IV
Miss Peytral had to be put to bed under care of a nurse, for therevulsion was very great, and so was her physical prostration. Bowmore,now set free, and in himself a very pleasant young fellow, came withhurried inquiries and congratulations, and then rushed off to London tocable to his friends in Canada, for fear of the effect of newspapertelegrams.
When at last Hewitt and I sat with Mr. Peytral in his study, "Mr.Hewitt," said Peytral, "I am not sure how far explanations may gobetween us. There is more in that death in the barn than the police willever guess."
Peytral was haggard and drawn, for, as he had let slip already, he hadscarce slept an hour since leaving home on Thursday.
"I am tired," he said, "and worn out, but that is not a novelty with me;and I'm not sure but we may be of use to each other. Did my daughtertell you why she sent Mr. Bowmore after me on Thursday night?"
Hewitt explained the thing as briefly as possible, just as he had heardit from Miss Peytral.
"Ah," said Peytral, thoughtfully. "So she thought my manner became moodya few months back. It did, no doubt, for I had memories; and more, I hadapprehensions. Mr. Hewitt, I think I read in the papers that you were insome way engaged in the extraordinary case of the murder of Mr. JacobMason?"
"That is quite correct. I was."
"There was another case, a little while before, which possibly you maynot have heard of. A man was found strangled near the York column, byPall Mall, with just such a mark on his forehead as was found on Mr.Mason's."
"I know that case, too, as well as the other."
"Do you know the name of the murderer?"
"I think I do. We speak in confidence, of course, as client andprofessional man?"
"Of course. What was his name?"
"I have heard two--Everard Myatt and Catherton Hunt."
"Neither is his real name, and I doubt if anybody but himself knows it.Twenty years ago and more I knew him as Mayes. He was a Jamaican. Mr.Hewitt, that man's foul life has been justly forfeit a thousand times,but if it belongs to anybody it belongs to me!"
It was terrible to see the sudden fiery change in the old man. Hislassitude was gone in a flash, his eyes blazed and his nostrils dilated.
For a little while he sat so, his mouth awork with passion; then he sankback in his chair with a sigh.
"I am getting old," he said, more quietly, "and perhaps I am not strongenough to lose my temper.... Well, as I said, Mayes was a Jamaican, arenegade white. Do you remember that in the black rebellion of 1865,there was a traitorous white man among the negroes? Eyre hanged a fewrebels, and rightly, but the worst creature on all that islandescaped--probably escaped by the aid of that very white skin that shouldhave ensured him a greater punishment than the rest. He escaped toHayti. Now you have probably heard something of Hayti, and of the commonstate of affairs there?"
We both had heard, and, indeed, the matter had been particularly broughtto Hewitt's notice by the case which I have told elsewhere as "TheAffair of the Tortoise." As for me, I had read Sir Spenser St. John'sbook on the black republic, and I had been greatly impressed by thegraphic picture it gives of the horrible, blood-stained travesty ofregular government there prevailing. Nothing in the worst of the SouthAmerican Republics is to be remotely compared to it. In the worstperiods there was not a crime imaginable that could not be, and was not,committed openly and with impunity by anybody on the right side of theso-called "government"; and the "government" was nothing but anorganised crime in itself.
"Well," Peytral pursued, "then I need not expatiate on it, and you willunderstand the sort of place that Mayes fled to, and how it suited him.He was a man of far greater ability than any of the coarse scoundrels inpower, and he was worse than all of them. He was not such a fool as toaim at ostensible political power--that way generally led toassassination. He was the jackal, the contriver, the power behind thethrone, the instigator of half the devilry set going in that unhappyplace, and he profited by it with little risk; he was the confidentialadviser of that horrible creature Domingue. If you know anything ofHayti you will know what that means.
"At this time I was comparatively a young man, and a merchant atPort-au-Prince. It was a bad place, of course, and business was riskyenough, but, for that very reason, profits were large, and that was anattraction to a sanguine young man like myself. I did very well, and Ihad thoughts of getting out of it with what I had made. But it was afatal thing to be supposed wealthy in Port-au-Prince, unless you were avillain in power, or partner with one. I was neither, and I was judged asuitable victim by Mayes. Not I alone, either--no, nor even only I andmy fortune. Gentlemen, gentlemen, my poor wife, who now lies----"
Peytral's utterance failed him. He rose as if choking, and Hewitt roseto quiet him. "Never mind," he said, "sit quiet now. We understand. Resta moment."
The old man sank back in his chair, and for a little while buried hisface in his hands. Then he went on.
