The Story Behind the Verdict/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
THE AFFAIR OF HARRY MAINGAYE
Keightley Wilbur seems to have been influenced by David's contempt of his detective powers, for soon he was spending four hours a day at his desk and talking about a "masterpiece." Within six weeks he had finished that now widely-known comedy, According to Cocker, and was spending all his afternoons and many of his evenings in rehearsing it. For be it known that when a Keightley Wilbur completes a play he has not the same difficulty as lesser men in placing it. The name counted, of course, but beyond the name was the salient fact that there was no pecuniary risk. Our leading American impressario fathered the production. The Fin de Siècle Theatre and a really fine caste was secured. Harry Maingaye, handsomest and most popular of actors, was engaged for the leading part.
Harry Maingaye, when he first burst upon the metropolis, had been known as "The Schoolgirl's Dream." The phrase had gone out of fashion, but not the man. His photographs were sold by the hundred thousand, and his fascinations were as frequently the topic of conversation among the ladies of Brixton and Clapham as the terminological inexactitudes of prominent politicians among their fathers and brothers.
On the first night of the production of the new play Keightley's mother and Lady Seddon-Battye occupied the stage box, with Sir Audley ponderously between them. Keightley dodged behind, sometimes surveying the house and sometimes the stage. He was greatly occupied in pretending to be quite uninterested in what was going on, and said more than once that it was a matter of indifference to him whether the critics or the public liked the play or not. He knew it was the best comedy London had seen since The Importance of Being Earnest, and that was sufficient for him.
"What does it matter what they say? No one else could have written it," he told his cousin when she wondered audibly what this or the other person would say or think of the play, of which she had already had a synopsis.
When the curtain drew up, Mrs. Wilbur, to whom every line was familiar, listened with beating heart, was on the watch for smile or applause, alternating hope with fear, almost ill with excitement. Veda was sympathetic and jumpy; Sir Audley very pleased to note that the Duchess of Oxmundham had the opposite box to their own, and that there were people in the stalls of almost his own social status. Members of the Cabinet were present, and a knighted actor with an exquisitely overdressed wife. A lame peeress brought an American hanger-on, and a well-known publisher a better-known beauty. There were a few obscure-looking people who had really done things, and many, more prominent ones, who were of no consequence whatever. Keightley Wilbur was always sure of a distinguished first night. The dramatic critics omitted to yawn and explain how bored they were at having to sit through a play, and the representatives of the box offices were present in force.
The first act went like fireworks, and the second was still more coruscating. Success was in the air, and it was admitted on all sides that the brilliancy of the dialogue was only exceeded by the novelty of the situations. Congratulatory smiles were directed towards the box where Keightley dodged behind the curtain, and where his mother sat well forward, exultant and happy.
"Isn't it going well?" she said, not once, but many times, as friends from before and behind came in with their congratulations.
Keightley, characteristically inconsistent, at the end of the second act became suddenly bored by all this unanimity, and went outside for a cigarette. Then the idea struck him to go and stand in the dress circle, survey the house from there, and listen to comments that he was not meant to overhear. The experiment was only fairly satisfactory. The back row of the dress circle cared nothing for brilliant dialogue, and their own ran something like this:
"Isn't she too sweet?"
"I love that dress with the paniers."
"But the hat!"
"I think the hat should have been larger."
"I never saw Harry Maingaye look handsomer."
"You know you are in love with him."
"Silly."
"You've got his photograph on the mantelpiece in your bedroom."
Keightley moved away, but found himself little better off at the next resting-place.
"Did you cry?"
"I don't think so."
"You know you did: your eyelids are red now. As for me, I simply howled. There's no actor on the stage like Harry Maingaye. I don't care what he plays. I'd come to see him even if it were in Shakespeare. And he's just as wonderful off the stage. I know a girl who has a friend who met him."
"What do you think of the play? I wonder what is going to happen in the third act? I hope it won't be very long: we are going on to supper at the Carlton."
"I can't think of the play or of anything but Harry Maingaye. I wonder whether he's really in love with Sylvia Hooper? I went hot and cold when they talked of giving each other up. I wonder what I should have felt if it had been me?"
"The play's rather Bernard Shawish, isn't it? I often didn't know what people were laughing at. I don't care for that sort of clever talk, do you?"
