Chapter V
The Allegorical Practical Joker
The criminal specialist who had come with Dr. Warner was a somewhatmore urbane and even dapper figure than he had appeared whenclutching the railings and craning his neck into the garden.He even looked comparatively young when he took his hat off,having fair hair parted in the middle and carefully curledon each side, and lively movements, especially of the hands.He had a dandified monocle slung round his neck by a broad black ribbon,and a big bow tie, as if a big American moth had alighted on him.His dress and gestures were bright enough for a boy's; it was onlywhen you looked at the fish-bone face that you beheld somethingacrid and old. His manners were excellent, though hardly English,and he had two half-conscious tricks by which people who only methim once remembered him. One was a trick of closing his eyeswhen he wished to be particularly polite; the other was one oflifting his joined thumb and forefinger in the air as if holdinga pinch of snuff, when he was hesitating or hovering over a word.But those who were longer in his company tended to forget theseoddities in the stream of his quaint and solemn conversationand really singular views.
"Miss Hunt," said Dr. Warner, "this is Dr. Cyrus Pym."
Dr. Cyrus Pym shut his eyes during the introduction, rather as if he were"playing fair" in some child's game, and gave a prompt little bow,which somehow suddenly revealed him as a citizen of the United States.
"Dr. Cyrus Pym," continued Warner (Dr. Pym shut his eyes again), "is perhapsthe first criminological expert of America. We are very fortunate to be ableto consult with him in this extraordinary case--"
"I can't make head or tail of anything," said Rosamund. "How canpoor Mr. Smith be so dreadful as he is by your account?"
"Or by your telegram," said Herbert Warner, smiling.
"Oh, you don't understand," cried the girl impatiently."Why, he's done us all more good than going to church."
"I think I can explain to the young lady," said Dr. Cyrus Pym. "This criminalor maniac Smith is a very genius of evil, and has a method of his own,a method of the most daring ingenuity. He is popular wherever he goes,for he invades every house as an uproarious child. People aregetting suspicious of all the respectable disguises for a scoundrel;so he always uses the disguise of--what shall I say--the Bohemian,the blameless Bohemian. He always carries people off their feet.People are used to the mask of conventional good conduct.He goes in for eccentric good-nature. You expect a Don Juan to dressup as a solemn and solid Spanish merchant; but you're not preparedwhen he dresses up as Don Quixote. You expect a humbug to behave likeSir Charles Grandison; because (with all respect, Miss Hunt, for the deep,tear-moving tenderness of Samuel Richardson) Sir Charles Grandisonso often behaved like a humbug. But no real red-blooded citizen is quiteready for a humbug that models himself not on Sir Charles Grandisonbut on Sir Roger de Coverly. Setting up to be a good man a little crackedis a new criminal incognito, Miss Hunt. It's been a great notion,and uncommonly successful; but its success just makes it mighty cruel.I can forgive Dick Turpin if he impersonates Dr. Busby; I can't forgivehim when he impersonates Dr. Johnson. The saint with a tile looseis a bit too sacred, I guess, to be parodied."
"But how do you know," cried Rosamund desperately, "that Mr. Smithis a known criminal?"
"I collated all the documents," said the American, "when my friend Warnerknocked me up on receipt of your cable. It is my professional affairto know these facts, Miss Hunt; and there's no more doubt about themthan about the Bradshaw down at the depot. This man has hitherto escapedthe law, through his admirable affectations of infancy or insanity.But I myself, as a specialist, have privately authenticated notesof some eighteen or twenty crimes attempted or achieved in this manner.He comes to houses as he has to this, and gets a grand popularity.He makes things go. They do go; when he's gone the things are gone.Gone, Miss Hunt, gone, a man's life or a man's spoons, or more often a woman.I assure you I have all the memoranda."
"I have seen them," said Warner solidly, "I can assure youthat all this is correct."
"The most unmanly aspect, according to my feelings," went on the Americandoctor, "is this perpetual deception of innocent women by a wild simulationof innocence. From almost every house where this great imaginative devilhas been, he has taken some poor girl away with him; some say he's gota hypnotic eye with his other queer features, and that they go like automata.What's become of all those poor girls nobody knows. Murdered, I dare say;for we've lots of instances, besides this one, of his turning his handto murder, though none ever brought him under the law. Anyhow, our mostmodern methods of research can't find any trace of the wretched women.It's when I think of them that I am really moved, Miss Hunt. And I'vereally nothing else to say just now except what Dr. Warner has said."
"Quite so," said Warner, with a smile that seemed moulded in marble--"thatwe all have to thank you very much for that telegram."
