The Riddle of the Frozen Flame 17 – Hanshew · Verses Across
Literature · Detective Fiction
The Riddle of the Frozen Flame 17In the Cell
18
Literature · Detective Fiction
The Riddle of the Frozen Flame 17
In the Cell
HanshewEnglish
What followed was like a sort of nightmare to Merriton. That he should be arrested for the murder of Dacre Wynne reeled drunkenly in his brain. Murderer! They were calling him a murderer! The liars! The fools! Calling him a murderer, were they? And taking the word of a crawling worm like Borkins, a man without honour and utterly devoid of decency, who could stand up before them and tell them a story that was a tissue of lies. It was appalling! What a fiend incarnate this man Cleek was! Coming here at Nigel's own bidding, and then suddenly manipulating the evidence, until it caught him up in its writhing coils like a well-thrown lasso. Oh, if he had only let well enough alone and not brought a detective to the house. Yet how was he to know that the man would try to fix a murder on him, himself? Useless for him to speak, to deny. The revolver-shot and the cruel little bullet (which showed there were others who possessed that sort of fire-arm besides himself) proved too easily, upon the circumstantial evidence theory at all events, that his word was naught.
He went through the next hour or two like a man who has been tortured. Silent, but bearing the mark of it upon his white face and in his haggard eyes. And indeed his situation was a terrible and strange one. He had set the wheels of the law in motion; he himself had brought the relentless Hamilton Cleek into the affair and now he was called a murderer!
In the little cell where they placed him, away from the gaping, murmuring, gesticulating knot of villagers that had marked his progress to the police-station--for news flies fast in the country, especially when there is a viper-tongue like Borkins's to wing it on its way--he was thankful for the momentary peace and quiet that the place afforded. At least he could think--think and pace up and down the narrow room with its tiny barred window too high for a man to reach, and its hard camp bedstead with the straw mattress, and go through the whole miserable fabrication that had landed him there.
The second day of confinement brought him a visitor. It was 'Toinette. His jailer--a rough-haired village-hand who had taken up with the "Force" and wore the uniform as though it belonged to someone else (which indeed it had)--brought him news of her arrival. It cut him like a lash to see her thus, and yet the longing for her was so great that it superseded all else. So he faced the man with a grim smile.
"I suppose, Bennett, that I shall be allowed to see Miss Brellier? You have made enquiries?"
"Yes, sir." Bennett was crestfallen and rather ashamed of his duty.
"Any restrictions?"
Bennett hedged.
"Well--if you please--Sir Nigel--that is--"
"What the devil are they, then?"
"Constable Roberts give orders that I was to stay 'ere with you--but I can turn me back," returned Bennett, with flushing countenance. "Shall I show the lady in?"
"Yes."
She came. Her frock was of some clinging gray material that made her look more fairy-like than ever. A drooping veil of gray gauze fell like a mist before her face, screening from him the anguished mirrors of her eyes.
"Nigel! My poor, poor Nigel!"
"Little 'Toinette!"
"Oh, Nigel--it seems impossible--utterly! That you should be thought to have killed Dacre. You of all people! Poor, peace-loving Nigel! Something must be done, dearest; something shall be done! You shall not suffer so, for someone else's sin--you shall not!"
He smiled at her wanly, and told her how beautiful she was. It was useless to explain to her the utter futility of it all. There was the revolver and there the bullet. The weapon was his--of the bullet he could say nothing. He had only told the truth--and they had not believed him.
"Yes see, dear," he said, patiently, "they do not believe me. They say I killed him, and Borkins--lying devil that he is--has told them a story of how the thing was done; sworn, in fact, that he saw it all from the kitchen window, saw Wynne lying in the garden path, dying, after I fired at him. Of course the thing's an outrageous lie, but--they're acting upon it."
"Nigel! How dared he?"
"Who? Borkins? That kind of a devil dares anything.... How's your uncle, dear? He has heard, of course?"
Her face brightened, her eyes were suddenly moist. She put her hands upon his shoulders and tilted her chin so that she could see his eyes.
"Uncle Gustave told me to tell you that he does not believe a word of it, dearest!" she said, softly. "And he is going to make investigations himself. He is so unhappy, so terribly unhappy over it all. Such a tangled web as it is, such a wicked, wicked plot they have woven about you! Oh, Nigel dearest--why did you not tell me that they were detectives, these friends of yours who were coming to visit? If you had only said--"
He held her a moment, and then, leaning forward, kissed her gently upon the forehead.
"What then, p'tite?"
"I would have made you send them away--I would! I would!" she cried, vehemently. "They should not have come--not if I had wired to them myself! Something told me that day, after you were gone, that a dreadful thing would happen. I was frightened for you--frightened! And I could not tell why! I kept laughing at myself, trying to tease myself out of it, as though it were simply--what you call it?--the 'blues'. And now--this!"
He nodded.
"And now--this," he said, grimly, and laughed.
Bennett, hand upon watch, turned apologetically at this juncture.
