CHAPTER XXV
The train was moving out after the briefest stop at a place sounimportant, and he swung himself into one of the carriages gliding pasthim. At first he thought the compartment was empty, but as the trainemerged from a tunnel immediately beyond the station gates he observed aman with glasses reading a newspaper in the opposite corner seat. Thatreminded him to buy an evening paper at the next stopping place, a town ofsome importance, where a number of intending passengers were waiting onthe platform. Several pushed past him into the compartment. He did notheed them. He sat in a deep reverie, his paper unfolded in his hand, pastscenes flowing through his brain as the train sped on towards London. Thecarriage and its occupants receded from his vision, and he was back againon the Cornwall cliffs with Sisily. Her face appeared before his eyes justas he had seen it in their last parting.
He came back with an effort to the world of events, and unfolded hisnewspaper. That was a daily ordeal from which he shrank, yet dared notevade. During the past week he had faced it in all sorts of places: streetcorners, public squares, obscure restaurants, the burrowed windings ofUnderground stations, and once in the dark interior of a cinema where hehad followed a girl with a vague resemblance to Sisily. As the days wenton and he read nothing to alarm him, his tension grew less. It reallylooked as if Scotland Yard and the newspapers had forgotten all about theCornwall murder, or had relegated it to the list of undiscoverablemysteries.
He now glanced at the headlines listlessly enough. The editor could offernothing better on his front page that night than Ireland and theindustrial situation. Charles opened the sheet and looked inside. Hislistlessness vanished as his eye fell upon his own name. In the guise offat black capitals it headed a half-column article about his uncle'sdeath. Charles read it through, slowly and deliberately, to the end. Helearnt that there had been what the writer called fresh developments inthe case. The police were now looking for another suspect--himself. Thedetective engaged upon the case had suspicions of the murdered man'snephew for some time past, but had his reasons for reticence--reasonswhich had now so completely disappeared that Scotland Yard had made publica full description of the young man and the additional information that hewas supposed to be in London. Charles found himself reading thedescription of himself with the detached, slightly wondering air withwhich a man might be supposed to read his own death notice. He weighed thepersonal details quite critically. Young and tall. Yes. Good-looking. Washe? Dark blue eyes. Were they? He had never thought about them. Ofgentlemanly appearance. That read like the advertisement of a Cheapsidetailor--what was a gentlemanly appearance, if he had it? He had alwaysassociated it with a cheap lounge suit and a bowler hat. Very welldressed--then followed the description of his clothes. But he couldn't bewell dressed and of gentlemanly appearance at the same time!
These preoccupations floated lightly, almost playfully, on the surface ofhis mind, but the great fact had sunk to the depths like lead. Hisfather's fears had been right, and his departure from Cornwall had drawnattention to his actions on that night. He was--what was thephrase?--wanted by the police. So was Sisily. He was searching for Sisily,and the police were searching for both of them.
What had the police discovered about him? His lips framed the reply.Everything. That was to say, all there was to find out. Obviously they haddiscovered his visit to Flint House on that night, or at least, that hewas out in the storm during the time the murder was committed. Hiscommonsense told him the reason for Barrant's reticence. He had kept quietin the hope that he would go to his father's house at Richmond, which nodoubt had been closely watched. Now that Barrant had come to theconclusion that the man he was after was too clever to walk into thattrap, he had confided his suspicions to the newspapers in order to guardall avenues of escape by putting the public on the watch for him.
A feeling of helplessness crept over Charles as he contemplated theincredible ingenuity of the mesh of events in which he and Sisily wereentangled. Any moment might terminate his liberty and see him placed underlock and key. Would it help Sisily if he gave himself up and told all heknew? That was a question he had asked himself before, and dismissed itbecause he realized that his own story might involve her more deeplystill. And the loss of time since then, coupled with his owndisappearance, intensified the risk which such a course would entail.There was no hope for her in that direction. Where, then, were they tolook for hope?
He was recalled to his surroundings by a hand laid on his arm. He startedand looked round. The man next to him, with a glance at the paper in hishand, asked him if he could tell him the winner of the second race atLingfield. "It ought to be in the stop-press," he murmured. Charles turnedthe sheet to the indicated column, and the inquirer glanced at it with asatisfied smile, and the remark that it was only what he had expected, inspite of the weight. "A good horse," he remarked approvingly. "But perhapsyou don't go in for racing yourself?"
Charles resisted an insane impulse to shout with laughter. Didn't go infor racing! He was going in for racing with a vengeance--a race againsttime and the police. What was he to do now?