The little Yankee scientist had been speaking with such evidentsincerity that one forgot the tricks of his voice and manner--the falling eyelids, the rising intonation, and the poisedfinger and thumb--which were at other times a little comic.It was not so much that he was cleverer than Warner;perhaps he was not so clever, though he was more celebrated.But he had what Warner never had, a fresh and unaffected seriousness--the great American virtue of simplicity. Rosamund knittedher brows and looked gloomily toward the darkening housethat contained the dark prodigy.
Broad daylight still endured; but it had already changed from gold to silver,and was changing from silver to gray. The long plumy shadows of the one ortwo trees in the garden faded more and more upon a dead background of dusk.In the sharpest and deepest shadow, which was the entrance to the houseby the big French windows, Rosamund could watch a hurried consultationbetween Inglewood (who was still left in charge of the mysterious captive)and Diana, who had moved to his assistance from without. After a few minutesand gestures they went inside, shutting the glass doors upon the garden;and the garden seemed to grow grayer still.
The American gentleman named Pym seemed to be turning and on the movein the same direction; but before he started he spoke to Rosamund with aflash of that guileless tact which redeemed much of his childish vanity,and with something of that spontaneous poetry which made it difficult,pedantic as he was, to call him a pedant.
"I'm vurry sorry, Miss Hunt," he said; "but Dr. Warner and I,as two quali-FIED practitioners, had better take Mr. Smithaway in that cab, and the less said about it the better.Don't you agitate yourself, Miss Hunt. You've just got to thinkthat we're taking away a monstrosity, something that oughtn't to beat all--something like one of those gods in your Britannic Museum,all wings, and beards, and legs, and eyes, and no shape.That's what Smith is, and you shall soon be quit of him."
He had already taken a step towards the house, and Warner was aboutto follow him, when the glass doors were opened again and Diana Dukecame out with more than her usual quickness across the lawn.Her face was aquiver with worry and excitement, and her dark earnesteyes fixed only on the other girl.
"Rosamund," she cried in despair, "what shall I do with her?"
"With her?" cried Miss Hunt, with a violent jump. "O lord,he isn't a woman too, is he?"
"No, no, no," said Dr. Pym soothingly, as if in common fairness."A woman? no, really, he is not so bad as that."
"I mean your friend Mary Gray," retorted Diana with equal tartness."What on earth am I to do with her?"
"How can we tell her about Smith, you mean," answered Rosamund, her faceat once clouded and softening. "Yes, it will be pretty painful."
"But I HAVE told her," exploded Diana, with more than hercongenital exasperation. "I have told her, and she doesn't seem to mind.She still says she's going away with Smith in that cab."
"But it's impossible!" ejaculated Rosamund. "Why, Mary isreally religious. She--"
She stopped in time to realize that Mary Gray was comparativelyclose to her on the lawn. Her quiet companion had come down ve
ryquietly into the garden, but dressed very decisively for travel.She had a neat but very ancient blue tam-o'-shanter on her head,and was pulling some rather threadbare gray gloves on to her hands.Yet the two tints fitted excellently with her heavy copper-coloured hair;the more excellently for the touch of shabbiness: for a woman's clothesnever suit her so well as when they seem to suit her by accident.
But in this case the woman had a quality yet more unique and attractive.In such gray hours, when the sun is sunk and the skies arealready sad, it will often happen that one reflection at someoccasional angle will cause to linger the last of the light.A scrap of window, a scrap of water, a scrap of looking-glass,will be full of the fire that is lost to all the rest of the earth.The quaint, almost triangular face of Mary Gray was like sometriangular piece of mirror that could still repeat the splendourof hours before. Mary, though she was always graceful,could never before have properly been called beautiful; and yether happiness amid all that misery was so beautiful as to makea man catch his breath.
"O Diana," cried Rosamund in a lower voice and altering her phrase;"but how did you tell her?"
"It is quite easy to tell her," answered Diana sombrely;"it makes no impression at all."
"I'm afraid I've kept everything waiting," said Mary Gray apologetically,"and now we must really say good-bye. Innocent is taking me to his aunt'sover at Hampstead, and I'm afraid she goes to bed early."
Her words were quite casual and practical, but there was a sortof sleepy light in her eyes that was more baffling than darkness;she was like one speaking absently with her eye on somevery distant object.
"Mary, Mary," cried Rosamund, almost breaking down, "I'm so sorry about it,but the thing can't be at all. We--we have found out all about Mr. Smith."
"All?" repeated Mary, with a low and curious intonation;"why, that must be awfully exciting."
There was no noise for an instant and no motion except thatthe silent Michael Moon, leaning on the gate, lifted his head,as it might be to listen. Then Rosamund remaining speechless,Dr. Pym came to her rescue in a definite way.
