CHAPTER XLI.
TAKING LEAVE.
It was a handsome room, that in which Mr. Townsend, when at home,passed the larger portion of his waking hours--large, lofty,well-proportioned. The walls were wainscoted. Here and there was apiece of tapestry. Curtains suggested, rather than screened, anoccasional recess. Veiled, too, were entrances to rooms beyond. Awindow, running from floor to ceiling, extended on one side of theroom, almost from wall to wall. Had it been daytime, one would haveseen that it overlooked Hyde Park.
On his entrance Mr. Townsend went immediately to the portrait of thegirl which stood up on his mantelboard. He looked at it long andearnestly. He took it out of its frame. He kissed it, not once ortwice, but a dozen times at least. He regarded it with something of theveneration which the religious Russian peasant regards his Icon.
"Dora!" he murmured. "Dora!" Then, with a smile, "What might havebeen!"
Gripping the portrait with both his hands, he began to tear it intotwo; then stopped.
"It seems almost like sacrilege." He kissed the face again. "It wouldbe a sacrilege to let it fall into their hands as evidence that she hadendured the contamination of my acquaintance."
He tore the portrait, not only into halves, but into fragments, and thefragments he cast upon the fire. As the flames consumed them he made alittle gesture towards them with his hands.
"Good-bye!"
He picked up several knick-knacks which were about the room andexamined them, as if he were considering what ought to be their fate.Some of them, which bore unmistakable traces of feminine handiwork andtaste, he threw, after the portrait, into the fire. He opened a largedespatch-box which stood upon a table at one side. From among its variedcontents he took all sorts of things--a glove, a knot of ribbon, a menucard, some programmes of dances, a chocolate bonbon, a variety oftrivial impedimenta with which one would hardly have thought such a manwould have cared to be troubled. Last of all he took out four or fiveenvelopes addressed to himself in what was evidently a woman's hand.
"My love letters!--love letters! I doubt if there was a word of love inone of them, except that which came to me this morning. In ourcourtship hitherto love letters have scarcely entered. There has beenno opportunity. It is another case of what might have been--and yetthese are my love letters, for they were written by her hand, and theseare my love tokens, because they are tokens of certain passages whichshe has had with me. Nor must they become their spoil. These sort oftales find their way into so many sorts of papers that, for her sake,it is well that I have had time enough to destroy what might tend toshow that I ever was engaged--save the mark!--to marry Miss Jardine."
He threw the letters and the various trivialities together into thefire, breaking up the coals to enable them to burn the faster. He stoodwatching their destruction. When they were entirely consumed he turnedaway, the finger of his right hand in his waistcoat pocket, apparentlyfeeling for something which was there.
"I think that that is all; now I'm ready."
"That, young man, is just as well, because so am I."
The voice came from behind his back. Mr. Townsend showed no sign ofbeing startled, nor did he evince any anxiety to turn and inquire intothe speaker's personality. He stood, for a moment, as if he wasendeavouring to recall to his memory the tones of the speaker's voice.He turned at last, at his leisure, and with a smile--
"Mr. Haines?"
It was Mr. Haines. His sudden appearance was explained by the fact thathe had obviously just stepped from behind a pair of curtains whichconcealed the entrance to an inner room. He still held one of thecurtains in his hand. He eyed Mr. Townsend in silence, one hand beingin suggestive proximity to the hip pocket in his trousers in which theWesterner is apt to keep his gun.
"Yes, I am Mr. Haines."
"I am glad to have the pleasure of seeing you, Mr. Haines. Might I askyou to be good enough to select your own chair?"
Mr. Haines took no notice of Mr. Townsend's gesture of almostexaggerated courtesy. Manner and tone alike were dogged.
"I've been watching you."
"I am gratified to think that any action of mine should have beenesteemed worthy your attention."
"The woman said that you weren't in. I said I'd wait. I knew you'dcome. She fidgeted. So I stepped behind the curtains. I thought troublemight be saved."
"It was very thoughtful, Mr. Haines, of you, indeed."
Mr. Haines moved away from the curtains. He came farther into the room,his hand still in the neighbourhood of his pistol pocket, his eyesnever wandering from Mr. Townsend's face.
"Last night I reckoned with your brother."
"My brother?"
"He says he is your brother. He let it out as I was laying into him.And he's about your style all over. He calls himself StewartTrevannion, and he's a thief, but not near such a thief as you."