Keightley Wilbur, a little irritated, the reaction, perhaps, from that overdone insouciance he had exhibited in the box, found the wait between the second and the last act unduly prolonged. The house seemed to think so too, was becoming fidgety: he saw someone yawn.
A depression fell upon him, quite sudden and incomprehensible. When he told the story afterwards he always added that it was psychic.
"What the deuce is happening? Is there anything wrong? What could have gone wrong?"
He left the dress circle. A curious silence came over him when he got outside, as if he had become deaf, the whole house seemed hushed or muffled.
Fire! Could it be fire? What made him think of that? He tried to smell smoke, but there was no smoke, only the inexplicable delay and the sudden psychic depression.
He bungled when he sought for the door that would lead him to the wings. He wanted now to get behind, to find out what was happening, or whether there was anything happening. But he was in the wrong passage. There were fire buckets, and "Emergency Exit" was written up in white painted letters. No one was about, and it was not an emergency exit for which he was looking. Now he heard the sound of many voices, many roused and excited voices in the street, and the door, the emergency exit door, opened suddenly.
"You hear!" a hoarse voice said. He found himself gazing into light eyes; agonised, horror-strickened eyes in a young, pale face. "They are calling out 'Murder!’" the voice stammered.
The next moment the emergency exit had closed behind Keightley, and he was in the street. Already a small crowd had gathered. It was not fire. What had the boy said? What was the word that ran from lip to lip?
"Murder! 'E's been murdered, they can't go on.
"Where are the police?"
"I heard the shot myself."
"’E ain't dead, surely he ain't dead?"
"Have they got the man?"
Now Keightley was at the stage door, a moment more and he was inside.
"What's the matter?"
Half a dozen voices answered—grief-stricken voices, voices giving explanations, asking instructions.
Maingaye was shot as he left his dressing-room, killed on the spot. The man who killed him got away. Nobody saw him. My God! isn't it awful?"
Keightley felt a little overwhelmed and faint, the faces and the voices became indistinct. Something was lying on the ground. Ince—surely it was Dr. Ince who was kneeling by it—got up.
"It's all over: there is nothing to be done for him. Poor fellow! " he said. Then he caught sight of Keightley. "You here, Wilbur? I told them to send for you. You know what has happened?"
A woman on her knees beside the body was crying hysterically and sobbing, calling on the dead man's name. "Harry, Harry, darling: speak to me, only speak to me. …"
"His wife ought to be sent for," one said indignantly.
Dr. Ince saw the pallor of Keightley's face, and that he was struggling for composure or comprehension. He took him by the arm and began speaking at once.
"This has been a shock for you. It's a dreadful business. Maingaye had hardly left the stage. Nobody seems to know exactly what happened. A shot was heard: Dacre found him lying as we just saw him. The bullet went right through the heart: no one saw who fired it. You can't recollect when poor Terriss was assassinated, can you? It was something in the same way, only Terriss was stabbed, not shot. That was by a madman, so must this have been. I daresay the police have the man by now. They were sent for at once. You must try and pull yourself together."
Keightley had to pretend he was not startled nor unduly shocked. Ince talked to give him time to recover himself, but presently proffered a flask, which proved more successful.
The orchestra was still playing, the sound of it came to them where they stood. But the house was getting impatient, cat-calling and stamping its feet. The whole effect of the successful two acts was lost already. Keightley could not forget nor ignore that.
"I'd better go and tell them."
"If you feel equal to it."
"It hasn't affected me at all. What is an actor more or less?"
Bob Ince understood he was trying to be true to his conception of himself.
"As you say."
"I am thinking only of my beautiful play."
"Of course. Naturally. I quite understand your feeling."
"I suppose there really is nothing to be done?"
"Nothing. Death was practically instantaneous."
"Ghastly—isn't it?"
"The police are here in force, and the divisional surgeon. Take another pull at the flask; it can't do you any harm. You saw Inez de Brissac? I must try and get her away. We don't want a scandal; they've sent for his wife."
"How about the mater? Can you go up to her for a minute? She musn't be startled."
"Yes; I'll see her."
The stage manager came up, and in a few hurried words it was decided Keightley should speak to the impatient house.
"Give them their choice. Ask if we shall go on with an understudy. Isn't it awful? I hope they've got the man."