"To begin with," he said, "this man Smith is constantly attempting murder.The Warden of Brakespeare College--"
"I know," said Mary, with a vague but radiant smile."Innocent told me."
"I can't say what he told you," replied Pym quickly, "but I'm very muchafraid it wasn't true. The plain truth is that the man's stainedwith every known human crime. I assure you I have all the documents.I have evidence of his committing burglary, signed by a most eminentEnglish curate. I have--"
"Oh, but there were two curates," cried Mary, with a certain gentle eagerness;"that was what made it so much funnier."
The darkened glass doors of the house opened once more,and Inglewood appeared for an instant, making a sort of signal.The American doctor bowed, the English doctor did not,but they both set out stolidly towards the house.No one else moved, not even Michael hanging on the gate;but the back of his head and shoulders had still an indescribableindication that he was listening to every word.
"But don't you understand, Mary," cried Rosamund in despair; "don't youknow that awful things have happened even before our very eyes.I should have thought you would have heard the revolver shots upstairs."
"Yes, I heard the shots," said Mary almost brightly; "but I was busy packingjust then. And Innocent had told me he was going to shoot at Dr. Warner;so it wasn't worth while to come down."
"Oh, I don't understand what you mean," cried Rosamund Hunt,stamping, "but you must and shall understand what I mean.I don't care how cruelly I put it, if only I can save you.I mean that your Innocent Smith is the most awfully wickedman in the world. He has sent bullets at lots of other menand gone off in cabs with lots of other women. And he seemsto have killed the women too, for nobody can find them."
"He is really rather naughty sometimes," said Mary Gray,laughing softly as she buttoned her old gray gloves.
"Oh, this is really mesmerism, or something," said Rosamund,and burst into tears.
At the same moment the two black-clad doctors appeared outof the house with their great green-clad captive between them.He made no resistance, but was still laughing in a groggyand half-witted style. Arthur Inglewood followed in the rear,a dark and red study in the last shades of distress and shame.In this black, funereal, and painfully realistic style the exitfrom Beacon House was made by a man whose entrance a day beforehad been effected by the happy leaping of a wall and the hilariousclimbing of a tree. No one moved of the groups in the gardenexcept Mary Gray, who stepped forward quite naturally,calling out, "Are you ready, Innocent? Our cab's been waitingsuch a long time."
"Ladies and gentlemen," said Dr. Warner firmly, "I must insist on askingthis lady to stand aside. We shall have trouble enough as it is,with the three of us in a cab."
"But it IS our cab," persisted Mary. "Why, there's Innocent's yellowbag on the top of it."
"Stand aside," repeated Warner roughly. "And you, Mr. Moon,please be so obliging as to move a moment. Come, come! the soonerthis ugly business is over the better--and how can we open the gateif you will keep leaning on it?"
Michael Moon looked at his long lean forefinger, and seemedto consider and reconsider this argument. "Yes," he said at last;"but how can I lean on this gate if you keep on opening it?"
"Oh, get out of the way!" cried Warner, almost good-humouredly."You can lean on the gate any time."
"No," said Moon reflectively. "Seldom the time and the placeand the blue gate altogether; and it all depends whether youcome of an old country family. My ancestors leaned on gatesbefore any one had discovered how to open them."
"Michael!" cried Arthur Inglewood in a kind of agony, "are you going to getout of the way?"
"Why, no; I think not," said Michael, after some meditation,and swung himself slowly round, so that he confronted the company,while still, in a lounging attitude, occupying the path.
"Hullo!" he called out suddenly; "what are you doing to Mr. Smith?"
"Taking him away," answered Warner shortly, "to be examined."
"Matriculation?" asked Moon brightly.
"By a magistrate," said the other curtly.
"And what other magistrate," cried Michael, raising his voice,"dares to try what befell on this free soil, save only the ancientand independent Dukes of Beacon? What other court dares to tryone of our company, save only the High Court of Beacon? Have youforgotten that only this afternoon we flew the flag of independenceand severed ourselves from all the nations of the earth?"
"Michael," cried Rosamund, wringing her hands, "how can you standthere talking nonsense? Why, you saw the dreadful thing yourself.You were there when he went mad. It was you that helped the doctorup when he fell over the flower-pot."
"And the High Court of Beacon," replied Moon with hauteur,"has special powers in all cases concerning lunatics,flower-pots, and doctors who fall down in gardens.It's in our very first charter from Edward I: `Si medicusquisquam in horto prostratus--'"
"Out of the way!" cried Warner with sudden fury, "or we will forceyou out of it."
"What!" cried Michael Moon, with a cry of hilarious fierceness."Shall I die in defence of this sacred pale? Will you paintthese blue railings red with my gore?" and he laid hold of oneof the blue spikes behind him. As Inglewood had noticed earlierin the evening, the railing was loose and crooked at this place,and the painted iron staff and spearhead came away in Michael'shand as he shook it.