"I needn't go into details," he said, huskily. "It is enough to say thatevery devilish engine of force and cunning was put in operation againstme. So it came that at last, on a hint from a hanger-on of thepolice-office, who had enough humanity in him to remember a kindness hehad experienced at my hands, that we took flight in the middle of thenight--my poor wife, myself, and our three children, with nothing in theworld but our bare lives and the clothes we wore. I might have tried toget aboard a foreign ship in the harbour, but I knew that would beuseless. I should have been given up on whatever criminal charge Mayeschose to present, and my wife and children with me. I had hope ofsomehow getting to San Cristobel, where I had a friend--over the borderin the other Government of the island, the Dominican Republic. That waseighty miles away and more, across swamps, and forests and mountains.Well, we did it--we did it. We did it, Mr. Hewitt, and I dream of itstill. They hunted us, sir--hunted us with dogs. We hid from them awhole day among the rank weeds--up to our shoulders in the water of apestilential fever-swamp; Claire, the baby, on her mother's back, andboth the boys on mine. They died--they died next day. My two beautifulboys, gentlemen, died in my arms, and I was too weak even to bury them!"
There was another long pause, and the man's head was bowed in his handsonce more. Presently he went on again, but at first without lifting hishead.
"We did it, gentlemen," he said--"we did it. We crawled into SanCristobel at the end of five days; and from that moment my dear wife hasnever once stood upright on her feet. So we came out of it, and thebaby, Claire, was the one that suffered least. She was too young tounderstand, and her mother--her mother saved her, when I could not savethe boys!"
He paused again, and presently sat up, pale, but in full command ofhimself. "You will excuse me, gentlemen, I am sure, and make allowancesfor my feelings," he said. "There is not a great deal more to tell.Mayes did not last long in Hayti. Domingue was overthrown, and Mayesleft the island, I was told, and made for another part of the world.Years afterward I heard of his being in China, though what truth theremay have been in the rumour I cannot say.
"My friend in San Cristobel--he was a cousin, in fact--put me on my legsagain, and after a while he helped me to begin business at San Domingo,under my present name, Peytral, which, in fact, was my mother's maidenname. There came a sudden push in trade with the United States aboutthis time, and I went into my affairs with the more energy to distractmy thoughts. In fifteen years--to cut a long story short--I had made thesmall competency which I have brought to England with me, with the ideaof a peaceful end to my life and my wife's; though I doubt if I am tohave that now. I doubt it, and I will tell you why. Mr. Hewitt, when Iwent away without warning on Thursday night I was dogging Mayes!"
Hewitt nodded, with no sign of surprise. "And the man killed in thebarn?"
"That is one more of his thousand crimes, without a doubt. Though itdiffers. Do you know what drew my attention to the murders of the menDenson and Mason, and so set me thinking? In each case the murder was bystrangulation, and the medical evidence at the inquests showed that itwas eff
ected by means of a tourniquet. In fact, in the second case, thetourniquet itself was left behind."
"Yes," Hewitt replied, "I loosened it myself--but, unfortunately, I wastoo late."
"Well, now," Peytral went on, "in Hayti, in my time, Mayes's enemies hada habit of dying suddenly in the night, by strangulation, and atourniquet was always the instrument. And just as murder was quite apopular procedure in that accursed place, so strangulation by tourniquetbecame for a while the most common form of the crime. It was rapid,effective, and silent, you see. So that a murder by tourniquet, quite anunknown thing in this country, took my attention at once, and whenanother followed it so soon, I felt something like certainty. And thetriangle was suggestive, too."
"Were Mayes's victims marked in that way in Hayti?"
"No, there was no mark. But"--here Mr. Peytral's features assumed acurious expression--"there are things which are not believed in thiscountry--which are laughed at, in fact, and called superstition. Youknow something of Hayti, and therefore you must have heard ofVoodoo--the witchcraft and devil-worship of the West Indies. Well, Mayeswas as deep in that as he was in every other species of wickedness. Itsounds foolish, perhaps, here in civilised England, and you may laugh,but I tell you that Mayes could make men do as he wished, with theirconsent or against it! And he used a thing--it was generally known thathe used a thing marked with a triangle--a Red Triangle--by the use ofwhich he could bend men to his will!"
Hewitt was listening intently, with no sign of laughter at all,notwithstanding his client's apprehension. And I remembered the case ofMr. Jacob Mason, and how that victim had so fervently expressed his wishto the excellent clergyman, Mr. Potswood, that he had never dabbled inthe strange devilries of Myatt--or Mayes, as we were now learning tocall him.
