CHAPTER XIII
THEY HAVE NO HEART
As to what occurred in the heart of the fog on that night in Novemberfour years ago, most of you no doubt will remember. Those who do not Imust refer to the morning papers of the following day.
A perfect harvest for journalists. Gossip and detail sufficient tofill column upon column of newspaper: gossip that grew as the hourssped on, and the second day of fog pursued its monotonous course.
A man had been found murdered in a taxicab, his throat stabbed throughfrom ear to ear, the jugular pierced, life absolutely extinct; themurderer vanished.
Drama in the midst of reality.
Such things are, you know. No amount of so-called realisticliterature, no amount of sneers at what is dubbed melodrama, willprevent this fact occurring--and occurring very frequently in thestreets of a mighty city.
Just a man murdered and the murderer disappeared. A very real thingthat, and London has had to face such facts often enough, more oftenthan has an audience at Drury Lane or the Adelphi. The superior-mindedcritic who spells British Drama with a capital B and D, and pronouncesit Pritish Trama sat in the stalls of a London theatre on this verysame foggy evening in November, four years ago. The play was one thatdid not appeal to the superior-minded critic: it was just a simpletale of jealousy which led to the breaking of that great commandment:"Thou shalt do no murder!"
And the superior-minded critic yawned behind a well gloved hand anddubbed the play melodramatic, unreal, and stagey, quite foreign to thelife of to-day. But just at that hour--between nine and ten o'clock--aman was murdered in a taxicab, and his murderer vanished in the fog.
London doesn't dub such events melodrama; she does not sneer at themor call them unreal. She knows that they are real: there is nothingstagey or artificial about them: they have even become commonplace.
They occur so often! And most often whilst society dines or dances andthe elect applaud with languid grace the newest play by Mr. BernardShaw.
Only in this case, the event gained additional interest. The murderedman was a personality. Some one whom everybody that was anybody hadtalked about, gossiped, and discussed for the past six months. Someone whom few had seen but many had heard about--Philip deMountford--the son of the late Arthur de Mountford--Radclyffe's newlyfound heir, you know.
The news spread as only such news can spread, and when Society pouredout from theatres, from houses in Grosvenor Square, or from thedining-room of the Carlton, every one had heard the news.
It was as if the sprite of gossip had been busy whispering inover-willing ears.
"Philip de Mountford has been murdered."
"He was found in a taxicab; his throat was cut from ear to ear."
"No! no! not cut, I understand. Pierced through with a sharpinstrument--a stiletto, I presume."
"How horrible!"
"Poor Lord Radclyffe--such a tragedy----"
"He'll never live through it."
"He has looked very feeble lately."
"The scandal round the late Arthur's name broke him up, I think."
"It seems Arthur de Mountford had married a negress."
"No! no! Philip did not look like a half-caste. I saw him once ortwice. He was dark but nice looking."
"Still, there was some scandal about the marriage!"
"Nothing to what this scandal will be!"
"What scandal?"
"Seek whom the crime benefits, you know."
"Then you think?--You really think Luke de Mountford did it?"
"I thought so the moment I heard the story."
"I've always thought that Luke de Mountford a queer sort of fellow."
"And he took his cousin's advent very badly."
"Well one can't wonder at that exactly--to lose a future peerage allof a sudden--and he has no private fortune either----"
"Poor beggar."
"I heard there were awful rows between the cousins until LordRadclyffe himself turned Luke and the others out of the house."
"And now Philip de Mountford has been murdered."
"And the police will seek him whom the crime benefits."
"It certainly looks very suspicious."
"A real _cause celebre_! Won't it be exciting."
"Something to read about in one's morning papers."
"I shall try and get reserved seats for the trial. I hate a crush,don't you?"
"Will they hang him, do you think?"
"If he is found guilty--English justice is no respecter of persons."
"How awful."