"See!" he cried, brandishing this broken javelin in the air,"the very lances round Beacon Tower leap from their places to defend it.Ah, in such a place and hour it is a fine thing to die alone!"And in a voice like a drum he rolled the noble lines of Ronsard--
"Ou pour l'honneur de Dieu, ou pour le droit de mon prince, Navre,poitrine ouverte, au bord de mon province."
"Sakes alive!" said the American gentleman, almost in an awed tone.Then he added, "Are there two maniacs here?"
"No; there are five," thundered Moon. "Smith and I are the on
lysane people left."
"Michael!" cried Rosamund; "Michael, what does it mean?"
"It means bosh!" roared Michael, and slung his painted spearhurtling to the other end of the garden. "It means that doctorsare bosh, and criminology is bosh, and Americans are bosh--much more bosh than our Court of Beacon. It means, you fatheads,that Innocent Smith is no more mad or bad than the birdon that tree."
"But, my dear Moon," began Inglewood in his modest manner, "these gentlemen--"
"On the word of two doctors," exploded Moon again,without listening to anybody else, "shut up in a private hellon the word of two doctors! And such doctors! Oh, my hat!Look at 'em!--do just look at 'em! Would you read a book,or buy a dog, or go to a hotel on the advice of twenty such?My people came from Ireland, and were Catholics. What wouldyou say if I called a man wicked on the word of two priests?"
"But it isn't only their word, Michael," reasoned Rosamund;"they've got evidence too."
"Have you looked at it?" asked Moon.
"No," said Rosamund, with a sort of faint surprise; "these gentlemenare in charge of it."
"And of everything else, it seems to me," said Michael. "Why, youhaven't even had the decency to consult Mrs. Duke."
"Oh, that's no use," said Diana in an undertone to Rosamund; "Auntie can'tsay `Bo!' to a goose."
"I am glad to hear it," answered Michael, "for with such a flock of geeseto say it to, the horrid expletive might be constantly on her lips.For my part, I simply refuse to let things be done in this lightand airy style. I appeal to Mrs. Duke--it's her house."
"Mrs. Duke?" repeated Inglewood doubtfully.
"Yes, Mrs. Duke," said Michael firmly, "commonly called the Iron Duke."
"If you ask Auntie," said Diana quietly, "she'll only be for doing nothingat all. Her only idea is to hush things up or to let things slide.That just suits her."
"Yes," replied Michael Moon; "and, as it happens, it just suitsall of us. You are impatient with your elders, Miss Duke;but when you are as old yourself you will know what Napoleon knew--that half one's letters answer themselves if you can only refrainfrom the fleshly appetite of answering them."
He was still lounging in the same absurd attitude, with his elbowon the grate, but his voice had altered abruptly for the third time;just as it had changed from the mock heroic to the humanly indignant,it now changed to the airy incisiveness of a lawyer givinggood legal advice.
"It isn't only your aunt who wants to keep this quiet ifshe can," he said; "we all want to keep it quiet if we can.Look at the large facts--the big bones of the case. I believethose scientific gentlemen have made a highly scientific mistake.I believe Smith is as blameless as a buttercup. I admitbuttercups don't often let off loaded pistols in private houses;I admit there is something demanding explanation.But I am morally certain there's some blunder, or some joke,or some allegory, or some accident behind all this.Well, suppose I'm wrong. We've disarmed him; we're five mento hold him; he may as well go to a lock-up later on as now.But suppose there's even a chance of my being right.Is it anybody's interest here to wash this linen in public?
"Come, I'll take each of you in order. Once take Smith outside that gate,and you take him into the front page of the evening papers. I know;I've written the front page myself. Miss Duke, do you or your aunt wanta sort of notice stuck up over your boarding-house--`Doctors shot here.'?No, no--doctors are rubbish, as I said; but you don't want the rubbishshot here. Arthur, suppose I am right, or suppose I am wrong.Smith has appeared as an old schoolfellow of yours. Mark my words,if he's proved guilty, the Organs of Public Opinion will say youintroduced him. If he's proved innocent, they will say you helpedto collar him. Rosamund, my dear, suppose I am right or wrong.If he's proved guilty, they'll say you engaged your companion to him.If he's proved innocent, they'll print that telegram.I know the Organs, damn them."
He stopped an instant; for this rapid rationalism left him morebreathless than had either his theatrical or his real denunciation.But he was plainly in earnest, as well as positive and lucid;as was proved by his proceeding quickly the moment he hadfound his breath.