"Is that so? May I inquire, Mr. Haines, what I have done that youshould say I am a thief?"
"You've stole my girl."
"Your girl?" Mr. Townsend raised his eyebrows slightly, but stillsufficiently for the movement to be perceptible. "Are you alluding toMrs. Carruth?"
"Mrs. Carruth? No, young man, I am not alluding, as you call it, toMrs. Carruth."
"I thought that Mrs. Carruth could hardly be adequately described as agirl."
"Is it sneering at Mrs. Carruth you are?"
Mr. Haines's idiom, on the sudden, became flavoured with, as it were, areminiscence of Ireland.
"I trust that I never, Mr. Haines, shall be guilty of so heinous acrime as sneering at a lady. I believe that I am merely asserting afact in venturing to express an opinion that Mrs. Carruth can hardly beadequately described as a girl."
Mr. Townsend's exaggeration of courtesy, suggesting more than itexpressed, seemed to be something for which Mr. Haines was unprepared.He hesitated, as if in doubt; then repeated his previous assertion.
"You've stole my girl, and I've come to call you to account."
"I am unconscious of having conveyed from you any property of the kind.Of whom are you speaking as your girl?"
"My Loo."
"Your----" Mr. Townsend obviously started, regaining hisself-possession only after a momentary pause. "I am still, Mr. Haines,so unfortunate as to be unable to follow you."
"Whether she was known to you as Louisa Haines, or Louise O'Donnel, orMilly Carroll, she was my girl. You stole her. You killed her. I amhere to kill you for it."
There was silence. The two men eyed each other. Mr. Haines with thatsullen, dogged look upon his face which it was used to wear; Mr.Townsend with the natural expression of the man who has just been tolda sudden startling, wholly unexpected piece of news. He seemed to findit so startling a piece of news as to be almost incredible.
"Is it possible, Mr. Haines, that the lady whom I knew as LouiseO'Donnel was your child?"
"'Remove your hand, Sir!'" _Page_ 339]
"She was: my only child--my one ewe lamb. You took her life. What haveyou to say why I shouldn't have your life for hers?"
"Only that it is the unexpected happens. I may tell you, twice I havebeen advised to beware of you. I had no notion what was your cause ofquarrel. Now that I do know, I admit its perfect justice."
"Put up your hands."
Mr. Haines flashed a revolver in the air. Mr. Townsend remainedunmoved; he simply looked at Mr. Haines and smiled.
"I am afraid that I must decline to obey you, literally, Mr. Haines. Wedo not do it quite that way this side. To an English taste the methodseems a little bizarre. But I will undertake to offer no resistance.Nor to move. So far as I am concerned, you may shoot. I'm ready."
Mr. Haines moved a step or two forward. He pointed his revolver at Mr.Townsend's head, pointed it with a hand which did not tremble. Therewas an interval of silence. They steadfastly regarded each other,neither moving so much as an eyelash.
"You've grit. Which is what your brother'd like to swallow."
"It pleases y
ou to say so. I would not wish to put you toinconvenience, but if you will permit me to advise you you will shootand waste no time. Time is precious. I happen to know that, if youwaste it, others may cheat you of your prey."
Mr. Haines lowered his revolver.
"I reckoned to shoot you on sight. It's not because you've grit Idon't. Don't you think it. I've seen men like you before. A few. Someof them with grit enough to dare the devil to do his level worst whenhe gets them down to hell. Grit's just an accident. It don't count withme neither one way nor the other. Young man, I'm going to make you anoffer."
"Make it."
"There are two things I've had to live for. Just two. No more. You'verobbed me of them both. My girl, and the heart which I reckoned to haveone day for mine."
"If, as I presume, this time it is Mrs. Carruth to whom you arereferring, I do protest with all my heart that you are welcome to herheart, Mr. Haines."
"It's not your consent I should be asking. No. It's hers. I've askedfor it. In vain. I reckon that with nothing to live for living isn'tworth it. I've another gun in here." Mr. Haines produced a secondrevolver from one of his tail pockets. Mr. Townsend smiled. "What areyou laughing at, young man?"
"You must forgive me. You reminded me for a moment of a pirate king ofwhom I used to read in my boyish days, whose habit it was to carry anarsenal about with him wherever he might go."
"Laugh on. One of these guns is for you, the other gun's for me. We aregoing to shoot each other."
