Part 20 (1/2)

”You seem pretty quick, I've noticed, in what you've just been telling me at putting two and two together. Well, you say you were at the Santa Anna Hotel the night the murder was committed ten years ago. You knew there were two men mixed up in it. You remembered one of them; would you remember the other?”

”He was a mere boy,” I said, ”and it's a long time ago. He must have changed almost beyond recognition.”

”He's just twenty-nine at present; I've good reason to know, as I'm he.”

It was my turn to be astonished, but it was not policy to show it.

Therefore I merely said, ”Oh, indeed!”

”You see,” he went on dully, ”that's where Wildred has had his pull over me since he ran across me, by a piece of devil's own luck, in Canada five years ago. As you say, I have changed; but his eyes are like gimlets, they'd pierce a stone wall. It's quite true, as you suspected, that he and Collins are one. I knew him by a queer scar on his hand, shaped like a star--perhaps you've observed it? But he didn't mind. He seemed even to find a sort of pleasure in telling me how he had been to a clever fellow in Paris, and got himself made over into another man, so that he might the more easily turn his back upon various little episodes of the past. I couldn't have proved it if I'd wanted to, he was so different, and had worked up such a new record for himself to travel on.

He knew that, and he knew, too, that I was in his power.”

”I don't exactly see how _that_ came about,” I objected.

”Don't you? You're not so quick as usual, then. I'd been accused of the murder at the Santa Anna Hotel. I hooked it, and got over to Mexico, so to Spain and France. I'd always been a black sheep, you know, but that was the first really serious trouble I'd got into. However, as I said, five years later, when Wildred and I met, I was in Canada; I'd turned actor (I'd always a little talent that way), and was doing pretty well.

He pointed out to me--and I wasn't very long in seeing his point--that I was not so much changed but what I should easily be recognised by those who had known me during those wild days when I'd been under his thumb in San Francisco, and the authorities there would still be very glad to hear of me. He didn't happen to want anything of me just then, but he allowed me to understand that it was to my interest to keep sweet with him. And from that day to this he's had his eye on me.”

”But it was _he_ who was accused of that murder, not you,” I said.

”_What!_”

The man seemed either not to believe or understand me.

I repeated the statement, and then, when he stammered his astonishment, his ignorance of all that had taken place in San Francisco after his escape (at which we had all tacitly connived at the time), I went on to explain the true circ.u.mstances of the case. Carson Wildred had deceived him into the belief that he alone had been suspected--that if he were caught he would be promptly hanged.

”He has told the same story to your sister, I would swear!” I exclaimed, hotly. ”It is for this reason that she has been persuaded into promising to marry him. Believing that he knows your whereabouts, and holds it in his power at any moment to have you punished as a murderer--believing, too, no doubt, that you did commit the murder, she has been ready to save your life by the sacrifice of all that has made hers dear.”

”Curse him! I'd take my oath you're right!” he a.s.severated. ”He's sly enough and vile enough for anything.”

”Did you ever see Harvey Farnham?” I questioned.

”Yes, years ago I knew him well, and liked him immensely--as he did me, I think. It was in Tuolumne County, California, where he had a gold mine--the Miss Cunningham. It was I who named that, oddly enough it may seem to you, after my sister, of course. He wasn't aware of that, but thought it was just a whim of mine, that probably I'd admired some girl called 'Miss Cunningham,' and wanted to pay her a compliment. You see, no one knew me by my right name even then.

”It was before that hateful time when I got in with Collins, or Wildred, whichever you like to call him, and not long after I'd run away from home and England under the a.s.sumed name of Hartley--it was my mother's maiden name. I was only seventeen or eighteen, but I was pretty sharp for my years, I'm afraid, for I'd been among a queer lot already, and one night I would have got into a row with some older man over cards, a row that might have ended badly if it hadn't been for Mr. Farnham, who had dropped into the place to look on, and who stood by me for all he was worth.

”It seemed he noticed me the moment he entered the room, thinking that I looked enough like him to be his own son. Afterward he took me up, making a lot of me, wanting to find out where I'd come from, and all that. He thought my resemblance to him (which everyone who saw us together invariably remarked) a wonderful joke, and used to call me his 'boy,' and 'sonny,' getting it into his head that I was a sort of 'Mascot,' who brought luck to him in whatever he undertook. That was the princ.i.p.al reason, of course, that he was so keen on having me name his mine for him. I think if I had sowed all my wild oats, and been willing to settle down a bit into a respectable member of society, there was a time when he wouldn't have minded adopting me, for some old, unhappy love affair or other had kept him out of the marriage-market, eligible as he was, and he swore that he never meant to marry, even for the hope of having an heir to all his money. Yes, I might have been that heir if I hadn't been a fool, for Farnham certainly thought the world and all of me in those days. As it was, he did me many a kindness.”

”And now, by way of repaying that affection and those kindnesses,” I could not help exclaiming, with a returning touch of the old bitter contempt, ”you've undertaken to help his murderer to get off scot free.

You've been masquerading in the very clothes the poor fellow wore, you've been using his luggage, trading on the likeness to him which once won for you his regard, heightening it in every way by artificial means, so that not only shall Carson Wildred, or Willis Collins, escape suspicion, but that he may enrich himself on the dead man's millions.

You even set an hotel on fire to finish the whole fiendish plot with a fine dramatic effect!”

The poor wretch, who had made such a wreck of his young life, was white as death, and shaking like an aspen. I could see the beads of sweat oozing out on his pale forehead. ”For G.o.d's sake,” he implored, ”don't say that to me; I can't bear it! Until you told me just now I swear to you by all I hold sacred--by my sister's love, which I so little deserve--that I never dreamed of Harvey Farnham's being dead. You may believe me or not, as you like, but you're _her_ friend, so I should be glad that you should believe. And, at least, you owe it to me in common justice to hear what I've got to say.

”Collins always managed to keep his eye on me, and knew my whereabouts and my doings, making me feel that at any moment he could come down on me if he chose. I daresay he had other men in his power like that, men whom he thought he might wish to make his tools at one time or other. I didn't often hear from him, though I knew myself shadowed, and knew also, only too well, whom I had to thank for it. You can't guess the horror of the feeling, or how it got on my nerves. I fancied it would drive me to madness or suicide one day, always knowing I was watched, that I could never, try as I would, escape that Eye, which was really Willis Collins's, spying me out across the ocean.

”Well, a cablegram came from him commanding rather than asking me to go to England, saying that it would be much to my advantage to do so, and that my fare and all expenses would at once be sent me in advance. There was just a hint that I had better not refuse, which I understood as well as if it had been a definite threat; and, anyhow, there was a certain attractiveness in the idea of going home--I hadn't seen Karine or England for so long.

”I didn't mean to let my sister know of my presence--I would have spared her that--but I fancied myself standing among the crowd in the Park, watching her drive by, or something of that sort. Even a glimpse of her face would have been sweet.