"It is just the same," he cried, "with our medical friends.You will say that Dr. Warner has a grievance. I agree.But does he want specially to be snapshotted by all thejournalists ~prostratus in horto~? It was no fault of his,but the scene was not very dignified even for him.He must have justice; but does he want to ask for justice,not only on his knees, but on his hands and knees?Does he want to enter the court of justice on all fours?Doctors are not allowed to advertise; and I'm sure nodoctor wants to advertise himself as looking like that.And even for our American guest the interest is the same.Let us suppose that he has conclusive documents.Let us assume that he has revelations really worth reading.Well, in a legal inquiry (or a medical inquiry, for that matter)ten to one he won't be allowed to read them. He'll be trippedup every two or three minutes with some tangle of old rules.A man can't tell the truth in public nowadays. But he canstill tell it in private; he can tell it inside that house."
"It is quite true," said Dr. Cyrus Pym, who had listened throughoutthe speech with a seriousness which only an American could have retainedthrough such a scene. "It is true that I have been per-ceptibly lesshampered in private inquiries."
"Dr. Pym!" cried Warner in a sort of sudden anger."Dr. Pym! you aren't really going to admit--"
"Smith may be mad," went on the melancholy Moon in a monologuethat seemed as heavy as a hatchet, "but there was somethingafter all in what he said about Home Rule for every home.Yes, there is something, when all's said and done, in the High Courtof Beacon. It is really true that human beings might often getsome sort of domestic justice where just now they can only getlegal injustice--oh, I am a lawyer too, and I know that as well.It is true that there's too much official and indirect power.Often and often the thing a whole nation can't settle is just the thinga family could settle. Scores of young criminals have been finedand sent to jail when they ought to have been thrashed and sent to bed.Scores of men, I am sure, have had a lifetime at Hanwell when theyonly wanted a week at Brighton. There IS something in Smith'snotion of domestic self-government; and I propose that we put itinto practice. You have the prisoner; you have the documents.Come, we are a company of free, white, Christian people,such as might be besieged in a town or cast up on a desert island.Let us do this thing ourselves. Let us go into that house thereand sit down and find out with our own eyes and ears whether thisthing is true or not; whether this Smith is a man or a monster.If we can't do a little thing like that, what right have we to putcrosses on ballot papers?"
Inglewood and Pym exchanged a glance; and Warner, who was no fool,saw in that glance that Moon was gaining ground. The motives that ledArthur to think of surrender were indeed very different from thosewhich affected Dr. Cyrus Pym. All Arthur's instincts were on the sideof privacy and polite settlement; he was very English and would oftenendure wrongs rather than right them by scenes and serious rhetoric.To play at once the buffoon and the knight-errant, like his Irish friend,would have been absolute torture to him; but even the semi-officialpart he had played that afternoon was very painful. He was not likelyto be reluctant if any one could convince him that his duty was to letsleeping dogs lie.
On the other hand, Cyrus Pym belonged to a country in which things arepossible that seem crazy to the English. Regulations and authorities exactlylike one of Innocent's pranks or one of Michael's satires really exist,propped by placid policemen and imposed on bustling business men.Pym knew whole States which are vast and yet secret and fanciful;each is as big as a nation yet as private as a lost village, and asunexpected as an apple-pie bed. States where no man may have a cigarette,States where any man may have ten wives, very strict prohibition States,very lax divorce States--all these large local vagaries had preparedCyrus Pym's mind for small local vagaries in a smaller country.Infinitely more remote from England than any Russian or Italian,utterly incapable of even conceiving what English conventions are,he could not
see the social impossibility of the Court of Beacon. It isfirmly believed by those who shared the experiment, that to the veryend Pym believed in that phantasmal court and supposed it to besome Britannic institution.
Towards the synod thus somewhat at a standstill there approachedthrough the growing haze and gloaming a short dark figure with a walkapparently founded on the imperfect repression of a negro breakdown.Something at once in the familiarity and the incongruity of thisbeing moved Michael to even heartier outbursts of a healthyand humane flippancy.
"Why, here's little Nosey Gould," he exclaimed. "Isn't the meresight of him enough to banish all your morbid reflections?"
"Really," replied Dr. Warner, "I really fail to see how Mr. Gouldaffects the question; and I once more demand--"
"Hello! what's the funeral, gents?" inquired the newcomer with the airof an uproarious umpire. "Doctor demandin' something? Always the wayat a boarding-house, you know. Always lots of demand. No supply."
As delicately and impartially as he could, Michael restated his position,and indicated generally that Smith had been guilty of certain dangerousand dubious acts, and that there had even arisen an allegation thathe was insane.
"Well, of course he is," said Moses Gould equably; "it don'tneed old 'Olmes to see that. The 'awk-like face of 'Olmes,"he added with abstract relish, "showed a shide of disappointment,the sleuth-like Gould 'avin' got there before 'im."