And tittle-tattle, senseless talk, inane remarks, were wafted on thegrimy wings of the fog. They penetrated everywhere, in the lobbies ofthe theatres, the boudoir of madame and the smoking room of my lord.They penetrated to the magnificent reception rooms of the DanishLegation, and Louisa heard the remarks even before she knew the fulldetails of the story. Louisa had a well-trained contralto voice, andhad been asked to sing, in the course of the evening. Just as shestood in an outer room selecting her music, she heard a group ofidlers--men and women--talking over the mysterious murder in thetaxicab.
They had at first been unconscious of her presence. She had her backtoward them, turning over the leaves of of her song. Suddenly therewas a hush in the conversation; one of the chatterboxes must havepointed her out to the others.
Whereupon Louisa, serene and smiling, a roll of music in her hand,joined the merry group.
"Please," she said, "don't stop. I have heard nothing yet. And ofcourse I want to know."
One of the men laughed inanely and the ladies murmured silly nothings.
"Oh!" said some one, "it mayn't be true. Such lots of wild rumours getabout."
"What," asked Louisa placidly, "mayn't be true? Some one said just nowthat Philip de Mountford has been murdered."
"Well," murmured one of the ladies, "they say it was Mr. de Mountford;but they can't be sure, can they?"
The group was dissolving: almost, it seemed, as if it had vanishedinto thin air. When Louisa first heard them talking there were about adozen men and women, a brilliant throng of gaily plumaged birds; nowthe ladies remembered that they wanted to hear the latest infantprodigy who had been engaged to entertain the guests at thepost-dinner reception to-night, and the men too, feeling uncomfortableand awkward, made good their escape.
People--the pleasure-loving people of to-day--have no use for latenttragedy. Excitement, yes! and drama; but only from the secure distanceof a private seat at an Old Bailey trial. The murder of Philip deMountford could be discussed with quite an amount of enjoyment betweena dinner party and a ball supper, but not in Louisa Harris's presence!By Gad! too much of a good thing you know!
Within a very few minutes Louisa found herself almost alone, just theone or two near her to whom she had directly spokenand--fortunately--Colonel Harris in the door-way, come to look for hisdaughter.
"The infant with the violin," he said as soon as he caught sight ofLouisa, "is just finishing his piece, poor little rat! You promisedyou would sing next, Lou. What songs have you got?"
"I was just making a selection when you came, father. What would youlike me to sing?"
With an unexpressed sigh of relief the last two of the original groupof gossips dwindled away into the reception room beyond,congratulating themselves on having successfully engineered theirexit.
"Dooced awkward, don't you know, Miss Harris asking questions."
"I suppose she doesn't realize----"
"She will soon enough----"
"She ought to have broken off her engagement long ago."
"Isn't it awful?--Poor thing."
Louisa, left alone with her father, could allow her nerves to easetheir fearful tension. She had no need to hide from him the painfulquiver of her lips, or the anxious frown across her brow.
"Do you know," she asked, "anything about this awful business,father?"
"There's a lot of gossip," he replied: his voice was not only gruffbut hoarse, which showed that he was strangely moved.
/> "But," she insisted, "some truth in the gossip?"
"They say Philip de Mountford has been murdered."
"Who says so?"
"Some people have come on from the theatres, and men from the clubs.The streets are full of it--and evening papers have brought outmidnight editions which are selling like hot cakes."
"And do they say that Luke has killed Philip de Mountford?"
"No"--with some hesitation--"they don't say that."
"But they hint at it."
"Newspaper tittle-tattle."
"How much is actual fact?"
"I understand," he explained, "that at nine o'clock or thereabouts twomen in evening dress hailed a passing taxicab just outside the LyricTheatre in Shaftesbury Avenue and told the chauffeur to drive to HydePark corner, just by the railings of the Green Park. The driver drewup there and one of the two men got out. As he reclosed the door ofthe cab he leaned toward the interior and said cheerfully, "S'long oldman. See you to-morrow." Then he told the chauffeur to drive on to 1Cromwell Road opposite the museum, and turning on his heel disappearedin the fog. When the chauffeur drew up for the second time no onealighted from the cab. So he got down from his box and opened thedoor."
