The Avenger (Oppenheim)/Chapter 41
CHAPTER XLI
THE COLONEL SPEAKS
Wrayson glanced at the clock for the twentieth time.
"I am afraid," he said gravely, "that Mr. Sydney Barnes has been one too many for us."
"Do you think," Louise asked, "that he has persuaded the girl to give him the packet?"
"It looks like it," Wrayson confessed.
Louise frowned.
"Of course," she said, "I think that you were mad to let her go before. She had the letters here in the room. You would have been perfectly justified in taking them from her."
"I suppose so," Wrayson assented, doubtfully. "Somehow she seemed to get the upper hand of us towards the end. I think she suspected that some of us knew more than we cared to tell her about—her husband's death."
Louise shivered a little and remained silent. Wrayson walked to the window and back.
"To tell you the truth," he said, "I expected some one else here to-night who has failed to turn up."
"Who is that?" the Baroness asked.
Wrayson hesitated for a moment and glanced towards Louise.
"Colonel Fitzmaurice," he said.
Louise seemed to turn suddenly rigid. She looked at him steadfastly for a moment without speaking.
"My father," she murmured at last.
Wrayson nodded.
"Yes!" he said.
"But—what has he to do with this?" Louise asked, with her eyes fixed anxiously, almost fearfully, upon his.
"I went to him for advice," Wrayson said quietly. "He has been always very kind, and I thought it possible that he might be able to help us. He promised to be here at the same hour as the others. Listen! There is the bell at last."
The Colonel entered the room. Louise half rose to her feet. Wrayson hastened to meet him.
"Herbert," he said, with an affectionate smile, "forgive me for being a little late. Baroness, I am delighted to see you—and Louise."
The Baroness held out both her hands, which the Colonel raised gallantly to his lips. Louise he greeted with a fatherly and unembarrassed smile.
"I must apologize to all of you," he said, "but perhaps this will be my best excuse."
He took the packet from his breast pocket and handed it over to the Baroness. The room seemed filled with exclamations. The Colonel beamed upon them all.
"Quite simple," he declared. "I have just taken them from Mr. Sydney Barnes upstairs. He, in his turn, took them from——"
The door was suddenly opened. Mrs. Morris Barnes rushed into the room and gazed wildly around.
"Where is he?" she exclaimed. "He has robbed me. The little beast! He got into my rooms while I was out."
The Colonel led her gallantly to a chair.
"Calm yourself, my dear young lady," he said. "Where is he?" she cried. "Has he been here?"
The Colonel shook his head.
"He is in his room upstairs, but," he said, "I should not advise you to go to him."
"He has my packet—Augustus' packet," she cried, springing up.
The Colonel laid his hand upon her arm.
"No!" he said, "that packet has been restored to its rightful owner."
She rose to her feet, trembling with anger. The Colonel motioned her to resume her seat.
"Come," he said, "so far as you are concerned, you have nothing to complain of. You offered, I believe, to give it up yourself on one condition."
She looked at him with sudden eagerness.
"Well?" she cried, impatiently.
"That condition," he said, "shall be complied with."
She looked into his face with strange intentness.
"You mean," she said slowly, "that I shall know who it was that killed my husband?"
"Yes!" the Colonel answered.
A sudden cry rang through the room. Louise was on her feet. She came staggering towards them, her hands outstretched.
"No!" she screamed, "no! Father, you are mad! Send the woman away!"
He smiled at her deprecatingly.
"My dear Louise!" he exclaimed, "our word has been passed to this young woman. Besides," he added, "circumstances which have occurred within the last hour with our young friend upstairs would probably render an explanation imperative! I am sorry for your sake, my dear young lady," he continued, turning to Mrs. Barnes, "to have to tell you this, but if you insist upon knowing, it was I who killed your husband."
Louise fell back into her chair and covered her face with her hands. The Baroness looked shocked but not surprised. Wrayson, dumb and unnerved, had staggered back, and was leaning against the table. Mrs. Barnes had already taken a step towards the door. She was very pale, but her eyes were ablaze. Incredulity struggled with her passionate desire for vengeance.
"You!" she exclaimed. "What should you want to kill him for?"
The Colonel sighed regretfully.
"My dear young lady," he said, "it is very painful for me to have to be so explicit, but the situation demands it. I killed him because he was unfit to live—because he was a blackmailer of women, an unclean liver, a foul thing upon the face of the earth."
"It's a damned lie!" the girl hissed. "He was good to me, and you shall swing for it!"
The Colonel looked genuinely distressed.
"I am afraid," he said, "that you are prejudiced. If he was, as you say, kind to you, it was for his own pleasure. Believe me, I made a careful study of his character before I decided that he must go."
She looked at him with fierce curiosity.
"Are you a god," she demanded, "that you should have power of life or death? Who are you to set yourself up as a judge?"
"Pray do not believe," he begged, "that I arrogate to myself any such position. Only, unfortunately, as regards your late husband's character there could be no mistake, and concerning such men as he I have very strong convictions."Wrayson, who had recovered himself a little, laid his hand upon the Colonel's shoulder.
"Colonel," he said hoarsely, "you're not serious! You can't be! Be careful. This woman means mischief. She will take you at your word."
"How else should she take me?" the Colonel asked calmly. "I suppose her prejudice in favour of this man was natural, but all I can say is that, under similar circumstances, I should act to-day precisely as I did on the night when I found him about to sell a woman's honour, for money to minister to the degraded pleasures of his life."