"If he is mad," began Inglewood.
"Well," said Moses, "when a cove gets out on the tile the first nightthere's generally a tile loose."
"You never objected before," said Diana Duke rather stiffly,"and you're generally pretty free with your complaints."
"I don't compline of him," said Moses magnanimously, "the poor chap's'armless enough; you might tie 'im up in the garden here and 'e'dmake noises at the burglars."
"Moses," said Moon with solemn fervour, "you are the incarnationof Common Sense. You think Mr. Innocent is mad. Let me introduce youto the incarnation of Scientific Theory. He also thinks Mr. Innocentis mad.--Doctor, this is my friend Mr. Gould.--Moses, this is the celebratedDr. Pym." The celebrated Dr. Cyrus Pym closed his eyes and bowed.He also murmured his national war-cry in a low voice, which soundedlike "Pleased to meet you."
"Now you two people," said Michael cheerfully, "who both think our poorfriend mad, shall jolly well go into that house over there and prove him mad.What could be more powerful than the combination of Scientific Theorywith Common Sense? United you stand; divided you fall. I will not beso uncivil as to suggest that Dr. Pym has no common sense; I confine myselfto recording the chronological accident that he has not shown us any so far.I take the freedom of an old friend in staking my shirt that Moses has noscientific theory. Yet against this strong coalition I am ready to appear,armed with nothing but an intuition--which is American for a guess."
"Distinguished by Mr. Gould's assistance," said Pym, opening hiseyes suddenly. "I gather that though he and I are identicalin primary di-agnosis there is yet between us something thatcannot be called a disagreement, something which we may perhapscall a--" He put the points of thumb and forefinger together,spreading the other fingers exquisitely in the air, and seemedto be waiting for somebody else to tell him what to say.
"Catchin' flies?" inquired the affable Moses.
"A divergence," said Dr. Pym, with a refined sigh of relief; "a divergence.Granted that the man in question is deranged, he would not necessarilybe all that science requires in a homicidal maniac--"
"Has it occurred to you," observed Moon, who was leaning on the gate again,and did not turn round, "that if he were a homicidal maniac he might havekilled us all here while we were talking."
Something exploded silently underneath all their minds,like sealed dynamite in some forgotten cellars. They allremembered for the first time for some hour or two that the monsterof whom they were talking was standing quietly among them.They had left him in the garden like a garden statue; there mighthave been a dolphin coiling round his legs, or a fountain pouring outof his mouth, for all the notice they had taken of Innocent Smith.He stood with his crest of blonde, blown hair thrust somewhat forward,his fresh-coloured, rather short-sighted face looking patientlydownwards at nothing in particular, his huge shoulders humped,and his hands in his trousers pockets. So far as they could guesshe had not moved at all. His green coat might have been cut outof the green turf on which he stood. In his shadow Pym had expoundedand Rosamund expostulated, Michael had ranted and Moses had ragged.He had remained like a thing graven; the god of the garden.A sparrow had perched on one of his heavy shoulders; and then,after correcting its costume of feathers, had flown away.
"Why," cried Michael, with a shout of laughter, "the Court of Beaconhas opened--and shut up again too. You all know now I am right.Your buried common sense has told you what my buried common sense hastold me. Smith might have fired off a hundred cannons instead of a pistol,and you would still know he was harmless as I know he is harmless.Back we all go to the house and clear a room for discussion.For the High Court of Beacon, which has already arrived at its decision,is just about to begin its inquiry."
"Just a goin' to begin!" cried little Mr. Moses in an extraordinarysort of disinterested excitement, like that of an animal during musicor a thunderstorm. "Follow on to the 'Igh Court of Eggs and Bacon;'ave a kipper from the old firm! 'Is Lordship complimentedMr. Gould on the 'igh professional delicacy 'e had shown,and which was worthy of the best traditions of the Saloon Bar--and three of Scotch hot, miss! Oh, chase me, girls!"
The girls betraying no temptation to chase him, he went away in asort of waddling dance of pure excitement; and had made a circuitof the garden before he reappeared, breathless but still beaming.Moon had known his man when he realized that no people presentedto Moses Gould could be quite serious, even if they werequite furious. The glass doors stood open on the side nearestto Mr. Moses Gould; and as the feet of that festive idiot wereevidently turned in the same direction, everybody else wentthat way with the unanimity of some uproarious procession.Only Diana Duke retained enough rigidity to say the thing that hadbeen boiling at her fierce feminine lips for the last few hours.Under the shadow of tragedy she had kept it back as unsympathetic."In that case," she said sharply, "these cabs can be sent away."