"The other man," murmured Louisa vaguely, "was in the cab--dead!"
"That's about it."
"With his throat pierced from ear to ear by a sharp instrument whichmight have been a skewer."
"You have heard it all then?"
"No, no!" she said hurriedly.
The room was swaying round her: the furniture started hopping anddancing. Louisa, who had never fainted in her life, felt as if thefloor was giving way under her feet. Memory was unloading one of herstorehouses, looking over the contents of a hidden cell, wherein shehad put away a strange winter scene in Brussels, a taxicab, theill-lighted boulevard, the chauffeur getting down from his box andfinding a man crouched in the farther corner of the cab--dead--withhis throat pierced from ear to ear by an instrument which might havebeen a skewer. And memory was raking out that cell, clearing it inevery corner, trying to find the recollection of a certain morning inBattersea Park a year ago, when Louisa recounted her impressions ofthat weird scene and told the tale of this crime which she had almostwitnessed. Memory found a distinct impression that she had told thetale at full length and with all the details which she knew. Sheremembered talking it all over, and, that when she did so, the groundin Battersea Park was crisp with the frost under her feet, and aninquisitive robin perched himself on the railings and then flew awayaccompanying her and another all the way along as far as the gates.
Two pictures, vivid and distinct: that evening in Brussels, and themorning in Battersea Park, her first meeting with Luke after hisletter to her--the letter which had come to her in the Palace Hoteland which had made her the happiest woman in all the world.Memory--satisfied--had at last emptied the storehouse of that one celland left Louisa Harris standing here, staring at her father, her earsbuzzing with the idle and irresponsible chatter of society jackdaws,her mind seeing all that had happened outside 1 Cromwell Road: the cabstopping, the chauffeur terrified, the crowd collecting, the policetaking notes. Her mind saw it as if her bodily eyes had been there,and all that her father told her seemed but the recapitulation of whatshe knew already.
"Where," she said after awhile, "is the dead man now?"
"I don't know," he replied. "I should imagine they would keep thebody at the police station until the morning. I don't suppose they'dbe such mugs as to disturb Lord Radclyffe at this time of night; theshock might kill the old man."
"I suppose they are quite sure that it is Philip de Mountford who waskilled?"
"Why, yes; he had his pocket-book, his cards, his letters on him, andmoney too--robbery was not the object of the crime."
"It was Philip de Mountford then?"
"Good God, yes! Of whom were you thinking?"
"I was thinking of Luke," she replied simply.
The old man said nothing more. Had he spoken at all then it would havebeen to tell her that he, too, was thinking of Luke and that there wasperhaps not a single person in the magnificent house at that momentwho was not--in some way or another--thinking of Luke.
The hostess came in, elegant and worldly, with banal words to requestthe pleasure of hearing Miss Harris sing.
"It is so kind of you," she said, "to offer. I have never heard you,you know, and people say you have such a splendid voice. But perhapsyou would rather not sing to-night?"
She spoke English perfectly, but with a slight Scandinavianintonation, which seemed to soften the banality of her words. Beingforeign, she thought less of concealing her sympathy, and was muchless fearful of venturing on delicate ground.
She held out a small, exquisitely gloved hand and laid it almostaffectionately on the younger woman's arm.
"I am sure you would rather not sing to-night," she said kindly.
"Indeed, Countess, why should you think that?" retorted Louisalightly. "I shall be delighted to sing. I wonder which of these newsongs you would like best. There is an exquisite one by Guyd'Hardelot. Shall I sing that?"
And Her Excellency, who so charmingly represented Denmark in Englishsociety, followed her guest into the reception room: she admired theelegant carriage of the English girl, the slender figure, the softabundant hair.
And Her Excellency sighed and murmured to herself:
"They are stiff, these English! and oh! they have no feeling, nosentiment!"
And a few moments later when Louisa Harris's really fine voice, firmand clear, echoed in the wide reception room, Her Excellencyreiterated her impressions:
"These English have no heart! She sings and her lover is suspected ofmurder! Bah! they have no heart!"