"Was it a man?" Keightley said, almost mechanically. "I thought it was a boy." He hardly knew what he was saying.
"Isn't it cursed luck? We were in for a real good thing."
"I don't suppose it matters."
The stage manager gazed at Keightley curiously: he didn't seem to be quite himself. But he made way for him. Keightley was white-faced, but making an effort for his cloak of indifference, for his pose of being unlike other people, and not horrified by this tragedy. He even lit a cigarette; his hands were shaking, but he explained that by saying it was "so damned windy in these cursed flies."
The curtain going up discovered him with the cigarette and the pose, but without the words that the occasion demanded. The faces of the audience were white blobs and he could not distinguish his mother at all; the box seemed empty. He wanted to thank the house for the attention they had given his play, to say something characteristic that would be in the papers the next morning. But the words would not come. There was applause, stamping of feet, cat-calls. Someone called out, "Why don't you finish; where's the last act?" and there was laughter. Now the house was plainer to him. He saw that many people in the stalls had risen, the women being hurriedly cloaked: the news had somehow penetrated.
"Spit it out, man, can't you?" came ribaldry from the gallery.
But he couldn't. For the first and only time in his life Keightley Wilbur was speechless. He opened his mouth, but nothing came through. His play ruined, spoiled, unfinished; he was sure it was only the spoliation of his play that paralysed his speech.
The stage manager in the wings understood the situation better, and came to his assistance.
"Get off," he whispered. "Leave it to me."
The stage manager was fluent, and found no difficulty in expressing himself.
"Mr. Wilbur, the talented author of the brilliant play we were in course of presenting to you, came before you to make an announcement. But his emotion has proved too much for him. He will have your sympathy. Ladies and gentlemen"—there was a dramatic break in his own voice and a pause—"I have a dreadful thing to tell you. As Mr. Harry Maingaye left the stage after the last act, he was shot by an unknown assassin."
Now there was a desperate strained attention, a silence that was like fog, then sobs, like a storm breaking.
"The doctors are with him now. We are not without hope." The stage manager knew Harry Maingaye was dead, but he put that in. "As you may imagine, behind the scenes the shock has been very great. Miss Hooper is in the deepest distress, quite unable to resume her part. The tragedy has struck us all. But we are the servants of the public. I am speaking on the part of all the performers. Mr. Wilbur would have spoken, but, as you saw, he was unable. Shall we go on with understudies, or will you give us leave to drop the curtain, to indulge our grief?" His voice broke.
"Pull down the bally curtain!"
The house emptied slowly; there were sobs, questions, a growing, dreadful excitement. Nothing like this had ever been known in the annals of the English stage. Harry Maingaye shot! Assassinated! But such things don't happen in England—it was incredible! Weeping women filled the hall: men's faces were white and shocked.
The newspapers the next day had big headlines and columns of conjecture. A full account of the tragedy was given, and great bewilderment expressed as to how the assassin could have escaped. The police were blamed, and the Conservative papers wrote about the "fostering of class hatred" and "Limehouse." There were lists of the parts Harry Maingaye had played, descriptions of his methods, reprints of interviews with him in his country home, reprints of photographs of "Harry Maingaye and his two little daughters," "Harry Maingaye gardening," "In his library," "In his motor." Comtesse Inez de Brissac was not mentioned; the English Press, whatever its shortcomings, knows how to be silent when the relations of man and woman are in question.
Mrs. Harry Maingaye, on the other hand, who was well known under her nom de théâtre of Susanne O'Neill, was interviewed, but had little or nothing to say. She expressed her horror of the assassin, and did not know where the police could have been to let him escape them. She said, "Harry has not an enemy in the world as far as I know." No interviewer could get any more from her. After the first day she refused to see any more reporters, and the little over-photographed house in Halliford was found to be guarded by policemen, inaccessible.
Three days later, at St. Martin's Town Hall, Charing Cross, Mr. John Salmon, the Westminster coroner, opened an inquest on the body of Mr. Henry Lepel Mings, better known as Harry Maingaye, the popular actor who was fatally shot outside the private entrance to the Fin de Siècle Theatre in Maiden Lane, on the 17th inst. Mr. White watched the case on behalf of the lessee of the theatre: Mr. Keats for the Maingaye family.