"Well, Innocent must have his bag, you know," said Mary with a smile."I dare say the cabman would get it down for us."
"I'll get the bag," said Smith, speaking for the first time in hours;his voice sounded remote and rude, like the voice of a statue.
Those who had so long danced and disputed round his immobilitywere left breathless by his precipitance. With a run and springhe was out of the garden into the street; with a spring andone quivering kick he was actually on the roof of the cab.The cabman happened to be standing by the horse's head, having justremoved its emptied nose-bag. Smith seemed for an instant to berolling about on the cab's back in the embraces of his Gladstone bag.The next instant, however, he had rolled, as if by a royal luck,into the high seat behind, and with a shriek of piercing andappalling suddenness had sent the horse flying and scamperingdown the street.
His evanescence was so violent and swift, that this time itwas all the other people who were turned into garden statues.Mr. Moses Gould, however, being ill-adapted both physically and morallyfor the purposes of permanent sculpture, came to life some time beforethe rest, and, turning to Moon, remarked, like a man starting chattilywith a stranger on an omnibus, "Tile loose, eh? Cab loose anyhow."There followed a fatal silence; and then Dr. Warner said, with a sneerlike a club of stone,--
"This is what comes of the Court of Beacon, Mr. Moon. You have letloose a maniac on the whole metropolis."
Beacon House stood, as has been said, at the end of a long crescentof continuous houses. The little garden that shut it in ran out intoa sharp point like a green cape pushed out into the sea of two streets.Smith and his cab shot up one side of the triangle, and certainlymost of those standing inside of it never expected
to see him again.At the apex, however, he turned the horse sharply round and drove with equalviolence up the other side of the garden, visible to all those in the group.With a common impulse the little crowd ran across the lawn as if to stop him,but they soon had reason to duck and recoil. Even as he vanished upstreet for the second time, he let the big yellow bag fly from his hand,so that it fell in the centre of the garden, scattering the companylike a bomb, and nearly damaging Dr. Warner's hat for the third time.Long before they had collected themselves, the cab had shot away with ashriek that went into a whisper.
"Well," said Michael Moon, with a queer note in his voice;"you may as well all go inside anyhow. We've got two relicsof Mr. Smith at least; his fiancee and his trunk."
"Why do you want us to go inside?" asked Arthur Inglewood,in whose red brow and rough brown hair botheration seemedto have reached its limit.
"I want the rest to go in," said Michael in a clear voice,"because I want the whole of this garden in which to talk to you."
There was an atmosphere of irrational doubt; it was really getting colder,and a night wind had begun to wave the one or two trees in the twilight.Dr. Warner, however, spoke in a voice devoid of indecision.
"I refuse to listen to any such proposal," he said; "you have lostthis ruffian, and I must find him."
"I don't ask you to listen to any proposal," answered Moon quietly;"I only ask you to listen."
He made a silencing movement with his hand, and immediatelythe whistling noise that had been lost in the dark streets on one sideof the house could be heard from quite a new quarter on the other side.Through the night-maze of streets the noise increased with incrediblerapidity, and the next moment the flying hoofs and flashing wheels hadswept up to the blue-railed gate at which they had originally stood.Mr. Smith got down from his perch with an air of absent-mindedness,and coming back into the garden stood in the same elephantineattitude as before.
"Get inside! get inside!" cried Moon hilariously, with the airof one shooing a company of cats. "Come, come, be quick about it!Didn't I tell you I wanted to talk to Inglewood?"
How they were all really driven into the house again it wouldhave been difficult afterwards to say. They had reached the pointof being exhausted with incongruities, as people at a farceare ill with laughing, and the brisk growth of the storm amongthe trees seemed like a final gesture of things in general.Inglewood lingered behind them, saying with a certain amicableexasperation, "I say, do you really want to speak to me?"
"I do," said Michael, "very much."
Night had come as it generally does, quicker than the twilight had seemedto promise. While the human eye still felt the sky as light gray, a verylarge and lustrous moon appearing abruptly above a bulk of roofs and trees,proved by contrast that the sky was already a very dark gray indeed.A drift of barren leaves across the lawn, a drift of riven clouds acrossthe sky, seemed to be lifted on the same strong and yet laborious wind.
"Arthur," said Michael, "I began with an intuition; but now I am sure.You and I are going to defend this friend of yours before the blessed Courtof Beacon, and to clear him too--clear him of both crime and lunacy.Just listen to me while I preach to you for a bit." They walked upand down the darkening garden together as Michael Moon went on.
"Can you," asked Michael, "shut your eyes and see some of those queer oldhieroglyphics they stuck up on white walls in the old hot countries.How stiff they were in shape and yet how gaudy in colour.Think of some alphabet of arbitrary figures picked out in black and red,or white and green, with some old Semitic crowd of Nosey Gould'sancestors staring at it, and try to think why the people put itup at all."