"Sorry, Sir Nigel," he said, "but time's up. Ten minutes is the time allowed a prisoner, and--and--I'm afeared the young leddy must go. It 'urts me to tell you, sir, but--you'll understand. Dooty is dooty."
"Yes, doubtless, Bennett, though some people's idea of it is different from others'," returned Merriton, with a bleak smile. "Have no fear, 'Toinette. There is still plenty of time, and I shall engage the finest counsel in the land to stand for me. This knot shall be broken somehow, this tissue of lies must have a flaw somewhere. And nowadays circumstantial evidence, you know, doesn't hold too much water in a court of law. God bless you, little 'Toinette."
She clung to him a moment, her face suddenly lightening at the tenor of his words--so bravely spoken, with so little conviction behind them. But they had helped her, and for that he was glad.
When she had gone, he sat down on the edge of his narrow bed and dropped his face in the cup of his hands. How hopeless it seemed. What chance had he of a future now--with Cleek against him? Cleek the unraveller of a thousand riddles that had puzzled the cleverest brains in the universe! Cleek would never admit to having made a blunder this time--though there was a sort of grim satisfaction in the knowledge that he had blundered, though he himself was the victim.
... He sat there for a long time, thinking, his brain wearied, his heart like lead. Bennett's heavily-booted feet upon the stone floor brought him back again to realities.
"There's another visitor, sir," said he. "A gentleman. Seen 'im up at the Towers, I 'ave. Name of West, sir. Constable Roberts says as 'ow you may see him."
How kind of the constable, thought Nigel bitterly. His mouth twisted into a wry smile. Then his eyes lightened suddenly. Tony West, eh? So all the rats hadn't deserted the sinking ship, after all. There were still the old doctor, who came, cheering him up with kind words, bringing him books that he thought he could read--as though a man could read books, under such circumstances--and now Tony West--good old West!
West strode in, his five-feet-three of manhood looking as though it were ready to throw the jailer's six-feet-one out of the window upon request, and seized Nigel's hand, wringing it furiously.
"Good old Nigel! Gad! but it's fine to see you. And what fool put you in this idiotic predicament? Wring his damned neck, I would. How are you, old sport?"
Under such light badinage did West try to conceal his real feeling but there was a tremour of the lips that spoke so banteringly.
Good old West! A friend in a thousand.
"Nice sort of place for the Squire of the Manor to be disporting himself, isn't it?" returned Merriton, fighting his hardest to keep his composure and reply in the same light tone. "I--I--damn it, Tony, you don't believe it, do you?"
West went red to the rim of his collar. He choked with the vehemence of his response.
"Believe it, man? D'you think I'm crazy? What sort of a fool would I be to believe it? Wasn't I there, that night, with you? Wait until I give my evidence in court. Bullet or no bullet, you're no--no murderer, Nigel; I'd swear my life away on that. There were others on worse terms with Wynne than you, old chap. There was Stark, for one. Stark used to borrow money from him in the old days, you know, until they had a devil of a shindy over an I.O.U. and the friendship bust. You'd no more reason to kill him than Lester Stark, I swear. Or me, for that matter."
"No, I'd no reason to kill him, Tony. But they'll take that quarrel we had over the Frozen Flame that night, and bring it up against me in court. They'll bring everything against me; everything that can be twisted or turned or bullied into blackening my name. If ever I get scot-free, I'll kill that man Borkins."
West put up his hand suddenly.
"Don't," he said, quietly; "or they'll be putting that against you, too. Believe me, Nigel, old boy, the Law's the greatest duffer on earth. By the way, here's a piece of news for you! Heard it as I stopped in at the Towers this morning. Saw that man Headland, the detective. He told me to tell you, and I clean forgot. But they found an I.O.U. on Wynne's body, an I.O.U. for two thou'--in Lester Stark's name. Dated two nights before the party. Looks a bit funny, that, doesn't it?"
Funny? Merriton felt his heart suddenly bound upward, and as suddenly drop back in his breast like lead. Glad that there was a chance for another pal to come under the same brutal sway as he had? What sort of a friend was he, anyway? But an I.O.U.!... And in Lester Stark's name! He remembered the black looks that passed between the two of them that night, remembered them as though they had been but yesterday. He jerked his chin up.
"What're they going to do about it?"
"Headland told me to tell you that he was going to investigate the matter further. That you were to keep up your heart.... Seemed a decent sort of a chap, I must say."
Keep up his heart!... And there was a chance of someone else taking his share of the damnable thing, after all!... But Lester Stark wouldn't kill. Perhaps not--and yet, some months ago he had told him to his face that he'd like to send Wynne's body to burn in hell!... H'm. Well, he would have to keep his mouth shut upon that conversation, at all events, or they'd have poor Stark by the heels the next minute.... But somehow his heart had lightened. Cleek didn't seem such a bad chap, after all. And they couldn't hang him yet, anyhow.
For the rest of the long, dreary day the memory of that I.O.U. with Lester Stark's name sprawled across the bottom of it, in the dashing caligraphy that he knew, danced before his mind's eye like a fleeting hope, making the day less long.