The jury having viewed the body, which lay in the mortuary adjacent to St. Martin's Church, Susanne O'Neill, otherwise Mings, or Maingaye, was called, and stated she had identified the body as that of her late husband, Henry Lepel Mings. Witness said she last saw him to speak to about three months ago. She knew nothing of his death except what had been told her. She never knew him to be threatened. She did not know that he had an enemy in the world.
A juror asked how it was that she had not seen her husband for so long a time. She replied, somewhat hesitatingly, that she had been touring in the country. Mr. Keats rose and asked the coroner whether it was necessary that family matters should be gone into. Until he spoke, the jury, and apparently the public, had known nothing of any family matters in Harry Maingaye's life that required suppressing.
The coroner said dryly that they had better call the next witness.
Mr. Stanley Dacre, who had played the title rôle in According to Cocker, deposed that he was in Mr. Maingaye's dressing-room when Harry came off the stage at the end of the second act. He appeared in the best of spirits, and they talked a little about the play and its reception. A note was brought in, and after Harry had glanced at it he said: "Oh, damn the woman!" But quite pleasantly, not as if he were annoyed. He then got up, saying "I'll be back in a minute," and went out.
The witness continued:
"A moment later I heard what I now know was a shot, but then I thought it was a tyre burst. I went outside and saw Harry lying in the passage."
His emotion overcame him and he was unable to goon.
"You were the last person who saw him alive?"
"I would have given twenty lives to have saved his," the witness exclaimed passionately.
The letter that had been mentioned was called for, but could not be produced. Police-constable Fear was called, and gave evidence that there was no letter on the body when it was taken to the mortuary. Other evidence was called confirming this.
Sub-divisional Inspector Brush said he was called to the Fin de Siècle Theatre, and found the body of Mr. Maingaye lying in the passage. He remained with the body until it was removed. He saw no letter. All the officials of the theatre were there. Scene shifters, carpenters, ladies and gentlemen from the stage were passing in and out all the time. He had no authority to keep them out. One lady knelt by the body for quite a long time.
Annie Stairs, an attendant and programme seller in the front of the house, said a lady in the stalls had given her a pencilled note to take round to Mr. Maingaye. Asked if she knew who this lady was, she said she thought it was the Comtesse de Brissac: someone had told her so. There was no answer asked for to the note.
The court was full to overflowing, and everyone strained forward and tried to get a glimpse of the next witness. By now the wildest rumours were flying about.
Inez de Brissac was cloaked in sables and wore two large pearls in her ears. She was no longer in her first youth, but still beautiful, with red hair and soft dark eyes. She said she was an American, married to the Comte Louis de Brissac, but since divorced from him. She seemed to have no reluctance in admitting this.
"You knew the deceased well?"
"I loved the very ground he walked upon." She burst into tears and wiped them away freely with a scented and coroneted handkerchief. "I know what they are saying about me, but I wouldn't have hurt a hair of his head. The note was to tell him how splendid he was, and that everybody around was saying so, and to say that I would see him later."
"When?"
"I didn't say when."
"You then left your seat?"
"I went into the foyer to wait for an answer. I was just longing to see him."
"You knew the way to Mr. Maingaye's dressing-room?"
"Yes."
"But you didn't go there?"
"I stayed around thinking he would come to me.
She gave her evidence with extraordinary simplicity, crying most of the time, but obviously concealing nothing.
"You were on intimate terms with Mr. Maingaye?"
"We were as husband and wife."
When Inez de Brissac said that she and Harry Maingaye had been as husband and wife, the dead man's widow, she who had been Susanne O'Neill, rose passionately in her place. But a lady with her pulled her down, put an arm about her, spoke to her soothingly.
In examination and re-examination, after several adjournments and with some Press assistance, part of the story came out. It appeared that Mr. and Mrs. Harry Maingaye had lived upon affectionate terms until he and the Comtesse de Brissac met at a supper party given by Sir Herbert Seaborne, about six months ago. Afterwards Harry Maingaye visited at her flat. At first the visits were supposed to be on business. The Comtesse was engaged on dramatising one of her salacious novels, in which there was a part she thought would suit Mr. Maingaye. The Comtesse was admittedly a woman of very strong attraction. Harry Maingaye was weak, susceptible to flattery. When his wife and her friends found out what was going on they did all they knew to stop it; but without affect. A temporary separation was agreed upon. It was hoped it would only be temporary; negotiations were opened with the Comtesse de Brissac. In the midst of them came this terrible news.