He glanced round him restlessly. The swaying noisy train and thecompartment packed with stolid faces jarred on his overburdened nerves.Why were those women in the next compartment laughing like hyenas? Whatwas there in life to laugh over at any time? It was a thing to imposesilence on all by its desolation, its unescapable doom. His eye was caughtby an advertisement above the rack opposite him--an advertisement whichdepicted a smiling grotesque face, and advised him to buy the comicjournal it represented in order to dissipate melancholy and gloom.
Fools--fools all!
While he was thus looking around him his eyes encountered a curious glancefrom the man in the opposite corner seat, who had been in the compartmentwhen he entered the train at Charleswood. The man dropped his gaze atonce, but there was something in the quality of the look which put Charleson his guard. Charles did not turn his head again, but, leaning back inhis seat, kept the other under view from seemingly closed eyes. He wassoon convinced that the man in the corner seat was watching him--shootingfurtive glances across the carriage from behind the screen of hisnewspaper.
Was he a detective? Not if Barrant was a usual representative of thetribe. Yet there was something infernally quizzical in the scrutiny whichreached him through those gold-rimmed glasses. Stay, though! Diddetectives wear glasses? Wasn't there an eyesight test or something likethat for officers of the law? He had never seen a policeman wearingglasses. If he was not a detective, why was he watching him? There was noreward offered for his arrest. Perhaps he belonged to the wretched type ofbeings who pride themselves on their public spirit--men who wrote lettersto the newspapers and interfered in other people's business. The beastmight have guessed his identity and wanted to show his public spirit byhanding him over to the police. The newspaper in his hand! Of course. Hehad read his description there, and identified him.
Charles found himself conjecturing how the man would set about carryingout his task of public watchdog, if that was in his mind. He pictured thepossibility of him appealing to the others in the compartment. He mightget up and say: "There is a murderer in this compartment. I recognize himfrom the description in this paper, and I call upon you all aspublic-spirited citizens to see that he does not escape justice." Thetorpid passengers would start up, staring and looking foolish after thefashion of English people when asked to do something unusual. Would theyhelp? There was a stout man opposite with the symptoms of a public spiritlurking in the creases of his fat self-satisfied face. Charles promisedhimself that he would give them a fight for it. He counted his chances. Hewas aware from his previous journey to Charleswood that the train he wasin now ran through to Charing Cross without another stop. Perhaps the manin the corner seat would wait until they arrived there, and then give himin charge. That was a disconcerting possibility, but he could see no wayof guarding against it unless he chose to drop from the train, nowtravelling at nearly forty miles an hour, taking the risk of being maimedor kill
ed. He considered the advisability of that. It was a chance hemight have taken casually enough on his own account, but he had also tothink of Sisily. She would be quite friendless if he were killed. Besides,there was also the chance that he might be mistaken in interpreting theman's intentions by his own fears. At all events he seemed to have nothought of springing up and denouncing him. Charles decided to wait andtrust to luck to escape in the crowd at Charing Cross if the man made anymove there.
In ten minutes the train was running into Charing Cross station at slowingspeed. Charles's mouth closed tightly, and his face flushed.
The man in the corner seat flattened his newspaper into a pocket, openedthe carriage door, and sprang out on to the platform. Charles followed himquickly, and stood still watching him make his way towards the barrier. Hesaw him press through, give up his ticket, and disappear without so muchas a backward glance.
There was something so ridiculous in this anticlimax to his poignant fearsthat the young man was for the moment actually exasperated. But his faceand linen were wet with perspiration. Then a great feeling of relief sweptover him like a cooling wave. He followed in the wake of the otherpassengers and emerged from the station into the street.
It was early enough for the shops to be still open, but the streets werethronged with pleasure-seekers going to restaurants and places ofamusement. As he stood there a painted girl touched him on the arm with anenticing smile for such wares as she had to sell, and her solicitationawakened him sharply to the folly of standing in the lighted Strand atthat hour in full view of every passing policeman. He walked slowly away,debating where to turn his steps. An outfitter's shop displaying overcoatsgave him a bright idea. He walked inside and selected a long dark coatwhich reached to his heels, putting it on over the light and fashionablecoat he was wearing. The shopman seemed surprised at his choice, but madeno comment as he took his money and handed him his change. Charles caughta glimpse of himself as he went out, and was satisfied with his changedappearance. In that shapeless garment he was no longer likely to catch theeye of any unduly curious observer as a "well-dressed" man.
