that he,at any rate, had turned it to account. It had been, indeed, the makingof him; thanks to that stern incentive, even some of the sweets of adeserved success were already his. But there was no hint of complacencyin Cazalet's clouded face and heavy attitude. He looked as if he had notslept, after all, since his nightmare; almost as if he could not trusthimself to sleep again. His face was pale, even in that torrid zonebetween the latitudes protected in the bush by beard and wide-awake. Andhe jumped to his feet as suddenly as the screw stopped for the firsttime; but that might have been just the curious shock which itscessation always causes after days at sea. Only the same thing happenedagain and yet again, as often as ever the engines paused before the end.Cazalet would spring up and watch his stateroom door with clenched fistsand haunted eyes. But it was some long time before the door flew open,and then slammed behind Hilton Toye.

  Toye was in a state of excitement even more abnormal than Cazalet'snervous despondency, which indeed it prevented him from observing. Itwas instantaneously clear that Toye was astounded, thrilled, almosttriumphant, but as yet just drawing the line at that. A newspaperfluttered in his hand.

  "Second sight?" he ejaculated, as though it were the night before andCazalet still shaken by his dream. "I guess you've got it in fullmeasure, pressed down and running over, Mr. Cazalet!"

  It was a sorry sample of his talk. Hilton Toye did not usually mix theready metaphors that nevertheless had to satisfy an inner censor, ofsome austerity, before they were allowed to leave those deliberate lips.As a rule there was dignity in that deliberation; it never for a moment,or for any ordinary moment, suggested want of confidence, for example.It could even dignify some outworn modes of transatlantic speech whichstill preserved a perpetual freshness in the mouth of Hilton Toye. Yetnow, in his strange excitement, word and tone alike were on the level ofthe stage American's. It was not less than extraordinary.

  "You don't mean about--" Cazalet seemed to be swallowing.

  "I do, sir!" cried Hilton Toye.

  "--about Henry Craven?"

  "Sure."

  "Has--something or other--happened to him?"

  "Yep."

  "You don't mean to say he's--dead?"

  "Last Wednesday night!" Toye looked at his paper. "No, I guess I'mwrong. Seems it happened Wednesday, but he only passed away Sundaymorning."

  Cazalet still sat staring at him--there was not room for two of them ontheir feet--but into his heavy stare there came a gleam of leadenwisdom. "This was Thursday morning," he said, "so I didn't dream of itwhen it happened, after all."

  "You dreamed you saw him lying dead, and so he was," said Toye. "Thefuneral's been to-day. I don't know, but that seems to me just about thenext nearest thing to seeing the crime perpetrated in a vision."

  "Crime!" cried Cazalet. "What crime?"

  "Murder, sir!" said Hilton Toye. "Wilful, brutal, bloody murder! Here'sthe paper; better read it for yourself. I'm glad he wasn't a friend ofyours, or mine either, but it's a bad end even for your worst enemy."

  The paper fluttered in Cazalet's clutch as it had done in Toye's; butthat was as natural as his puzzled frown over the cryptic allusions of ajournal that had dealt fully with the ascertainable facts in previousissues. Some few emerged between the lines. Henry Craven had receivedhis fatal injuries on the Wednesday of the previous week. The thing hadhappened in his library, at or about half past seven in the evening; buthow a crime, which was apparently a profound mystery, had been timed towithin a minute of its commission did not appear among the latestparticulars. No arrest had been made. No clue was mentioned, beyond thestatement that the police were still searching for a definite instrumentwith which it was evidently assumed that the deed had been committed.There was in fact a close description of an unusual weapon, a specialconstable's very special truncheon. It had hung as a cherished trophy onthe library wall, from which it was missing, while the very imprint of asilver shield, mounted on the thick end of the weapon, was stated tohave been discovered on the scalp of the fractured skull. But that was alittle bit of special reporting, typical of the enterprising sheet thatToye had procured. The inquest, merely opened on the Monday, had beenadjourned to the day of issue.

  "We must get hold of an evening paper," said Cazalet. "Fancy his ownfamous truncheon! He had it mounted and inscribed himself, so that itshouldn't be forgotten how he'd fought for law and order at TrafalgarSquare! That was the man all over!"

  His voice and manner achieved the excessive indifference which theEnglish type holds due from itself after any excess of feeling. Toyealso was himself again, his alert mind working keenly yet darkly in hisacute eyes.

  "I wonder if it was a murder?" he speculated. "I bet it wasn't adeliberate murder."

  "What else could it have been?"

  "Kind of manslaughter. Deliberate murderers don't trust to chanceweapons hanging on their victims' walls."

  "You forget," said Cazalet, "that he was robbed as well."

  "Do they claim that?" said Hilton Toye. "I guess I skipped some. Wheredoes it say anything about his being robbed?"

  "Here!" Cazalet had scanned the paper eagerly; his finger drummed uponthe place. "'The police,'" he read out, in some sort of triumph, "'havenow been furnished with a full description of the missing watch andtrinkets and the other articles believed to have been taken from thepockets of the deceased.' What's that but robbery?"

  "You're dead right," said Toye. "I missed that somehow. Yet who inthunder tracks a man down to rob and murder him in his own home? Butwhen you've brained a man, because you couldn't keep your hands off him,you might deliberately do all the rest to make it seem like the work ofthieves."

  Hilton Toye looked a judge of deliberation as he measured hisirrefutable words. He looked something more. Cazalet could not tear hisblue eyes from the penetrating pair that met them with a somber twinkle,an enlightened gusto, quite uncomfortably suggestive at such a moment.

  "You aren't a detective, by any chance, are you?" cried Cazalet, withrather clumsy humor.

  "No, sir! But I've often thought I wouldn't mind being one," said Toye,chuckling. "I rather figure I might do something at it. If things don'tgo my way in your old country, and they put up a big enough reward, why,here's a man I knew and a place I know, and I might have a mind to trymy hand."

  They went ashore together, and to the same hotel at Southampton for thenight. Perhaps neither could have said from which side the initiativecame; but midnight found th
e chance pair with their legs under the sameheavy Victorian mahogany, devouring cold beef, ham and pickles asphlegmatically as commercial travelers who had never been off the islandin their lives. Yet surely Cazalet was less depressed than he had beenbefore landing; the old English ale in a pewter tankard even elicited afew of those anecdotes and piquant comparisons in which his conversationwas at its best. It was at its worst on general questions, or onconcrete topics not introduced by himself; and into this category,perhaps not unnaturally, fell such further particulars of the ThamesValley mystery as were to be found in an evening paper at the inn. Theyincluded a fragmentary report of the adjourned inquest, and the actualoffer of such a reward, by the dead man's firm, for the apprehension ofhis murderer, as made Toye's eyes glisten in his sagacious head.

  But Cazalet, though he had skimmed the many-headed column before sittingdown to supper, flatly declined to discuss the tragedy his first nightashore.