The woman leaned towards him, venomous and passionate.
"You're a nice one to preach, you are," she cried hysterically, "you, with a man's blood upon your hands! You, a murderer! Degraded indeed! What were his poor sins compared with yours?"
The Colonel shook his head sadly.
"I am afraid, my dear young lady," he said, "that I should never be able to convert you to my point of view. You are naturally prejudiced, and when I consider that I have failed to convince my own daughter"—he glanced towards Louise—"of the soundness of my views, it goes without saying that I should find you also unsympathetic. You are anxious, I see, to leave us. Permit me!"
He held open the door for her with grave courtesy, but Wrayson pushed him aside. He had recovered himself to some extent, but he still felt as though he were moving in some horrible dream.
"Colonel!" he exclaimed hoarsely, "you know what this means! You know where she will go!"
"'To the nearest police station! That's where I'm off!'"
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"If he don't, let me tell him," she interrupted. "To the nearest police station! That's where I'm off."
Wrayson glanced quickly at the Colonel, who seemed in no way discomposed.
"Naturally," he assented. "No one, my dear young lady, will interfere with you in your desire to carry out your painfully imperfect sense of justice. Pray pass out!"
She hesitated for a moment. Her poor little brain was struggling, perhaps, for the last time, to adapt itself to his point of view—to understand why, at a moment so critical, he should treat her with the easy composure and tolerant good-nature of one who gives to a spoilt child its own way. Then she saw signs of further interference on Wrayson's part, and she delayed no longer.
The Colonel closed the door after her, and stood for a moment with his back against it, for Wrayson had shown signs of a desire to follow the woman whose egress he had just permitted. He looked into their faces, white with horror—full of dread of what was to come, and he smiled reassuringly.
"Amy," he said, turning to the Baroness, "surely you and Wrayson here are possessed of some grains of common sense. Louise, I know, is too easily swayed by sentiment. But you, Wrayson! Surely I can rely on you!"
"For anything," Wrayson answered, with trembling lips. "But what can I do? What is there to be done?"
The Colonel smiled gently.
"Simply to listen intelligently—sympathetically if you can," he declared. "I want to make my position clear to you if I can. You heard what that poor young woman called me? Probably you would have used the same word yourself. A murderer!"
"Yes!" Wrayson muttered. "I heard!"
"When I came back from the Soudan twelve years ago, I had been instrumental in killing some thousands of brave men, I dare say I had killed a score or so with my own hand. Was I a murderer then?"
"No!" Wrayson answered. "It was a different thing."
"Then killing is not necessarily murder," the Colonel remarked. "Good! Now take the case of a man like Morris Barnes. He belonged to the class of humanity which you can call by no other name than that of vermin. Whatever he touched he defiled. He was without a single good instinct, a single passable quality. Wherever he lived, he bred contamination. Whoever touched him was the worse for it. His influence upon the world was an unchanging one for evil. Put aside sentiment for one moment, false sentiment I should say, and ask yourself what possible sin can there be in taking the life of such a one. If he had gone on four legs instead of two, his breed would have been exterminated centuries ago."
"We are not the judges," Wrayson began, weakly enough.
"We are, sir," the Colonel thundered. "For what else have we been given brains, the moral sense, the knowledge of good or evil? There are those amongst us who become decadents, whose presence amongst us breeds corruption, whose dirty little lives are like the trail of a foul insect across the page of life. I hold it a just and moral thing to rid the world of such a creature. The sanctity of human life is the canting cry of the falsely sentimental. Human life is sacred or not, acaccording to its achievements. Such a one as Morris Barnes I would brush away like a poisonous fly."
"Bentham!" Wrayson faltered.
"I killed him, sir!" the Colonel answered, "and others of his kidney before him. Louise knew it. I argued with her as I am doing with you, but it was useless. Nevertheless, I have lived as seemed good to me."
"There is the law," Wrayson said, with a horrified glance towards Louise. He understood now.
The Colonel bowed his head.
"I am prepared," the Colonel answered, "to pay the penalty of all reformers."
There was a ring at the bell. Wrayson threw open the door. A small boy stood there. He held a piece of paper in his hand.
"The lidy said," he declared, "that the white-headed gentleman would give me 'arf a crown for this 'ere!"
Wrayson gave him the money, and stepped back into the room. He gave the paper to the Colonel, who read it calmly, first to himself and then aloud.
"I leave you to your conshens. He may have been bad, but he was good to me!
The Colonel's eyes grew very soft.
"Poor little woman," he said to himself. "Wrayson, you'll look after her. You'll see she doesn't come to grief!"
There was the sound of a heavy fall in the room above. The Colonel's face assumed an air of intense irritation.
"It's that infernal window pole," he declared. "I had doubts about it all the time."
Wrayson looked at him in horror.
"What do you mean?" he demanded.
"Perhaps you had better go up and see," the Colonel answered, taking up his hat. "A very commonplace tragedy after all! I don't quite see what else he could have done. He was penniless, half mad with disappointment; he'd been smoking too many cigarettes and drinking too much cheap liquor, and he was in danger of arrest for selling the landlord's furniture. No other end for him, I am afraid."
Wrayson threw open the door.
"Don't hurry," the Colonel declared. "You'll probably find that he has hanged himself, but he must have been dead for some time."
Wrayson tore up the stairs. The Colonel watched him for a moment. Then, with a little sigh, he began to descend.
"False sentiment," he murmured to himself sadly. "The world's full of it."