Inglewood's first instinct was to think that his perplexing friendhad really gone off his head at last; there seemed so recklessa flight of irrelevancy from the tropic-pictured walls he wasasked to imagine to the gray, wind-swept, and somewhat chillysuburban garden in which he was actually kicking his heels.How he could be more happy in one by imagining the other he couldnot conceive. Both (in themselves) were unpleasant.
"Why does everybody repeat riddles," went on Moon abruptly,"even if they've forgotten the answers? Riddles are easy to rememberbecause they are hard to guess. So were those stiff old symbolsin black, red, or green easy to remember because they had been hardto guess. Their colours were plain. Their shapes were plain.Everything was plain except the meaning."
Inglewood was about to open his mouth in an amiable protest, but Moonwent on, plunging quicker and quicker up and down the garden and smokingfaster and faster. "Dances, too," he said; "dances were not frivolous.Dances were harder to understand than inscriptions and texts.The old dances were stiff, ceremonial, highly coloured but silent.Have you noticed anything odd about Smith?"
"Well, really," cried Inglewood, left behind in a collapse of humour,"have I noticed anything else?"
"Have you noticed this about him," asked Moon, with unshaken persistency,"that he has done so much and said so little? When first he came he talked,but in a gasping, irregular sort of way, as if he wasn't used to it.All he really did was actions--painting red flowers on black gowns or throwingyellow bags on to the grass. I tell you that big green figure is figurative--like any green figure capering on some white Eastern wall."
"My dear Michael," cried Inglewood, in a rising irritation which increasedwith the rising wind, "you are getting absurdly fanciful."
"I think of what has just happened," said Michael steadily."The man has not spoken for hours; and yet he has been speakingall the time. He fired three shots from a six-shooter and thengave it up to us, when he might have shot us dead in our boots.How could he express his trust in us better than that?He wanted to be tried by us. How could he have shown it betterthan by standing quite still and letting us discuss it?He wanted to show that he stood there willingly,and could escape if he liked. How could he have shown itbetter than by escaping in the cab and coming back again?Innocent Smith is not a madman--he is a ritualist. He wants toexpress himself, not with his tongue, but with his arms and legs--with my body I thee worship, as it says in the marriage service.I begin to understand the old plays and pageants. I see whythe mutes at a funeral were mute. I see why the mummers were mum.They MEANT something; and Smith means something too.All other jokes have to be noisy--like little Nosey Gould's jokes,for instance. The only silent jokes are the practical jokes.Poor Smith, properly considered, is an allegorical practical joker.What he has really done in this house has been as franticas a war-dance, but as silent as a picture."
"I suppose you mean," said the other dubiously, "that we have got to find outwhat all these crimes meant, as if they were so many coloured picture-puzzles.But even supposing that they do mean something--why, Lord bless my soul!--"
Taking the turn of the garden quite naturally, he had liftedhis eyes to the moon, by this time risen big and luminous,and had seen a huge, half-human figure sitting on the garden wall.It was outlined so sharply against the moon that for the first flashit was hard to be certain even that it was human: the hunchedshoulders and outstanding hair had rather the air of a colossal cat.It resembled a cat also in the fact that when first startled itsprang up and ran with easy activity along the top of the wall.As it ran, however, its heavy shoulders and small stooping headrather suggested a baboon. The instant it came within reachof a tree it made an ape-like leap and was lost in the branches.The gale, which by this time was shaking every shrub in the garden,made the identification yet more difficult, since it meltedthe moving limbs of the fugitive in the multitudinous movinglimbs of the tree.
"Who is there?" shouted Arthur. "Who are you? Are you Innocent?"
"Not quite," answered an obscure voice among the leaves."I cheated you once about a penknife."
The wind in the garden had gathered strength, and was throwing the treebackwards and forwards with the man in the thick of it, just as ithad on the gay and golden afternoon when he had first arrived.
"But are you Smith?" asked Inglewood as in an agony.
"Very
nearly," said the voice out of the tossing tree.
"But you must have some real names," shrieked Inglewood in despair."You must call yourself something."
"Call myself something," thundered the obscure voice, shaking the treeso that all its ten thousand leaves seemed to be talking at once."I call myself Roland Oliver Isaiah Charlemagne Arthur HildebrandHomer Danton Michaelangelo Shakespeare Brakespeare--"
"But, manalive!" began Inglewood in exasperation.
"That's right! that's right!" came with a roar out of the rocking tree;"that's my real name." And he broke a branch, and one or two autumnleaves fluttered away across the moon.
Part II
The Explanations of Innocent Smith