Mrs. Susanne O'Neill was recalled and very closely questioned about her movements on the night of the tragedy. She admitted now to having been in the house, in the pit, and said she had never missed one of Harry's first nights. To the question whether anyone had seen her there, she answered that she was dressed quietly, as she did not wish to be recognised. She had her pride. She said she saw the Comtesse in the stalls.
The coroner urged her to think of someone who had seen her, but she averred that she had spoken to no one. All her friends were in the stalls or dress circle. She knew no one in the pit—that was why she had gone there. She left after she saw the Comtesse go out. She guessed whom she had gone to see.
"I couldn't bear it. I went home: it was late, and I feared that I might miss the last train. I heard nothing until the next day."
Further examined, she said that she had never had a revolver in her possession and did not know how to shoot. Her servant, Ann Coates, was sitting up, knew the hour she returned to Halliford, had made her a cup of chocolate, and helped her off with her things. Ann had been with her for many years.
The time that the last train to Halliford from London arrived was investigated, and proved to be as Mrs. Maingaye stated. Ann Coates confirmed as to the chocolate, and said her mistress was not at all agitated, but very depressed and unhappy. And then she said something indignantly about "women that was no better than they should be, and others whose shoes they were not fit to wipe."
The coroner stopped her, and again the reputable daily papers made no comment upon the incident. Ann Coates, however, enlarged upon her text materially the next day to a quick and sympathetic interviewer. This interviewer represented the Starting Gate, which not only printed the substance of what she said in full, but in a leading article gave an account of the Comtesse de Brissac's career from the time when, nearly twenty years ago, she had left America with Comte Louis de Brissac, a well-known Belgian nobleman, until to-day.
It appeared from this leader that Comte Louis had married Inez B. Mott a few months before the birth of her son, and that his family had cut him off in consequence. Five years later he divorced her. With the utmost effrontery she immediately published a volume of love letters, under the title, "He and I and Summer," in which she retold the story related in the Belgian divorce court. She came to England with this book twelve years ago. The article went on:
"She offered it to publisher after publisher, until in the end she persuaded Messrs. Kirsch and Co. to undertake the job. Mr. William Kirsch, the society member of the well-known firm, if we may be allowed to say so, is admittedly not entirely adamant to female graces. The book was a succès de scandale. Others followed, and it would be idle to deny to the lady a certain ability in telling what, for the sake of euphemism, we will call a 'borderland story.' One of these stories ran through the columns of our valued contemporary. Illustrated Panpipes, one of the Herodsfoot publications. It is perhaps inadvisable to inquire how Lord Herods, foot came by the MS. The Comtesse was in Monte Carlo that year, and was not, we believe, on visiting terms with Lady Herodsfoot. But this by the way. Roger Macphail painted her and the picture was shown at the Goupil Gallery, where it excited considerable attention. Mr. Macphail will perhaps remember who gave him his commission?"
The article went as far as it was possible to go without libel, or perhaps even further. But the Starting Gate had a reputation to keep up. The editor had been so often summoned, fined and committed, that the process had no terror for him. Suspicion as to the murder of Harry Maingaye was at this time directed towards Susanne O'Neill, and the article had the intention—in which it was successful—of arousing public sympathy on her behalf. According to the Starting Gate, she was a woman greatly wronged.
At the fifth and last adjournment of the coroner's inquiry Mr. Keightley Wilbur was called, not with the expectation that he could throw fresh light upon the affair, but merely as a matter of form.
In the witness-box Keightley Wilbur told the story of the first night of the play. He told of the applause and congratulations, then of his own reaction of feeling and visit to the dress circle. A certain amount of latitude was given to him, and the court heard of the delay after the second act, and Mr. Wilbur's intuition or psychic vision of disaster, of how he left the dress circle and found himself near the emergency exit.
"Someone spoke to me, said: 'You hear—they are calling out "murder"!’"
The coroner asked at once:
"Who spoke to you? Someone you knew?"
"I don't think so—I'm not sure. Many people know me whom I do not know." This was the old familiar Keightley.
"The murder had not been committed two minutes. You were in an unused passage. Who had the right of entry there?"