He now walked swiftly. Turning out of Chandos Street from the Strand, heavoided the brightly lit proximity of Leicester Square, and plunged intothe crooked dark streets on the other side of Charing Cross Road. Hereached New Oxford Street, crossed it, and continued along obscurestreets, his head bent forward, in the unconscious habit of a man thinkingdeeply as he went.
In the first feeling of dismay at the discovery that the police werelooking for him he had been overwhelmed by a sense of catastrophe. Withthe passing of that phase he was able to consider the situation with acooler brain, and it now seemed to him that his position was not soprecarious as he deemed it in the light of that shock. He knew London, andmight be able to evade arrest indefinitely if he took precautions andavoided risks. But Sisily was in different case. He recalled her tellinghim that she had only been in London once, as a child with her father. Herinexperience of London was her greatest danger, because it was likely toattract attention. The only one to whom she could look for help washimself.
His determination to find her was doggedly renewed as he thought of that.He accepted the lengthened odds against him with the desperate darkcourage of a spirit which had always regarded life as a gamble againstunseen forces holding marked cards. The police were searching for him?Very well. He would pit his wits against theirs, and continue his ownsearch for Sisily with a caution he had hitherto disdained to use.
Courage and caution! Those were the two qualities he must use in adroitcombination. The plight of both Sisily and himself was desperate enoughnow without giving the enemy a chance by recklessness. He was like a manrowing a small boat in the immensity of a dark sea which threatened everymoment to engulf him. Sisily was somewhere in that darkness, and she mustbe rescued. If his own cockleshell went down there could be no succour forher. That was a thought to make him keep afloat--to keep on rowing.
And suppose that he did find her, as he believed he would, sooner orlater--given time. What was to happen then?
That thought pursued him in his walk that night, and was his constantcompanion in the lonely days and nights of his wanderings which followed.He had banished it before, but that course was no longer possible. Theimpalpable yet terribly real menace of authority overshadowing them bothnow made it imperative that all the facts should be faced. All thefacts--but what were they? It was the question he asked himself again andagain as he strove to twist out of the black fantasy of that horriblenight some tangible shred of truth which might help them both. His ownincredible share in it was forever being re-enacted in his mind, andhaunted his dreams. In the night, at early dawn, at odd moments of hiseternal quest, the curtain of his mind would rise on that unforgettablescene--the cliffs, the rocks, the darkling outline of Flint House, with afeeble beam of light slanting down from the upstairs window at the backwhich looked out on the sea. Then the gush of light from the open door,and her shape stealing forth into the darkness, followed byanother--Thalassa's. And then, the final phase--the desolate house, thewind rushing noisily along dark passages, the dead form of Robert Turoldin the room upstairs. What did these things mean, and what was to be theend?
His hope was that Sisily could reveal something which would furnish thekey to the enigma of that night's events. From her lips he might learnenough to guide him to the hidden truth, and save them both. Sustained bythe feeling that she existed somewhere near him, he continued his searchday after day until in the abstracted intensity of his fancy Londonassumed the appearance of a wilderness of unending streets filled withpallid faces which flitted past his vision like ghosts. But the face hewas seeking was never among them.
He searched with the wariness of one whose own liberty depended upon hiswatchfulness. A second glance, an indignant look, a turn of the head, apoliceman's casual eye--any of these things would place him immediately onhis guard and turn his footsteps in a different direction. He chose hissleeping places with care at the last minute, and left them at earlymorning when only a yawning night porter or a sleepy maid servant wasastir. He never returned to the same place, nor did he go to the samerestaurant twice. Most carefully did he read the newspapers, but nothingappeared in their columns to alarm him; merely an occasional perfunctoryparagraph about the Cornwall murder. The favourite adjective in thejournalistic etymological garden was culled for the heading, and it wasdescribed as an amazing case. Charles felt that the definition was correctenough. Early developments were faithfully promised--by the newspaper.Charles understood very well what was meant by that. It was hoped he wouldprovide the development by falling into the hands of the police. He smileda little at that, but the unintended warning increased his vigilance.
On the whole he felt tolerably safe in the crowded London streets. It wasnot as though there was any real hue and cry after him. The lonelyCornwall tragedy had not come into sufficient public notice for that, andnow it seemed almost forgotten.
He had his hazards and chances, though in a different way. One was anencounter with a young man of good family whose acquaintance, commenced inFrance during the war, had continued in London afterwards. The two youngmen had seen a great deal of each other--dining and going to music-hallstogether. It was in Leicester Square that Charles saw him getting out of ataxi-cab to enter a hall where a professional billiard match was inprogress. He paused midway at the sight of Charles, exclaiming: "Why,Tur--" The second syllable of the name was nipped off in mid-air, and theoutstretched arm was dropped, as the patron of billiards took in the cutof his former friend's coat. He gazed at the ill-fitting garment with akind of astonished animosity, and then his puzzled look shot upwards tothe face surmounting it, no doubt with the feeling that he may have beendeceived by a chance resemblance. Charles went past him without a sign ofrecognition, but he felt that the other was still staring after him.
