Part 41 (2/2)
It was her exquisite thought to involve the man from Scotland Yard.
Mark Brendon, then known to be taking holiday at Princetown, had been pointed out to her; she appraised him correctly and her woman's intuition told her what verisimilitude would spring from his active cooperation. Secure in her own genius, she therefore complicated the issues by appealing to Brendon and winning his enthusiastic a.s.sistance. Much sprang from this, for the poor fellow was soon a willing victim to Jenny; and while he lent a thousand happy touches to subsequent incidents by his inefficiencies and sins of omission, such moderate talent as he possessed was still farther obscured by the emotion of love which sprang up in his heart for my widowed partner. Thus he became exceedingly useful as time pa.s.sed; yet fortune favours fools and his very stupidity served him well at the end; for when I sought to destroy him on Griante and believed that I had done so, the man displayed an ingenuity for which I did not give him credit and unconsciously laid the foundations of subsequent disaster.
The letter which Bendigo Redmayne received, and supposed had come from his brother at Plymouth, was posted by Jenny on her journey to ”Crow's Nest.” We had written it together a week earlier and studied her uncle's indifferent penmans.h.i.+p very carefully before doing so.
This blind I held valuable, and indeed it proved to be; for it concentrated attention on the port and led to the theory that Robert had escaped to France or Spain.
Thus closed our opening episode. The murder of Michael Pendean became received as a fact capable of everything but proof absolute, while the escape of Robert Redmayne offered an insoluble problem to the authorities. Michael Pendean indeed was dead enough, for it had been a part of my original conception that he should never reappear.
Obviously he could not do so; and I, who had already created ”Doria,” now began to live my new part in life with zest and gusto--a dramatist and actor in one. He did not spring full-fledged from my brain; but like other great impersonators, I gradually enlarged and enriched the character and finally found myself actually living and thinking the new being into which I was translated. Pendean sank to the shadow of a shade.
My past, by an effort of will, was banished from my mind. I invented and presently believed in another past. When my wife returned to my side, I fell in love with her for the second time; and so superbly did I enter into the existence and mental outlook of Giuseppe Doria that I was almost shocked by the familiarity of Jenny when she kissed me and hugged me at the first convenient opportunity after her arrival at ”Crow's Nest”!
And her own echoing genius swiftly accepted this magnificent apotheosis of her Cornish husband. I became a new man in her eyes also. With that marvellous power of make-believe, possible only to women of supreme genius, she swiftly conceived of me as something altogether different from Michael Pendean--a creature richer and rarer--and this effort of imagination enabled us both to create that solid appearance of a new and quickening understanding that so amply sufficed to deceive Bendigo Redmayne and delude Brendon.
It is impossible to exaggerate the unique entertainment we derived from this phase of our deception. We proposed to let six months pa.s.s before the death of Bendigo Redmayne, and we were already contemplating details and considering how best to bring his brother back upon the stage for the purpose of Ben's destruction, when Mark Brendon blundered in upon us once again. He came very pat with calf love in his eyes; and it seemed that he might well a.s.sist us once more and apply his limited attainments to the problem of our sea wolf's approaching exit. Because we knew our Marco well, by this time, and perceived how useful he might be in disseminating that atmosphere of reality so desirable in cases such as these.
We were called upon to act quickly--so quickly that the first steps were taken before the last had been fully planned; but the place, the time of long, dark nights and other circ.u.mstances--these all lent value and a.s.sistance to the acute operations now undertaken. I swiftly brought Robert Redmayne to life; and though, with more leisure for refinements, I should not have clothed him in his old attire, yet that crude detail possessed a value of its own and certainly served to deceive Brendon, who, before the sudden apparition under that night of storm, did not stop to be logical or weigh probability. In the windy moonlight he saw the red head, huge mustache and bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned waistcoat of Robert Redmayne, and any question of detail escaped him in the whirl of the larger emotions and suspicions awakened by such an unexpected vision.
Doubtless he was thinking of Jenny and speculating with deep unrest how he might approach that lonely and lovely woman. Nor had he missed my attractions and we may feel sure that jealousy shared his heart with pa.s.sion. Upon these reflections broke Redmayne, the murderer, and Marco's first thought was doubtless unflattering to the residents of ”Crow's Nest.” What he designed to do next morning I cannot say, but we determined his actions from the other end.
Having first appeared before him by Black Wood and lifted the curtain on the second act of my romantic comedy, I remained there a while, then ascended to Strete Farm and presently, in the small hours, awakened the farmer, showed myself stealing food and so hastily departed.