"Excuse me, we are not."
"I say we are." Mr. Townsend slightly shrugged his shoulders. Thegesture seemed to anger Mr. Haines. He went still closer to him. "Youare going to put the muzzle of one gun to my forehead, and I'm going toput the muzzle of the other gun to yours, and we're going to firetogether on the word."
"I beg ten thousand pardons for being constrained to contradict you,but--we are not."
"I say we are." Again the only response was a movement of Mr.Townsend's shoulders. "Take hold of the gun."
Mr. Haines endeavoured to thrust one of the revolvers into Mr.Townsend's hand.
"Not I."
"Take hold of the gun!"
Mr. Haines, on Mr. Townsend's betraying an inclination to removehimself from too near neighbourhood, caught him by the shoulder.
"Remove your hand, sir. I have no objection to your shooting me. But toyour touching me while I am still alive I have."
"You hearken to what I say, young man. Take hold of this gun!"
Mr. Haines endeavoured to subject Mr. Townsend to what, in the nursery,is called a shaking.
"If you attempt to do that again, Mr. Haines, I shall be under thedisagreeable necessity of knocking you down--before the shooting."
Mr. Haines attempted to do it again. Mr. Townsend tried to knock Mr.Haines down. Mr. Haines was not to be easily felled. Bursting intosudden passion, he seized Mr. Townsend by both shoulders. His two"guns" fell, unnoticed, to the ground. With commendable promptness Mr.Townsend returned the compliment which had been accorded him byclutching Mr. Haines. They clenched, struggled, and together fell tothe floor.
On the floor they continued to discuss to the best of their ability theside issue which Mr. Haines had raised.
So engrossed were they with their own proceedings that they failed tonotice the sudden opening of the door, followed by the unannouncedentrance into the room of four or five men. One of them moved quicklyto where the two combatants were contending on the floor. He placed hishand on Mr. Townsend's shoulder.
"You are my prisoner, Mr. Townsend. I arrest you on the charge ofmurder."
The sound of Mr. Holman's voice--for Matthew Holman was thespeaker--did produce a diversion of the interest. The two men ceased tostruggle. Then, being suffered to do so by Mr. Haines, Mr. Townsendrose to his feet. As he did so, some one who had come into the roomwith the police broke into laughter as he pointed at him with hisfinger. It was Mr. Pendarvon.
"Yes, officer, that's your man. That's Townsend, the Three Bridgesmurderer."
Mr. Pendarvon's merriment seemed out of place. He had cause to exchangeit for something else a moment afterwards.
Mr. Townsend turned to Mr. Holman.
"As this person says, I am the man you want. And----" He paused; beforethey had a notion of what it was he intended to do, rushing forward, hehad caught Mr. Pendarvon in his arms and borne him completely from hisfeet. "You are just the man I want."
Mr. Townsend's movements were so rapid that, before they could doanything to stop him, he had carried his victim right across the room,and, brushing aside the curtains, with a tremendous splintering ofglass, had crashed with him through the closed windows into the nightbeyond.
"All right," cried Mr. Holman, as, too late to check his progress, theconstables rushed after him. "There are some of the other chaps outthere. They'll have him."
From Mr. Holman's point of view it proved to be all right. The dropfrom the window was only six or seven feet. By the time Mr. Holman hadreached it Mr. Townsend was already again in the hands of the police.The detective shouted his instructions through the shattered pane.
"Put the handcuffs on him."
A voice replied from below--
"They are on him. He has almost killed this other man."
Mr. Townsend was heard speaking with a most pronounced drawl.
"Almost! Not quite! That's a pity. Still, 'twill serve. Officer, willyou allow me to use my handkerchief; my mouth is bleeding?"
He succeeded, in spite of his handcuffed wrists, in withdrawing ahandkerchief from an inner pocket of his coat. He pressed it, for amoment, to his lips. When he removed it, he tossed something into theair.
"Done you!" he cried. "Hurrah!"
There was an exclamation from the officer who was in charge of him.
"He has taken something. I can smell it."
"Yes," said Mr. Townsend, "I have taken leave." There was a smallcommotion. Mr. Townsend, reeling, would have fallen to the ground hadhe not been supported by the sergeant's arms. The man leaned over himto smell his breath. He, probably, was something of a chemist."Hydrocyanic acid!" he exclaimed. "He is dead."