"At any rate," Peytral resumed, "you will understand that theconjunction of the tourniquet with the Red Triangle in the two cases youknow of caused me some excitement. My daughter, as you have said,noticed a change in my habits from that time; my wife did more--she knewthe reason. Mr. Hewitt, I am an older man, but there is hotter blood inmy veins than in yours. My father was English--though you might scarcelysuppose it--but my mother, to whose name I have reverted, was a FrenchCreole. So perhaps my natural instincts come nearer to those of oursavage ancestry than do yours. Whether or not you will understand me Ido not know, but I can tell you that even now, in cold blood--for myparoxysm has exhausted itself and me--it seems to me that it would be myduty, not to say my sacred duty, to tear that man to pieces with myhands whenever and wherever I could put them on him! My old passions mayhave slept, I find, but they are alive still, and I found them wakingwhen I realised that Mayes was alive and in England. The words 'sane'and 'insane' are elastic in their application, but I doubt if you wouldhave called me strictly sane of late. I evolved mad schemes for thedestruction of this wretch, and I was ready to devote myself andeverything I possessed to the purpose. More than once I contemplatedcoming to you--seeing that you had met the man in one of hisvillainies--with the idea of enlisting your aid. But I reflected thatyou would probably make yourself no party to a plan of private revenge,and I hesitated. And then--then, a little more than a week ago, I sawthe man himself! Changed, without doubt, but not half as much changed asI am myself. Nevertheless, sure as I am of him now, I hesitated then.For it was here in the meadow that you know, near the barn, and thething seemed so likely to be illusion that I almost suspected my senses.It was dusk, and he was walking and talking with another man, a gooddeal younger. And presently, while I was still confounded with surprise,and as they passed behind a clump of trees, Mayes was gone, and I sawhis companion alone. He was a young man--an artist, it would seem, withsketch-book and colours."
I started, and Hewitt and I glanced at each other. Peytral saw it andpaused. "Never mind," said Hewitt. "Please go on."
"After that I came out every night, in the hope of seeing my enemyagain. On several evenings I saw the young artist waiting by the barnexpectantly, but nobody joined him. I found that this young man waslodging at a cottage in the village, and I resolved not to lose sight ofhim.
"At last, on Thursday night, I saw Mayes again. Mr. Bowmore was here,and when I left the house he troubled me much by coming after me. I wasobliged to tell him that I wished to be alone, and I was in a nervouslyexplosive state when I did it. He seemed reluctant to go; my angerblazed out, and I violently ordered him off. From what he has told me itseems that he followed me still, but lost sight of me near Penn'sMeadow. Well, be that as it may, I saw Mayes and the young artist again.I watched from a rather awkward spot, and dusk was falling, so that Icould not see all that passed; but presently I was aware that Mayes wasmaking off by the road alone, and I followed him.
"From that moment I think I really was mad, though my madness did notdrive me to attack him at once. I had a feeling of curiosity to seewhere he would go, and a curious cruel idea of letting him run for alittle first--as a cat feels, I suppose, with a mouse. You may judgethat I was not in my normal state of mind from the fact that all throughyesterday and part of to-day I never as much as thought of telegraphinghome to say that I had gone to London. For it was to London I followedhim. I took no ticket at the station--I got on the platform by stealth,and entered the train unobserved, for he and one boy were the onlypassengers, and I feared attracting attention. It was easy enough, insuch a station as Redfield, and I paid my fare at London. And after allI lost him! Lost him in London!"
"How?"
"Like a fool. I saw him enter a house, and waited. Followed him again,and waited at another. I might have flung him into the river from theEmbankment, and I refrained. And then--whether it began at a dark corneror in a group of people I cannot tell, but I suddenly discovered that Iwas following a stranger--a stranger of about Mayes's form and stature.It was what I should have expected, and provided for, in London streetsat night!
"If I have been mad, it was then I was worst. I suppose by that time itmust have been too late to get back home, but I never thought of that. Iran the streets the whole night, like a fool, hunting for Mayes. I kepton all day yesterday. I waited and watched hours at the two houses hehad visited; and it was not till early this morning that I flung myselfon a bed in a private hotel in Euston Road. I slept a little, and myparoxysm was over. Perhaps I am more fortunate than I am disposed tothink, since I am as yet in no danger of trial for murder."
This passionate, wayward, stricken man was plainly the object offascinated interest to Hewitt. My friend waited a moment, and thensaid--"The houses he called at--I should like to know them. And whereyou lost sight of him."
Peytral sat back, and gazed thoughtfully for fully half a minute inHewitt's face. "Do you know," he said at length, "I don't think I'llanswer that question now. I'd like to leave it for a day or two.Yesterday I wouldn't have told you, even on the rack--no, not a word! Ishould have said, 'Take your own chances, and get him if you can. As forme, I consider him _my_ prey, and what scent I have picked up I shalluse myself!' A mad fancy, you will think, perhaps. For me the questionis, was I sanest then or now? I will take a day or two to think."