This was new evidence, and there was something like a sensation in court.
"I don't know."
"But this is very important, very serious. The police were on the scene almost immediately; they surrounded the theatre; a crowd gathered outside very quickly. No one saw a man or woman running."
Keightley himself saw the inference, was startled that it had not occurred to him before.
"We will hear afterwards who had the right of access to this passage. You will tell us now what you remember of this boy or man who spoke to you. Was he panting, as if he had been running, agitated?"
"I have only a general impression."
"Give us your general impression."
"Let me think a minute. It had not occurred to me to connect the circumstances."
His friend David Devenish reminded him afterwards, and often, that, although he prided himself on his flair for crime and the criminal, on this, his first real opportunity, he had to admit how completely he had missed it. The time came when Devenish had not to remind him, when his self-reproaches were worse than any taunts or chaff. But that is another story.
Now, in the witness-box, on the last of the many-times-adjourned inquiry into the death of Harry Maingaye, Keightley Wilbur dropped all his affectations, they fell from him involuntarily. He was asked to assist the court, and he did so to the best of his ability. He remained silent for quite a minute after he had said that it had not occurred to him to connect the circumstance of the young man speaking to him under the fire buckets with the criminal who had shot Harry Maingaye. Then he went on:
"I can't remember definitely. I can only give my impression." He covered his eyes with his hand as if to remember better, to see into the past, and he spoke slowly: "A hoarse voice, unfamiliar. Light eyes, familiar, but not as I had known them, the horror changing their expression. …"
"Search your memory," the coroner said solemnly. The court was as still as if it were the antechamber of death.
Keightley Wilbur still spoke as if he were sleep-walking; he was thinking backwards, trying to see through shadows.
"I don't know what makes me think it was a familiar face. Yet I am sure I have seen those curious light eyes before, and fair hair. …"
"The man wore no hat, then?"
"No."
"Evening dress, as if he were part of the audience?"
"I don't remember. Perhaps. I think a white shirt front, and an overcoat, loose, or cape. I have an impression, but no real memory."
"Would you know the man if you saw him again?"
"I might. I believe I have seen him before; I think I should."
"Had he anything in his hand?"
"I don't know."
"You would know if he had a revolver. That would have been sufficiently unusual to impress itself on you."
"I did not see a revolver, I am sure of that."
You say the door opened. Did he—did the mysterious stranger open it?"
One moment I saw the door, the 'Emergency Exit' in white letters, the fire buckets, the next I was outside, racing for the stage door."
"Did he follow you?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. I had forgotten him. But now, looking back, I believe I recognised the fear in his eyes, that it was communicated to me, that that was why I ran."
Mr. Wilbur then related what he saw when he got to the stage door. But all that the court had heard already.
No questions, however skilful, and the coroner was a clever lawyer, could elicit anything further about the man who had met Keightley Wilbur at the emergency exit, whose eyes were familiar, but to whom he could put no name.
"You are quite sure it was a man, and not a woman in man's clothes?"
"Not absolutely sure."
"Think—a life is at stake."
"Don't press me. I have told you all of which I am sure. Anything else might be invented and not remembered. The eyes were familiar, that is all of which I am positive, but I have seen them differently."
He was then allowed to go.
When the coroner summed up the case to the jury, he said that Mr. Keightley Wilbur's evidence was very unsatisfactory, and had added to the difficulty of the case.
"He saw a face that he tells us was familiar, but he cannot put a name to it. He says he is not sure that if he saw the man again he would be able to identify him. He is not even prepared to swear that it was a man at all and not a woman in disguise. Neither he nor any of the witnesses we have called are aware that the murdered man had any avowed enemy, that he had been the subject of any threat, that any vendetta had been declared against him. Any suspicion that has been aroused in the long course of this inquiry has been suspicion only, lacking verification. It would be idle to deny, gentlemen, that a very painful story has been indicated, but fortunately it is not one which it is any part of your or my duty to investigate or upon which to comment. It is to be hoped that further investigation will reveal the truth and lead to the conviction of the criminal."
He then directed them to their verdict, which ran, as had been anticipated, "Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown."