Another day a street musician regarded him curiously from behind a barrelorgan which he was turning with the lifeless celerity of one withouti
nterest in the sounds created by the process. His card of appeal--"Wantedin 1914; not wanted now"--helped Charles to recall him as a soldier of hisold regiment. They exchanged glances across the card. The man gave no signthat he knew his former officer, but Charles had no doubt that he did. Heplaced a coin on top of the organ and went swiftly on.
A week of increasing strain slipped by, and another commenced. ThenFortune, with a contemptuous good-humoured spin of her wheel, did forCharles Turold what he could hardly have hoped to achieve in a year'seffort without her aid.
It was late at night, and he was in a despondent mood after one of hisrecurring disappointments--this time a graceful slender shape which he hadearlier in the evening pursued in a flock of home-going shop-girls untilshe turned and revealed a pert Cockney face which bore no resemblance toSisily's. Several hours later he paid another of his visits to EustonSquare, which he believed to be the starting-point of Sisily's ownwanderings. He felt closer to her in that locality because of that. FromEuston Square he walked on aimlessly, engrossed in impossible plans forfinding Sisily by hook or crook, until the illuminated dial of a streetclock, pointing to half-past ten, reminded him of the passage of time.
He paused and looked round. He was in an area of darkened suburban streetsconverging on a distant broader avenue, where occasional taxi-cabs slidpast into the blackness of the night with the heartless velocity of yearsdisappearing into the gulf of Time.
He turned his steps in the direction of this thoroughfare in order to findout the locality, but stopped half-way at the sight of a coffee-stall onthe opposite side of the street. He was hungry and thirsty, and he hadlearnt to like the safety of these places in his wanderings. The foodmight be coarse, but there were no lengthy waits between courses; nocurious glances from the other patrons. A couple of half-drunken young menwere feeding at this stall, and a girl of the streets was standing nearthem. In the light of a swinging lamp the scene shone clearly in thesurrounding darkness--the brass urn, the thick crockery, the head of thestall-keeper bent intently over a newspaper, the munching jaws of thecustomers, the girl in the background with splashes of crimson paint likeblood on her white drawn face.
Charles was about to cross the street, but at that moment a policeman'shelmet emerged slowly from the surrounding darkness as if irresistiblyattracted by the concentric glow of the light. At the sight of him Charlesshrank back into the friendly shadow of his own side of the road. Thepoliceman emerged into the fulness of the light, serene in his officialimmobility. His slow yet seeing vision dwelt on the painted girl with agaze as penetrating as that of Omnipotence in its profound knowledge ofevil. He strolled towards her with a kind of indifferent benignity withwhich Providence has also been credited. He raised a hand, omnipotent withthe authority of the law. "Better get away from here," Charles heard himwarn her, and she disappeared from view in obedience to this command.
So did Charles, but in quite another direction. There was something aboutthese chance manifestations of authority, so lightly exercised, sounhesitatingly obeyed, which never failed to thrill and impress him, asthey would have thrilled and impressed any other man in his presentposition. They seemed to intensify the hopelessness of his own situation.He had a slight feeling of creepiness about the spine as he thought of thenarrowness of that escape--though, of course, the policeman might not haveidentified him. But some day or other it was bound to come--thataccidental confrontation which might mean his arrest.
He walked swiftly until he reached the avenue. It was a part of Londonthat he did not know, and appeared quite deserted. He wondered which wayhe should turn to get back to that area of London where he usually soughta bed.
As he stood there glancing about him irresolutely, his eye caught aglimpse of somebody walking swiftly along--a slight girlish figure dimlyvisible in the dark vista of the empty street. There was somethingfamiliar in the girl's outline--something which caused his heart to give agreat maddening jump. As he looked she turned into one of the convergingstreets.
He raced up the broad road, indifferent at that moment whether the eyes ofall the policemen in London were upon him. When he reached the streetwhich had swallowed her he could see nothing of the form which had excitedhim. Then, far ahead, he again saw it passing under a distant lamp-postand merge once more into the darkness. He ran quickly in pursuit.
The girl heard him coming and looked back anxiously. This time he saw herface. In a bound he was at her side.
"Sisily, Sisily!" he cried. "Oh, Sisily, I have found you!"