Thus a few hours later, when Giuseppe goes for the milk, he hears of the robbery, returns to ”Crow's Nest” and describes a man that Ben has no difficulty in recognizing as his brother, or Jenny as her uncle. Robert Redmayne is on the war-path once more!
Of subsequent events, most are so familiar that there is no need to retrace them. It is to be noted, however, that Robert does not appear again to anybody but Jenny and Doria. In other words, he does not appear again at all. His disguise is doffed--not to be resumed until many months have pa.s.sed, when once more he leaps out upon the wild ranges of Griante. No. While alive enough and close enough to impress both Bendigo and Brendon with his presence as described by Jenny and myself, he has in reality vanished to the void. The ”forgery” again goes to sleep--as soundly as the real man in Foggintor.
Accident, indeed, modified the original scheme and once more Chance befriended us and enabled us to improve upon the first intention.
My tears fall when I think of my incomparable Jenny and her astounding mastery of minutiae at ”Crow's Nest”--her finesse and exquisite touch, her kittenlike delicacy, her catlike swiftness and sureness. The two beings involved were as children in her hands. Oh, precious phoenix of a woman, you and I were of the same spirit, kneaded into our clay! Through your father you won it--and I had it from my mother--the primeval fire that burns through all obstacles to its inveterate purpose!
I say that accident made a radical alteration of design vital, for I had intended, on the night when Robert Redmayne would come and see Bendigo, to murder the old sailor in his tower room and remove him before morning with my wife's a.s.sistance. But the victim postponed his own destruction, for upon the night when his death was intended, during my previous conversation with him touching Jenny, I had perceived, by his clumsy glances and evidence of anxiety, that somebody else was in the tower room--unseen.
There was but one hiding-place and but one man likely to occupy it.
I did not indicate that I had discovered the secret and it was not the detective who gave himself away; but, once alive to his presence, I swiftly marked a flash of light at one of the little ventilation holes in the cupboard and perceived that our sleuth stood hid within it. My plan of campaign was altered accordingly and to great advantage. Indeed, to have slain Ben in his house, when I should have appeared instead of the brother he expected, had been a maladroit achievement, contrasted with the far more notable feat of the following night.
Having conveyed the old sailor to the cave, where, on my recent run up the coast after dropping Brendon, I had already looked in and lighted the lamp, I landed behind him and, as his foot touched the sh.o.r.e, the pole-axe fell. He was dead in an instant and five minutes later his blood ran upon the sand. Next I dug a grave under the s.h.i.+ngle, at a spot destined within half an hour to be covered by the tide. In less than twenty minutes Bendigo Redmayne reposed beneath three feet of sand and stone and I was on my way back again to ”Crow's Nest.” There I reported to Brendon that the brothers had met and would expect me again anon. I smoked a cigarette or two, descended to our little harbour, removed my spade from the launch to the boathouse, took a sack and so set out again.
By the time that I had reached the cavern the waves already flowed over old sea wolf's resting-place. I landed, half filled my sack with stones and sand, scattered judicious drops of blood and climbed the steps and tunnel, laying the trail that occupied official attention to such poor purpose during the days that followed.
Having reached the plateau, I emptied my sack, casting its contents over the cliff; I then left a good impression or two of Robert Redmayne's shoes, which I had, of course, remembered to put on. They would be recollected by Mark Brendon, for impressions had been found and records taken at Foggintor.
I swiftly descended the tunnel again after these operations, returned to my boathouse, stowed my sack, changed my boots and hastened to Brendon with my story. How we proceeded to the cave, our fruitless inquiries and the subsequent failure to find any solution to the disappearance of Bendigo and the reappearance of Robert are all facts within the memory. I need not tell you that tale again; but may declare how specially attractive it was to picture the puzzled police upon the little beach next day, and know that Bendigo Redmayne lay not a yard beneath their feet.
Once more my amazing wife and I parted for a brief period and then I had the joy of introducing her to Italy, where the remainder of our task awaited us. But we resolved that considerable time should pa.s.s before proceeding and we did not appear before her remaining uncle for many months. Meantime we revelled in a second honeymoon, reported our marriage to Albert Redmayne and the egregious Marco, to whom, at Jenny's suggestion we conveyed a piece of wedding cake, that he might the better grasp our achievement. We had not finished yet with the pride of New Scotland Yard.
And now for Italy. It is true that in my early manhood I had suffered a sad accident at Naples, the secret of which was known to my mother and myself alone. I therefore entertained some grudge against her country; but the fact at no time lessened my love for the south; and Jenny and I had always determined that when our task was accomplished the balance of our united life should there be spent in dignity and peace.
CHAPTER XIX
A LEGACY FOR PETER GANNS
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