A few days after the verdict had been arrived at, Keightley Wilbur sauntered into the Savoy grill-room as usual, and found Roger Macphail at the same table with David Devenish. David, as has been already related, rallied him on his evidence. Roger said:
"Well, at least Wilbur's theory is maintained. Here there is certainly a story behind the verdict."
"A very ugly one."
"We only know part of it," Keightley interposed a little eagerly,
"But for you we should probably at least know the assassin," David reminded him, somewhat cruelly.
"That is not the most important thing."
"Not! I should have thought it was."
"No. The most important thing is my position in the matter."
"You think that!"
"Steak and kidney pudding and a bottle of lager." Keightley had taken his seat at the table with them, and now gave his order to the waiter. Then he went on:
"Once you said that my investigation of crime was little better than acting as a spy in a friendly country, you talked of my vanity, and said I desired notoriety and not knowledge. It was you sent me back to my desk."
"You have obviously no qualification for detective work."
"You mean because I failed to recognise this man—detain him?"
"You never even thought of him as the assassin until the idea was presented to you in court."
"That has nothing to do with it. Idiot! I said lager, not whisky!" This was to the waiter. Keightley Wilbur was not himself to-day, or he would not have spoken so rudely. "I believe the whole thing to be 'The Moving Finger Writes.' I believe Why do you think it was to me the murderer was shown, that he came to me?"
"Because you were at the emergency exit, and he had to get back into the house somehow whilst the police were searching outside," David answered.
"You have neither faith nor imagination: I have both. I am going to clear the reputation of Susanne O'Neill."
"It was not Susanne, then?" David asked coolly.
"Can you tell us anything you didn't tell the court?" Roger wanted to know.
"I am suddenly convinced that it was the man who shot Harry Maingaye who spoke to me in the passage. But he was not an ordinary criminal. Quite a youngster, trembling all over, appalled at what he had done, sick with fright or remorse. It comes back to me bit by bit."
Roger was drawing on the tablecloth, one of his bad habits. He drew the head of a Medusa, hair standing snakily on end, staring, sightless eyes.
"Anything like that?" he asked Keightley.
"Not a bit. It was not a woman."
"What are you going to do?" Devenish asked with all the curiosity he could spare from kidneys and Yorkshire pudding.
"I am going on with the work that has been given me to do. You think, for instance, that there is only one story in Inez de Brissac's life. You saw that article in the Starting Gate; even that was only half the truth."
"True," interposed Roger; "and the lesser half."
"She is Lais, Messalina, Catherine of Russia—all the bad women in history and throughout the ages; a man-eater. Maingaye was the latest, but not the last. She wrecked his home, but how many more? The immediate question is to find from what wrecked home or hope came the shot that killed Harry Maingaye."
"And when you have found out, will you be responsible for his execution; that he shall hang by the neck until he is dead? There is no 'unwritten law in our civilised England."
"I am not bound to give him up. But I am bound to find out. I owe it to myself. He killed the man, why didn't he kill the woman? I will, do nothing else—I swear I will not—until I know the truth. I did not seek the task; it has been thrust upon me."
"You had far better write another play."
"I shall write many more plays. But I won't put pen to paper until I know not only the whole history of Inez de Brissac, but who killed Harry Maingaye."
"Don't make absurd vows."
"Well, perhaps it is impossible for me not to write. But I swear I will not publish nor produce until those light eyes have materialised." Then he remembered the part he always played, and added, with a laugh: "You forget how my first night was spoilt."
"I bet you what you like you don't find out. The police may, but not you."
"I'll take that bet."
"You'd better have a time limit," suggested Roger.
"Why?"
"We can't spare your work indefinitely."
"It won't be long," Keightley answered confidently.
"Say a year."
"Very well, a year from to-day. Within a year from to-day I will produce the man I met in the passage."
"Or a poem founded on the incident," David Devenish jeered.
"You may chaff. But I hold you to your bet. Here are the terms: If I fail I give you and Roger a dinner at the Ritz, and you can jeer at me until the end of time. If I succeed you give me a column in the Grail to tell my story, and admit my justification in thinking I have a mission."
"That sounds fair."
"And a leader."
"Anything else? Perhaps you would like a complete edition of the paper," David said as he rose to go. "But you shall have your leader. You can spread yourself if you've anything to spread about."
"Don't go, Roger. Stay whilst I drink my coffee. I want to talk to you."
And Roger stayed.